Postcards in an Elevator

Today’s Prompt: Elevator blog. If you were in an elevator with someone and they asked about your blog, your Health Activism, your community, or your condition, what would you tell them? Make a version for a 30 second elevator ride, a version for a 1 minute elevator ride, and a version for a 2 minute elevator ride.

If we were on an elevator together today, you'd see me in my Big Blue Test t-shirt (for the last time, since it's now embarrassingly tight on me). You'd probably ask me what it was about (or ask about my enormous belly poking out underneath it).

The 30-second version would follow:

I have Type 1 Diabetes and today is November 14th - World Diabetes Day, an internationally recognized day where we try to spread awareness about diabetes - its signs, symptoms, concerns, complications. The Big Blue Test is an awareness initiative that many of us take part in by testing our blood sugars and getting active.

The 1-minute version would include this next bit:

November 14th was Frederick Banting's birthday - he was one of the men who discovered insulin, you know. Anyway, there are millions of people with diabetes in the US, but there are hundreds of millions all over the world. Many of them don't have access to that life-saving insulin, to test strips, to good medical care. If we can get enough people to do the Big Blue Test, there's a company called Roche that will donate $75K to charities to help those people.

The 2-minute version would have me digging into my diaper bag to show you this:

See this postcard? It's from someone I've never met named Jacque. She lives in Washington State. She has had diabetes almost as long as I have; we were both diagnosed in the early 1990s. And we were paired up by my friend Lee Ann Thill who organized this crazy cool artistic initiative called the World Diabetes Day Postcard Exchange where we would create postcards for World Diabetes Day and send them to people all over the world. Then we'd post them to a Facebook page.

I have a photo of the one I sent Jacque, too:

The cards have the blue circle logo that is synonymous with World Diabetes Day and the International Diabetes Federation....Oh, I'm sorry, am I blocking the doors? You probably need to get off here. Well, it was nice chatting with you!

Doors shut, end scene. Someone else gets on.

Hi. Oh, the shirt? Well, I have Type 1 Diabetes...

This post was written as part of NHBPM - 30 health posts in 30 days: http://bit.ly/vU0g9J.