You Don't Travel Alone // A World Diabetes Day Talk
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 doc...
13 Marras 6min
Diabetes Awareness Month and Social Media // What the Research Says
Back when Instagram videos were only 15 seconds long, Neil made quick, chaotic type 1 clips: a 4-part series on too many sugar-free gummy bears, and a game of football with a loaf of bread, cradled li...
11 Marras 6min
Three Out of Four // Type 1 Diabetes Stigma and Why We Hide It
When Neil started a new job in 2008, the questions started the first time his pump beeped. "Wait, what's that?" "You have to do that how many times a day?" And his personal favorite, "You can't eat th...
9 Marras 6min
Two Questions // The Diabetes Distress Screen Nobody Gave You
Neil spent part of this week on a Zoom call, chewing a protein bar on mute (which is like chewing a shoe), nodding at a quarterly something, and thinking about his blood sugar while nobody on the call...
6 Marras 6min
Powerlessness Has a Name // The 7 Sources of Diabetes Distress
When it rains in Little Rock, Cora won't leave the back porch. She walks to the edge, looks at the rain, and turns right back around. 5.9 pounds of pure refusal, and nothing Neil does changes it. That...
4 Marras 7min
You Can Do This One Day // Doing Type 1 Diabetes Alone
A few months after Neil was diagnosed in 1992, his dad dragged him to a JDRF event. Neil was 20, arms crossed, doing the math on how fast they could leave. Somewhere in the middle of a keynote, his da...
2 Marras 8min
Eight Weeks of Not Sitting Still
The Keep It Moving finale. Eight weeks ago you took a before picture; today the wall goes up: real before-and-afters from the community, from the desk worker who cut a 4.5-hour sit to 90 minutes, to t...
30 Loka 7min
The Trick Is Movement, the Treat Is Range
Halloween week, the most complicated holiday on the type 1 diabetes calendar, hosted by a man who hands out candy from a fire pit in his front yard like a benevolent porch goblin. This is the Hallowee...
28 Loka 5min
