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.