As I said yesterday, I had the opportunity to interview diabetes expert and entertainer, Theresa Garnero, about her book, Your First Year with Diabetes. I also asked her about an issue that commonly comes up within the T1 community. I’m really interested in others’ thoughts on the question and her response to it.
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Theresa Garnero, Diabetes Expert & Entertainer

It is interactive, addresses the self-care behaviors in each section, is visually-inviting, promotes a can-do approach and uses humor throughout.

1. Overwhelm and information overload. Your First Year breaks it down into manageable bits of information and invites the reader to participate in their care by suggesting ideas to focus on.
2. Access to diabetes education and science-based information is a huge obstacle with only about 10% of people with diabetes ever seeing an educator. Your First Year provides my collective knowledge in working with thousand of people with diabetes, what they have shared has worked, as well as my know-how of the behind-the-scenes diabetes science and research.

Immensely. People with diabetes inspire me to keep it real. In bearing witness to so many peoples journeys of successes or challenges on the path to diabetes health, I am humbled by the innumerous ways one can approach and impact the disease. Recently, my California colleagues met during a statewide meeting. Several of our certified diabetes educator leaders have type 1 diabetes. It is clear in speaking with them how those of us without diabetes really don’t have a clue what it is like to have the disease. The book is my unique perspective on the global state of diabetes self-management affairs. I am one of thousands trying to help it be a better place for people with diabetes. I can only hope that in sharing someone else’s angle on what flipped the switch for them, what made the connection real, may inspire others. Writing it all down leaves me hungry to learn and share more.

It has been my professional observation that those who are most successful at managing diabetes long-term are the ones who have healthy coping strategies. If your mind is not prepared for what is in store—the effort, the unpredictable outcomes, the importance of knowing who to lean on—then your body will have a hard time following a plan to maximize health. The mind-body concept is alive and well in medical circles. I incorporated it as a personal philosophy after learning more about it as part of my literature research on the positive effects humor has on the body (in the field of psychoneuroimmunology).

I envision people reading it at the pace they are able, feeling encouraged with the can-do approach, incorporating items that resonate within or adding their own, and using it as a friendly, yet comprehensive resource to look up stuff they may have forgotten. The chapters build on each other and review the key self-care behaviors at regular intervals.

Being as though the book is a newborn and I have yet to see how people will respond after completing their first year, I am not entirely sure. My gut would be to ask what was helpful, where folks would like it to go. Would it be useful to go back and review goals, try new ones at certain intervals? Do people need an ongoing resource for year 2 and beyond or will they have found or developed their own ongoing diabetes self-management support?

The disenfranchisement of type 1s comes up a lot in patient and professional circles, and is an issue I hold dear to my heart. Not everyone holds this perspective since the majority of people with diabetes have type 2. Some feel it would confuse the masses by going into too much detail about type 1 when writing diabetes care books. I disagree. Regardless of the type of diabetes, self-care behaviors are the cornerstone to management. Granted, those with type 1 have so much more to think about all at once upon diagnosis and on an ongoing basis relative to the “typical” type 2 patient, but I think there is middle ground. I totally kept this in mind when writing this book with sections dedicated to insulin and many other items of relevance to type 1s. There are ways to change it by working together as a diabetes community.

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Thanks, Theresa, for taking the time to answer my questions!

Since I want with all my heart to have an impact on the lives of diabetics in a non-traditional way, using art therapy and encouraging the use of creative endeavors, I admire Theresa’s success and continued pursuit of using comedy and humor to affect the diabetes community. Check out Theresa’s website for more information about how she’s working to achieve that.

Also, I’m bursting at the seams to tell you about what I have brewing for WDD (a week from today!!), but it’s in the preliminary planning stage and finalizing it is in other people’s hands, so I’m afraid I’ll jinx it if I spill (you old-timers will get why I couldn’t help but chuckle just now…). It’s going to be phenomenally awesome though so I could use whatever prayers, good wishes, positive energy, and karma you can spare. I’m hoping it’ll be finalized enough that I can share first thing next week.