Tomorrow Neil stands in front of a room at Akron Children's Hospital on World Diabetes Day. Kids with sensors on their arms. Parents who haven't slept through the night since diagnosis. Nurses and doctors who send those families home and hope. This episode is that talk in 5 minutes, so you hear it the same weekend they do.
The thing Neil most wishes somebody had told him at 20: this disease will try to convince you that you're the only one, and it's lying. He walks through Julianne Holt-Lunstad's 2015 research, 70 studies and more than 3 million people on loneliness and early death, and says out loud where it stops, because nobody has run that study in type 1. Then one message each for the kids, the parents, and the clinicians, including a 4-second question that might be the most important prescription in the building.
In this episode:
- The loneliness research, said carefully, and what we still don't know
- To the kids: the sensor on your arm is how your people find you
- To the parents: you didn't cause this, and your kid is watching your face
- To the nurses and doctors: "Do you know anybody else with this?"
- How to say it somewhere on World Diabetes Day
This week's challenge: Saturday is World Diabetes Day. Say it somewhere: a DM, a 24-hour story, a comment on somebody's blue circle post, or your one-sentence story. Neil's spending the day resharing every one of you who posts. The poll closes Sunday night.
What is Your Best T1D Year?
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