"MARCIA,MARCIA,MARCIA!!!!!!!!!!"

Introducing a Post on the "New Type 1 Diabetic." Not to be confused with her more popular sister Type 2 Diabetes

Sometimes having Type 1 Diabetes makes me feel like Jan Brady.

The neurotic Brady sister #2 who was just as smart (some say smarter), just as pretty (some say even prettier), just as annoying (I say MUCH more annoying), and just as much the fashion victim as her "Golden Girl" sister Marcia. But,alas, poor Jan always spent each episode living in the shimmery shadow that the glorious Marcia cast.

Right now, you might be saying to yourself, "Kelly - your nuts, what the heck do you mean?"

Well dear Diabetesaliciousness reader, sometimes (and by sometimes I mean most of the time) I feel that Type 2 Diabetes gets all the "glory" in our Diabetes Brady family.

All, or most of the articles I find in my "research" regarding Diabetes breakthroughs, studies, etc always seem to have a T2 spin to them. Even today, April 1, 2008, on my very own blog's Diabetes News Feed, all 4 articles featured are for type 2 Diabetics. It's really great that Australian researchers did a study on the Ti Chi benefits for T2 diabetes. BUT, wouldn't Ti Chi help me? For your local Philly/Tri Stater CN8 watchers, (WHAT IS TI CHI?)
Why was the study just done on T2's?

I get all excited when I see the headline for a new diabetes breakthrough, and then I realize it's all about "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia." Or in my case, Type 2 Diabetes, Type 2 Diabetes, Type 2 Diabetes.

Sometimes it seems that only when a T1 tragedy strikes, does Type 1 make the news.
Then our hearts our broken and are tempers flare because we know that the tragedy could have been prevented, had the proper authorities been notified, and the proper info regarding T1 had reached the public.

Instead, T1& T2 causes, symptoms, & treatments are all lumped together, when in actuality they could not be more different. They are in fact, two very different diseases, who happen to have some characteristics and a name in common.

What about T1's? Are not we "Jan Brady's " of the Diabetes family just as important as out Marcia Brady T2 Diabetic counterparts? We my be a different branch of the family, but we are just as important.

Where's the love, where's the money for the research, and where the hell is the cure?

I don't blame my T2 compadres, they have their own issues and I feel for them, I know they get discriminated for other reasons that I don't have to contend with.

No, I blame the media for lumping us all together, not differentiating between the two, and printing information that might help t2's, but could really harm t1's. For example, every media outlet Printed Halle Berry's statement regarding her switch from being a t1 to a t2. You know the one, where she said something along the lines of "I used to be t1 but now I consider myself a t2, and I weaned myself off insulin through diet and exercise." You remember the brew ha, I'm paraphrasing and I won't bore us by replaying ,reprinting, or linking the video and various articles regarding said statement.

Maybe I'm just tired of having to explain my disease to people who continuously confuse it with the other more flamboyant member of my Diabetes family.
At this point, I'd settle for John Q. Public knowing the difference between T1 and T2, and never, ever having to hear some none-diabetic say to me, "Your on the insulin pump, you must have diabetes real bad!" How freaking "groovy" would that be!