About

Sarahndipity is a diabetes patient blog. It is not meant to give medical advice or to replace a diabetes medical professional team in any way, shape, or form. Thank you for visiting! Leave a comment below.

My name is Sarah Jane. I have type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 Diabetes is an auto immune disease that attacks the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, a hormone that the body uses to break down sugar in food we eat. With the absence of insulin, the sugar builds up in the blood. High blood sugar can cause numerous life hindering and life threatening complications, both immediate and long term. It can also raise the risk of heart disease. Type 1 Diabetes is often confused with type 2 diabetes, or insulin resistance, where the body is unable to use the insulin that the pancreas produces. Type 2 is the most common type of diabetes, and is the type that is most often portrayed in the media.

I don’t let the risk of complications get in the way of my life. I want to make a difference in the world and prove that diabetes doesn’t have to slow anyone down.

I’ve been diabetes blogging (dblogging) since July of 2009. If you’d like to read my first 99 posts, you can read them here at ThePwdPk.

I treat my diabetes using an Animas Ping insulin pump and meter as well as a Dexcom 7 Plus continuous glucose monitor.

I spent 5 months living in rural Northeastern Utah in the fall and winter of 2010-11 working for the National Park Service. Beginning in March 2011, I’ll be spending 3 months in South Carolina and then four months in Yellowstone doing similar internships. While I am passionate about NPS and would love a career working in the outdoors, I am still drawn to the diabetes community and am still hoping to go into diabetes education eventually.

Read definitions of Sarahisims here.

Contact: sajabla [a t] gmail [d o t] com

Nothing on this blog is medical advice. Consult your physician before changing your health care plan.

Sarah Jane grew up in western Missouri with her parents and two younger brothers. Beginning in Mid-March, she is spending the spring in South Carolina working for the Fish and Wildlife Service as an intern. She enjoys kitting badly, drinking diet coke, reading diabetes blogs, and dancing to Fall Out Boy in secret.

She decided to start a blog about diabetes one day in the summer of 2009 while she was bored on a rainy day while working at another national park. This journey has inspired her not only to better diabetes control (her A1C went from 8.2 to 7.1 over the course of the first year of her blog) but also to inspire others, changing her career goals from working for the National Parks Service as a historian to becoming a certified diabetes educator and helping others who live with diabetes as she does.

FAQ’s:

She was diagnosed at age 11.

Hardware:

Insulin Pump: Animas Ping (pink, with a purple skin) named Miss Lola Pingy Too.

Meds: Humalog insulin and Symlin injections (Symlin product page, Symlin on NIH)

Continuous Glucose Monitor: Dexcom 7 +

Blood Glucose Meters:

She owns two One Touch Minis (Pink and purple, of course) and one Freestyle Lite (with a pink skin), but the meter she uses the most is the Ping Remote, which is also a OneTouch, which she named Silverton.

Sarah Jane does not represent any of the companies listed or linked to above. The links are provided for the reader’s information only.

 

Updated 2-24-11