by pgunalan | Jul 7, 2026 | T1D Stories, Interviews
Scott K. Johnson is a prominent Type 1 diabetes (T1D) advocate, blogger, and speaker diagnosed in 1980 at age five. Known for early work in the online diabetes community and his blog, scottsdiabetes.com, he focuses on the emotional and technology-driven aspects of diabetes management. He has worked extensively with mySugr and now with Blue Circle Health, aiming to empower patients and improve diabetes care. I sat down with Scott recently to talk about staying resilient when faced with the challenges of aging and of T1D in general.
by pgunalan | Jun 26, 2026 | T1D Stories, Interviews
Judith Jones Ambrosini is the oldest person I know with type 1 diabetes, and she’s probably had it longer than anyone I know. When I was beginning to make my mark in diabetes, she was already in the thick of it. She’s been a board member with the American Diabetes Association (ADA), a board member of DESA (Diabetes Exercise and Sports Association), a journalist who wrote for many diabetes magazines, a professional chef and caterer who taught nutrition, she volunteered at Children with Diabetes’ conferences for more than twenty years, and taught Tai Chi at TCOYD (Taking Control of Your Diabetes) conferences in San Diego. When I first met Judith, thirty odd years ago, she blared at me something I’ve never forgotten: “You’re using the poor man’s pump!,” while looking at my syringe trying to convert me. Alas, she never did, but I loved her passion and commitment to helping others. At 83, Judith tells it like it is, then and now, and shares a few wild stories in-between.
by pgunalan | May 28, 2026 | T1D Stories, Interviews
She saw it coming closer on social media and the TV News, she heard the howling winds, but she couldn’t imagine that it could reach all the way to her house. So many previous fires had stayed in the foothills and not ventured into the neighborhoods of Altadena, CA. But as a T1D of 61 years, Dorothy Noe smelled, and then saw, the approaching danger. Over a period of hours on January 7 and 8, 2025, she and her husband had to take action. When she evacuated her house that dark, early morning, she never imagined that she’d never return.
by pgunalan | Apr 29, 2026 | T1D Stories, Interviews
Brian got type 1 diabetes when he was seven. He long feared one of his three children might face the same fate––until one did. His son Owen got T1D just past his eighth birthday. Brian is a clinical exercise physiologist and diabetes educator by training, cares for his three children, lives with type 1 and Owen’s type 1, and has helped start a branch of a grass roots diabetes meet up in his hometown of Philadelphia, GrownUp T1Ds. What’s it like with all that on your plate? Brian says he takes it one day at a time, with lots of coffee.
by pgunalan | Apr 3, 2026 | T1D Stories, Interviews
My curiosity before our talk was “Is it helpful to have a spouse or partner who also has type 1 diabetes, or is it a burden?” There are 88 years of combined experience living with T1D in the Cooke/Madden household—and a lot of love, support, humor and pump supplies. You’ll learn just how much diabetes is a strength in this marriage and what, based on this union, John said a few days later when asked, “If there were a stem cell cure without need for immunosuppressants would you take it?” When it came to John’s turn he answered, “Only if my wife did it. I wouldn’t want to do it unless she wanted to do it.”
by pgunalan | Feb 19, 2026 | T1D Stories, Interviews
“I think that my first husband felt that I made life hard for us. I couldn’t be as spontaneous as he probably wanted me to be. You know this was pre-insulin pumps and CGMs. We were young, he wanted to go out and do things and I felt I had to do things a certain way to keep my sugar really well-controlled. I think I’m the most fun person in the room, but he felt that I was a wet blanket. There was probably truth to it forty years ago. Today, technology has freed up life for us T1Ds. Of course that freedom means relying on all manner of medical apparatus and being visible about it.”
