Tag: diabetes

spectacularuniverse:

I’ve seen this photograph very frequently on tumblr and Facebook, always with the simple caption, “Ghost Heart”. What exactly is a ghost heart?

More than 3,200 people are on the waiting list for a heart transplant in the United States. Some won’t survive the wait. Last year, 340 died before a new heart was found.

The solution: Take a pig heart, soak it in an ingredient commonly found in shampoo and wash away the cells until you’re left with a protein scaffold that is to a heart what two-by-four framing is to a house.

Then inject that ghost heart, as it’s called, with hundreds of millions of blood or bone-marrow stem cells from a person who needs a heart transplant, place it in a bioreactor – a box with artificial lungs and tubes that pump oxygen and blood into it – and wait as the ghost heart begins to mature into a new, beating human heart.

Doris Taylor, director of regenerative medicine research at the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston, has been working on this— first using rat hearts, then pig hearts and human hearts – for years.

The process is called decellularization and it is a tissue engineering technique designed to strip out the cells from a donor organ, leaving nothing but connective tissue that used to hold the cells in place. 

This scaffold of connective tissue – called a “ghost organ” for its pale and almost translucent appearance – can then be reseeded with a patient’s own cells, with the goal of regenerating an organ that can be transplanted into the patient without fear of tissue rejection.

This ghost heart is ready to be injected with a transplant recipient’s stem cells so a new heart – one that won’t be rejected – can be grown.

(Source)

From further down in the article:

“And the nice thing about this technology,” Taylor says, “is that it will work with any organ or tissue. So it’s not just about hearts.”

Kidneys, livers, lungs, pancreases.

They’ll be growing those, too.

Sign me up for a ghost pancreas if I’m still around by the time their able to implement this.

Sweetly Voiced™: Snickers

This is a really good explanation of why those all too present “Bob/John/Joe/unlucky-name-of-the week has X amount of candy B; he eats Y amount. What does he have? Diabetes, Bob/John/Joe/unlucky-name-of-the week has diabetes” memes that tend to clog the diabetes tag which, guess what, people who actually have diabetes like to use, because it is a life-altering chronic illness that impacts most aspects of their lives.

My general mental response to those (besides blocking the tumblr user who posted one) is to immediately fantasize about tackling them and putting them in a headlock.

Note that I am attaching a content warning to this because it does reference rape jokes in order to point out that laughing about a disease that someone had no control over developing as if the person brought it on themself is a form of victim blaming.

Sweetly Voiced™: Snickers

Random thing that sucks about having type 1 diabetes (and which probably is also true for a fair number of other chronic illnesses):

When your best blood-drawing vein starts getting enough scar tissue to make it hard for the lab tech to draw blood. This especially sucks when the corresponding vein on your other arm is in a weird position for drawing blood.

insulinismylife:

“Diabetics shouldn’t have kids.”

“All of that sugar is why you’re diabetic to begin with”

“Constantly giving yourself shots is a disgusting way to live." image

The "you did it to yourself by eating too much sugar” is one of the most hideous pieces of bullshit ever. 1) Shaming people for their diseases/conditions is disgusting and is, in a way, a form of victim-blaming. 2) There are are INFANTS who develop type 1 (see ten-day old with an insulin pump). I can assure you those babies have not eaten too much sugar. 3) Far, far too many other things that can be added.

Also, the one time in my life that I have literally seen red happened when, back in the days when I still thought I would someday want to carry a child or two, someone I no longer talk to online basically said, of the chance that any child I might produce might also develop diabetes, “Why would you want to do that to a child?” followed by some cutesy sad face emoticon.

It is well for both of us that we were separated by a computer screen and several hundred miles, as if she’d said that to my face I would probably have hit her as hard as I could.

It’s hard. But sometimes you find things make you feel…a little hopeful.

So this month–this week, actually, I think–marks the 16th anniversary of my diagnosis with type 1 diabetes.

Tonight I stumbled across this post (I almost reblogged it, but one of the pictures seems to be not actually for World Diabetes day, according to Google Image Search; the post also only highlighted type 1, and World Diabetes Day is for all people with diabetes, not just those with type 1) and I just cried. Because lighting up monuments for World Diabetes Day is something I didn’t know about, and the fact that people would agree to do that for a chronic illness that is too often reviled and misunderstood…I don’t have a word for how that makes me feel. “Touched” isn’t strong enough. Neither is “moved” any other word that might be used for it.

There are no words only tears of deep gratitude that someone in charge of the care of these monuments would be willing to do this, whatever their personal thoughts or motives might have been.

It seems like such a little thing, but it’s huge to me.

Here’s an article from 2007 about the first World Diabetes Day that has more pictures of more monuments.

Don’t Be That Person: A Halloween PSA

One of the many Seasons of Copious Amounts of Sugary Treats (in this case, Halloween) is upon us.

With great amounts of candy comes a a great responsibility that most people don’t even realize is a responsibility.

That responsibility is to not be That Person who makes Halloween related diabetes jokes online or in real life.

It’s not cute.

It’s not funny.

And it’s not anywhere near factual.

Sugar does not cause any type of diabetes, no matter how much people want to use it as a way blame people for a disease that they have little to no control over developing. That’s right, little to no control. Even type 2 diabetes, the kind uninformed and insensitive people just love making fat jokes about, has more to it than just weight.

So this Halloween, don’t be That Person who makes “wise cracks” like “I ate sooo much candy I’m gonna get diabetes” or “I can taste the diabeetus.” Don’t be That Person who posts pictures of candy or other Halloween treats on Tumblr and tags the photos as “diabetes.”

Also, don’t be That Person who posts otherwise cute Halloween-y fandom things (or non-Halloween-y fandom things) and throws diabetes into a discussion of candy or into a discussion of how cute characters are or how cute characters are together.

Don’t do any of these things. They are cute. They aren’t funny. They’re hurtful and harmful and spread misinformation which adds to the stigma and the shame that often follows the word “diabetes.”

Millions of people all over the world deal with this chronic disease. There is no cure for type 1; insulin is only a treatment. Type 2 can sometimes be controlled by diet and exercise, but sometimes that alone is not enough.

People with diabetes are people, not punchlines.

So this Halloween? Don’t be That Person.

Our Diabetic Life: TSA Cares: Use it!

odiedragon:

PSA for anyone with special needs traveling by plane in the US: Be aware that you can get assistance from the TSA if you call ahead and schedule a Passenger Support Specialist (PSS) to assist you through the process.

If you…

Be informed, call ahead, make your travel go more smoothly!

Official TSA Cares website: http://www.tsa.gov/traveler-information/travelers-disabilities-and-medical-conditions

The information on general medication and diabetes supplies is MUCH more concise and understandable than it was when I made my first plane trip ever.

Since I’m doing that again soon, it was nice to have a concise review.

Even if just the idea of idea of screenings still makes me super anxious.

Our Diabetic Life: TSA Cares: Use it!