Scott Benner 9/12/14 Scott Benner 9/12/14

Video: Sierra Sandison on Dr. Oz #ShowMeYourPump

Sierra Sandison became Miss Idaho 2014, dreamt up the viral hashtag #ShowMeYourPump and is competing to be Miss America – all with her insulin pump clipped at her side.

Now she's on the Dr. Oz Show showing her pump to his audience and making every person with diabetes about as proud as can be.

I first met Sierra in July when I interviewed her about the events that led up to her #ShowMeYourPump tweet; which inspired people everywhere to share photos of themselves with their insulin pumps. During our conversation I learned about McCall Salinas and how a talk that she had with Sierra led to the Miss Idaho wearing her insulin pump on stage.

The Miss America Pageant is on ABC Sunday at 9 pm est. The top 15 contestant make it to the live stage and I'm hoping, as I imagine are all of you, that we see Sierra show her pump Sunday night on national television. Good luck Sierra, the entire diabetes community is behind you!

JDRF Partner ViaCyte to Immediately Initiate Type 1 Diabetes Clinical Trial

We are extremely pleased the FDA has allowed the company to move forward with a human clinical trial of its innovative type 1 diabetes (T1D) encapsulated cell replacement therapy...

From JDRF.org

JDRF’s partner ViaCyte recently announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is allowing them to move forward with a clinical trial of its innovative type 1 diabetes (T1D) encapsulated cell replacement therapy called VC-01™ product candidate. The company plans to immediately initiate the first ever clinical evaluation of a stem cell-derived islet replacement therapy for the treatment of people with T1D. The trial will enroll approximately 40 people at multiple clinical sites.

read the entire article on JDRF.org

No CGM, No Problem

I completed a rather exhaustive set of parent, user and creator interviews last week about CGM in the Cloud.

Arden turned ten years old in July but in softball years she is consider to be nine. 9u Little League all star play is a one tournament and done setup -- district play does't begin until 10u when it is then possible to play in a District, Section, State and finally Regional tournament (The World Series only exist at 12u).

Arden's team won the 9 tournament in our district and with that, softball was to be over.

Until she tried out for the 10u team and made it as a sub. Now you know, if you already didn't, that the "u' in the age bracket stands for "and under".

Arden's 9u tournament began in early June before school was over and they practiced for weeks before the Father's Day tournament. SO she had already been playing for a while when..

The 10u practices started just days later in June and on the evening of August 8th, the 10s played their last game. Three straight months of softball. There were practice almost daily and games when there weren't practices. It's been a mild summer here but at times the heat has been grueling. Blood glucose levels have been mostly stable during play but late night lows have been more common this year than in the past. We are handling it well.

With three games left in the Regional Tournament, oh yea by the way... they won the whole thing (Arden had the winning hit in the championship game). Anyway, with three games left in the fourth tournament Arden showed up at the field without her CGM. Too far from the hotel to go get it, we went old school diabetes and never missed a beat.

With DexCom we test after warmups which is about thirty minutes before the game begins and make any adjustments that are necessary. After that Arden uses hand signals (she holds up her fingers) about every two innings to let us know what her DexCom is reading. If there is an issue, we handle it.

Without DexCom we tested after warmups which was about thirty minutes before the game began and made the necessary adjustments (she needed a few carbs). After that Arden used hand signals (thumbs up or thumbs down) about every two innings to let us know how she felt. We tested before the fourth inning. There were no issues.

Why did I blog this non-story about not having Arden's CGM?

I completed a rather exhaustive set of parent, user and creator interviews last week about CGM in the Cloud (I'll be explaining CGM in the Cloud soon for those who aren't aware) and if I'm being quite honest, I'm still wrapping my head around all that I learned. So much good stuff there, between having better access to data and comfort for parents, but there's something about it that makes me uneasy and I'm trying to find the words to share that feeling without diminishing the joy that I felt hearing the parents talk about their peace of mind and the people who are using the data to better their health. But there is a conversation to be had about fear and I want to have it... just need to find the words.

Insulet and Dexcom Agree to Develop a CGM-Integrated Personal Diabetes Manager

You are about to read the most exciting grouping of sentences that an OmniPod user could ever wish to hear.

From Insulet.com:

This is the entire announcement from Insult. If you want the legalese and investor info, you can read it here.

New Insulet PDM Will Receive Dexcom G5 CGM Sensor Signals

BEDFORD, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/05/14 -- Insulet Corporation (NASDAQ: PODD), the leader in tubeless insulin pump technology with its OmniPod® Insulin Management System, and DexCom, Inc (NASDAQ: DXCM), the leader in continuous glucose monitoring ("CGM") technology, today announced their intention to allow information from Dexcom's 5th generation CGM system to be identified, received and displayed on Insulet's new Bluetooth-enabled Personal Diabetes Manager ("PDM"), currently in development.

