Learning from Oprah’s Megaphone
Okay, so I made a rookie mistake. I am still new to Twitter and in my haste to live up to the promise of twitter by tweeting when something time sensitive is taking place, I hastily tweeted the following statement:
Toasting Oprah for dedicating yesterday’s show to the topic of diabetes. Thank you, Oprah!
Unfortunately, I tweeted this after I heard about the show from a friend who had not watched the program and before I saw it for myself. Despite my mistake, I do hope you will consider following me on twitter. I promise that I will not make this mistake again.
Pre-tweet, I had no idea that Oprah’s episode would spark a firestorm in the blogosphere. I think that the sixuntilme post best summarizes the sentiments of Type 1 Diabetics who saw the program and had strong enough reactions to write or comment on other posts.
For families like ours and the individual living with this chronic illness every day, it is hard not to feel urgent about helping everyone on the planet understand exactly what living with Type 1 Diabetes involves. When Oprah decides to direct her substantial megaphone to the topic of diabetes education, we are all immediately invested in a deeply personal way. Honestly, I imagine that it would be hard for Oprah or Dr. Oz to get it exactly right as far as we are concerned because it is simply too close to home.
Nearly all estimates indicate that Type 1 Diabetics make up less than 10% of the entire diabetic population. Understandably, Oprah’s megaphone will be focused on the 90% of Type 2 Diabetics. I only wish that the megaphone was conveying information exclusively focused on managing and preventing Type 2 Diabetes and not confusing matters by blurring the line between Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. For the Minority Diabetes Population [MDP] forced to live with a lifetime of injections and finger pricks, Oprah’s show was simply unhelpful.
The virtue of reinforcing risk factors for developing Type 2 Diabetes and highlighting key statistics cannot be overstated. It is critical that sugar addicts like me understand that drinking one fully leaded soda every day translates into an 83% chance of developing Type 2 Diabetes. After enduring a week of illness, Oprah’s show should be lingering in my head as a source of inspiration or ammunition to eat healthier foods, exercise and generally take better care of myself. Instead, as the parent of a Type 1 Diabetic, I find myself preoccupied by why it is so important to me that people understand that as a mother, I could not have prevented Elle from getting Type 1 Diabetes.
Tags: diabetes, oprah, sixuntilme, twitter, type1, type2, typeone, typetwo
I did not see the show, but I find myself preoccupied, as well, with how to teach people that Kailyn having Type 1 is not my fault.
In my opinion, there should be completely different names for Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. People still say stuff to me for example, “she is not overweight how did she get it?” or, “so she can’t eat any sugar or carbs?”.(as recently as last Friday at her valentines day party).
Oprah’s show sounds just like everything else on tv. Alarming people about the epidemic of Diabetes, but not letting people know that there are two types, with the first one not being preventable.
I really wish they had different names. People so often tell me they ‘know all about diabetes’ and then follow it up with ‘my uncle/neighbor/ex-sister-in-law/grandpa’s first wife had it and (s)he died.’ So, not only are you going to disregard the seriousness of T1 (not that T2 isn’t serious, but the dangers are crazy different) but you are going to point out to my kid that she could die from it?!?!
We’re 3 1/2 years from diagnosis. I’ve learned to not be surprised and I’ve given up on large scale publicity. It’s all about educating where you can and correcting misperceptions. It’s a never-ending struggle but I just keep plugging away at it by talking about diabetes anytime I think it could help.
Stacy
Ditto! We did not see the Oprah show in question but feel nearly overwhelmed by the mis-understandings people have about the different kinds of diabetes. Our daughter was diagnosed 1 month before her 2nd birthday and peoples reactions are annoying! They think we gave her this disease by genetics and too much soda (when most kids juice drinks are just as high in carb…)
anyway, thanks for all the posting and a venue to vent to people who understand what a pain and added burden confusing inforation about type 1 and 2 is in our lives!
Even now almost six months later, that show still enrages me and I found myself steaming about it again tonight. Being a T1 for 26 years (since the age of 5), I completely agree with you that this show as unhelpful and fueled many of the myths that have long-endangered our advocacy efforts. My mom faced those same questions when I was young, which didn’t make her job any easier and made her even more angry as she’s a Type 1 herself since the age of 5. We were all hurt by Oprah and Oz. Kerri over at SixUntilMe did do a great job on that one and many of us blogged about it at the time, and all we can do is continue to push for more educational efforts and shows highlighting Type 1, and the differences. Thanks for posting this, and sorry that it’s several months overdue.