Saturday, September 15, 2007

Cherishing Life!

I can only hope for a life as long as my Great Aunt. She passed away two days ago, at the age of 104. Can you believe that, 104 years old! Her brother is still alive, at 94 and drives around with me in my Smart car.  

I have a great genetic basis, minus the whole diabetes thing. I figure the 104 year old life span factored against the diabetes, will leave me living to the average of most Canadians :) Do the math!!! 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

They say diabetes takes 10 years off a person's life, so 94 and still driving sounds good to me. :)

Anonymous said...

Drea,

Keep up the positivity and active lifestyle, and you just might reach your goal!

Because you blog about diabetes, I thought you might help the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) out a bit.

We are in the midst of our preparations for the first UN-observed World Diabetes Day (www.worlddiabetesday.org) on 14 November this year, and I wanted to ask you if you would like to help us to spread awareness of this worldwide event and the theme we have chosen for it this year - Diabetes in Children and Adolescents.

It is estimated that over 200 children develop type 1 diabetes every day and there's no question that the disease often hits disadvantaged communities the hardest, and that children in the developing world can die because their parents are unable to afford medication. In many countries diabetes is still considered an adult disease and as a result can be diagnosed late with severe consequences, including death. Even after diagnosis many children experience poor control and develop complications early.

This is why one of our key objectives for World Diabetes Day this year is to double the number of children covered by the Life for a Child Program - http://www.worlddiabetesday.org/go/wdd-2007/life-for-a-child. We also want to encourage initiatives that can help to reduce diabetic ketoacidosis (diabetic coma) and to promote the sort of healthy lifestyles which can prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes in children.

A version of the diabetes circle, the icon we used for our Unite for Diabetes campaign http://www.unitefordiabetes.org/ has now been adopted for World Diabetes Day and we have produced a number of web banners that you can view and download here http://banners.worlddiabetesday.org.

The way in which you can help us spread awareness of World Diabetes Day is to add one of the banners to your own blog, which we would really appreciate.

The UN's World Diabetes Day Resolution (61/225) was really just the first goal of an ambitious campaign that we have been leading. This is the first time a non-communicable disease has been recognised as a serious threat to global public health and we are hoping now to further raise awareness globally of the disease that is predicted to contribute to 6% of the world’s mortality in 2007.

If you would like to know more about the UN Resolution and our plans for World Diabetes Day this year, just drop me a line at stephanie.tanner@idf.org and I will get back to you with more information.

Many thanks,
Stephanie Tanner
IDF - Communications Assistant