Small But Mighty: Hanky Pancreas Aims to “Transform” Pumpers’ Style

Next up in our series on “mom-and-pop” diabetes shops is Jessica Floeh, who knows a thing or two about good design. As a type 1 diabetic and a student at Parsons The New School of Design, Jessica is mixing her love of design with her personal connection with diabetes. She’s recently concocted Hanky Pancreas, a...

American Idol Contestant Crystal Bowersox — Doing Her Thing with the ‘Betes

Like Jessica over at A Sweet Life, I have to say that Crystal Bowersox is hands-down my favorite American Idol contestant this year, and not just because she has diabetes.  She’s just cool. She wears dreadlocks, and plays guitar. People call her “Mama Sox” because she has a one-year-old son. (They call her “Mama” and...

My (Most Excellent) Life as a Pancreas

Funny what you find when you clean out your closets. As I was sorting through some of the piles of diabetes-related materials in my office last week, I uncovered this cheery-looking little book called “My Life as a Pancreas” by Priscilla Call Essert: Someone had sent it to me for review a while back, and I...

Sizing Up the Solo

Show and Tell today, Friends! I received my demo kit of the Solo tubeless insulin pumping system the other day. That’s the would-be competitor to OmniPod which was acquired by Roche Diabetes last month. It’s not yet on the market — in fact, not slated to be available until 2012, but you can order a free sample...

Mastering Those Carb-Guessing Skills

I loved D-psychologist Jessica Bernstein’s assertion that aiming to control your blood glucose levels with diabetes is a lesson in frustration. Rather, the best we can hope for is to influence our BG “by combining enough insulin and exercise to burn the sugar,” she says. Right on, Jessica! — which is I’ll talk about...

A Techie Type 1 Reviews the New Medtronic “Revel” Insulin Pump + CGM System

Technology blogger and Type 1 diabetic Scott Hanselman works for Microsoft, and is quite famous in software developer circles.  As it happens, he’s been wearing the brand new “Revel” combo Insulin Pump and Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) system from Medtronic for six days now, and has just posted his thoughts on his tech blog, Computer...

Balancing Pregnancy with Diabetes: the Book + the Interview

Cheryl Alkon, journalist and D-blogger at Managing the Sweetness Within (pictured right) has written the book that many a would-be-mom with diabetes has been waiting for: an ‘insider’s guide’ to having a baby with this illness. Titled Balancing Pregnancy with Pre-existing Diabetes, it covers the whole pregnancy experience, from the months before you begin trying...

Roche Acquires Medingo Solo Patch Pump: Begin the ‘Usability Wars’?

I’m sure many of you heard the news yesterday that Roche Diabetes has acquired Israel-based Medingo, makers of the much-anticipated Solo insulin patch pump — a would-be direct competitor to the OmniPod tubeless pumping system. Roche paid $160 million for the small company and its technology, which is a drop in the bucket in industry terms....