This project expands upon the initial agreement announced in June to enable the Dexcom mobile app platform to integrate data from Insulet's OmniPod System. That platform will be the first of its kind to enable glucose and pump data to be displayed on a smartphone.

"We are pleased to expand our development relationship with Dexcom to receive and display Dexcom G5 Sensor data on our new PDM, eliminating the need to carry a separate CGM receiver," said Duane DeSisto, President and Chief Executive Officer of Insulet. "This collaboration furthers our shared vision of helping people living with diabetes by providing greater access to the data they need to make smart and effective decisions to better manage and control their disease."

"We are pleased to be back working with Insulet to bring our leading-edge technologies together to help people living with diabetes better manage their disease," said Kevin Sayer, President and Chief Operating Officer of Dexcom.

Scott Benner 7/25/14 Scott Benner 7/25/14

Interview: Miss Idaho Sierra Sandison #ShowMeYourPump

All any of us want is to be anonymous and in a world where different is often looked upon with fear, the people who want, need and deserve that anonymity sometimes have to stand front and center to get it.

A few weeks ago Sierra Sandison was a contestant in the Miss Idaho Pageant. She wasn’t a diabetes advocate or even a person who widely shared with her friends that she was diagnosed with type I diabetes at the age of eighteen. Much has changed since then.

Sierra was backstage at Miss Idaho during the first night of competition when she had a chance meeting with Miss Idaho’s Outstanding Preteen, 12 year old McCall Salinas. Sierra stepped out of her dressing room and heard these words, “Oh my gosh, is that an insulin pump?”

Sierra told me that her stomach “flip flopped” when she realized that McCall recognized her insulin pump for what it was. I thought, “Oh no, people are going to notice, I was hoping that it was little enough that no one would notice”.

Sierra’s second reaction to McCall’s words, “I got scared”, but then McCall quickly explained that she also had type I diabetes and that she didn’t use an insulin pump because "she was scared of what her friends would think and of how it would look”.

It was during this brief encounter that a diabetes advocate was born. Sierra Sandison, a 20 year old woman who was diagnosed with type I diabetes only two years prior, was about to make a decision that would change her life. She could disconnect from her pump when she took the stage in her swim suit or leave it on and help McCall to not feel quite so alone.

At the time that their exchange took place Sierra told me, “I had no idea that I would even make the top ten, let alone become Miss Idaho - but I thought, I have to do this for McCall”.

During the interview I mentioned to Sierra that I believe people become advocates when they realize that they care more for another person than they do for themselves. This was that moment for Sierra. When she left that conversation with McCall she was a different person, and that person didn’t want McCall to be worried about what other people would think.

It only took Sierra a second to decide that she was going to walk on stage wearing her insulin pump, “I have to do this for McCall”, she thought.

“It was really scary (to walk out on stage) but thinking about McCall gave me a whole new confidence”. Suddenly Sierra didn't care what the audience or the judges thought and the prospect of becoming Miss Idaho or Miss America became secondary.

When she came off stage McCall walked up to Sierra and said, “now I want to get a pump”.

Sierra “balled her eyes out” when she realized that something she had done helped another person to find the confidence to be him or herself.

If this story stopped here it would be amazing and completely worth sharing. It’s a story of two strangers who find each other by chance, both unaware of how much they are in need of the other’s support. A simple and beautiful story of humanity, empathy and the power of sameness. But social media had other plans for this moment and later when Sierra shared a photo of herself and McCall on Facebook, along with a brief description of how they met backstage and the events that transpired immediately after, Sierra found a community of loving people living with diabetes that she didn't know existed - and they had her back.

The outpouring of support that she received on Facebook prompted Sierra to share a different photo, this time of her walking on stage in her black bikini with her insulin pump on her side. This is the first time that she would use the hashtag #ShowMeYourPump.

In an instant 20 year old Sierra Sandison went from being a hopeful pageant contestant who got caught up in the desire to support a little girl, to the face of confidence and security for people everywhere who live with insulin dependent diabetes. Her image was about to inspire countless thousands to share pictures of themselves with their insulin pumps on social media. Sierra’s very unintended coming out party was suddenly and gleefully part of the ethos.

Now everywhere you look on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and the rest of social media, people with diabetes are showing their pumps to the world in an effort to become invisible. The chain of events is continuing on. Sierra’s decision to support McCall has become a phenomenon of strangers holding up their pumps in support of Sierra, and in support of themselves. We are witnessing humanity at it’s best, we are witnessing people whose desire to support a stranger is helping them to overcome the same insecurity that brought Sierra and McCall together.

Show them your pump, until no one sees it.

Today, because a little girl noticed and insulin pump on a strangers hip, people who live with diabetes are a lot closer to that goal. I told Sierra that my hope is that one day soon another girl will walk onto a stage wearing an insulin pump, and that no one will notice. No one will post a picture, ask for an interview or bat an eye. That’s the world I want to live in, it's the world McCall needs and the world that Sierra Sandison’s bravery brought us all one-step closer to… when she showed us her pump.