The
Diabetes Symposium is being held in Minneapolis this year. It will be very similar to the Transplant Summit that was held in Bethesda last November. There will be eight islet cell transplant recipients present to tell their stories. Dr. Hering will speak about islet cell transplants and Dr. Firpo will speak about her stem cell research for diabetes. It will again be a great place to learn more about what is happening in diabetes research research for the cure. I'm looking forward to seeing all of the Minneapolis
SDI friends that I have made in the last three years. It will also be fun to meet some more recipients in person. I'll write all about it afterwards.
On the homefront, I just heard back from the nurse at the Nephrologist's office. She told me that my labs came back ok. I have a small amount of protein in my urine and my sodium is slightly lower than normal, but everything else looks fine. I'm scheduled to have a renal ultrasound on Monday and I will have some more lab tests run before my appt in November to compare with these. So, I won't be worrying about this.
I picked up my new foster Assistance dog on Thursday. His name is Senator and he seems like a very nice dog. He looks a lot like Dolly which was hard at first, but now we're getting used to having a new dog. He has a different personality than Dolly. He's not so afraid of things and not so inclined to jump on people. He does have his own set of issues however. He can be a barker at times which is totally unacceptable for an Assistance dog. He barks with a high pitch bark when he wants Callie to play or something from us. That is acceptable for now. However, he also barks at things outside with a lower pitched bark. This is not acceptable. We're working on this and he might be getting a bark collar which sprays citronella when he barks. Its actually kind of interesting to have a new set of problems. I get to learn a wider cross section of training. Part of getting him to quit barking might involve training him to bark on command and then training him to stop. Cool stuff. I didn't realize how much I would enjoy the learning aspect of training a dog. Its a science in itself.
The Senator and Callie are already buddies. And Callie is still the boss.
After getting all excited about combining diabetes and dogs, now I see that diabetes has found a connection with microbiology. This article came out today in DiabetesCare.net. A group of students at the University of Missouri found that they could measure blood sugar using bacteria that have an ability to glow in the presence of glucose. They found that the amount of glucose was in direct proportion to the amount of glow created by the bacteria. They are hoping that this might be used in test strips in the future. Bacteria are already used for their ability to create drugs and other useful chemicals. They are cheap, numerous and there is no moral issues with their use (that I am aware of). I'll be following this research.
