We're crazy to present yet other of our DiabetesMine Patient Voices Scholarship Contest winners for 2013 who will live attending our Innovation Height in November — Melissa Lee, a 33-year-old from north of Dallas, Texas, WHO's a very going advocate in the Diabetes Online Community and mother of two young children.

Melissa was diagnosed with type 1 almost a quarter century ago. Piece we know her as a young man diabetes blogger over at Sweetly Voiced, Melissa works professionally as a private voice lessons instructor. That means she gets to teach singing fundamentals while wearing multiple hats that power include entertainer, counselor, syntactic category trainer, and friend to her teenaged clients!

Of course, she's too passionate about improving diabetes technology,  so present's what Melissa has to say about the innovation world and about what motivates her to raise her representative:

DM) First, narrate USA about your beginnings with diabetes…

ML) I was diagnosed at age 10. My diagnosing story is a intimate one: thirst, lethargy, bon-wetting. DKA, infirmary, coma. I'm told that my blood wampu was over 1,000 mg/dL. I did all my own shots and blood sugar checks. We complied with the standard treatment communications protocol at the time, but there was a good deal we didn't understand. My A1c was in the 10-16% range for my first decade with diabetes. In college, I started pumping and came down into the 9s and 10s for the first time, but it wasn't until I was in my late 20s, married and provision for pregnancy that I saw numbers in the recommended range. And for that, I credit the societal support and entropy I launch online.

How did you prototypic find out what's today a large Diabetes Online Community, and what impact has it had on your spirit?

In 2008, I was newly married and had baby feverishness. My friends were all enjoying uncomplicated not-polygenic disease pregnancies while my A1c floated in the 7s and 8s and I couldn't join them. I didn't know what more I could behave to manage my diabetes better and I had no idea that people were talking about diabetes online. My warranty expired on the insulin pump I was using and my husband and I were searching online for information about new pumps connected the commercialise. He stumbled on Amy's Open Letter to Steve Jobs, where she asked why we were destined to Be saddled with diabetes technology that was so user-unfriendly. It genuinely wheel spoke to me.

From her blog, I saw a link to the TuDiabetes community and joined. I discovered the Oh, Baby group and, for the prototypical time in 18 years with type 1 diabetes, learned that I was not alone. There were other people just like me. They had the same struggles. They were adolescent, smart women who wanted to start families. They were troubled. They felt like zero one understood.

I didn't know how much I needful support until I felt it engrossed roughly me. I had no idea what it could dress for me. With the support and information I learned from others, I dropped my A1c in 6 months and, within a year of connexion the online community, was big with my archetypal of 2 children. I've since bespoken myself to spreading the message that TuDiabetes and the Diabetes Men Foundation espouses — "No one should feel alone." I enter actively in the broader online community, I serve along Diabetes Hands Foundation's Board of Directors, and I am presently serving happening the Steering Citizens committee of their Diabetes Advocates program.

So, you've had a couple successful pregnancies — how take today's D-tools played a start in this?

Now's diabetes engineering was a assistanc and a alleviation in preparing for and throughout both pregnancies. I used dual combinations of insulin pumps and continuous monitoring devices during my pregnancies to keep my stemma sugars in a desirable straddle and, many significantly, to respond to hyperglycemic events more quickly and aggressively. I in use those technologies prior to preparing for maternity, but I didn't however understand how to maximize their potential. I as wel well-educated that there were negatives I hadn't anticipated with pumping during pregnancy, but the online community help prepare me for what was ahead — considerations like using up your entire insulin cartridge in 24 hours, tightening skin kinking my infusion cannulas, the slow delivery of banging boluses, and pumps' max bolus settings being lower than you might motive in a single meal bolus. Toward the end of both pregnancies, I actually took my meal boluses via injection and allowed the pump to dressed ore on my basal inevitably. Maternity bottom be managed successfully without the tech gear, simply it suited my personality and my expectations to have so much data and control at my fingertips.

What inspired you to enter our Patient of Voices Competition?

True innovation starts with asking wherefore… Wherefore nates't we make information technology easier for people with diabetes to isolate the lawsuit of a high blood wampu? Wherefore coiffure I have to throw outer a feeding bottle of perhaps perfectly redemptive insulin because I Don River't sleep with if spoiled insulin is the culprit? Why do I have to change out my pump cartridge or pod because I can't tell if the insulin in it has done for malfunctioning? Why does a $1 test strip come with control solution, but a $100 vial of insulin does non?

Describe the grassroots message you intended to convey in your entry?

I believe that insulin manufacturers should provide us with way to check the efficaciousness of our insulin. I want to glucinium able to know whether the insulin in my pump OR handbag or icebox is spoiled.

Quick: what's your 140-fibre Twitter sentiment connected diabetes tools & technology?

Sleek diabetes technology, svelte management tools, faster insulins… None of it matters if we can't trust it to work systematically.

What would you near equal to experience and lend to the DiabetesMine Innovation Summit?

I am a longtime member of the Commerce and have ne'er been asked to attend a peak. I've ne'er had the chance to percentage my patient position with anyone on the pharmaceutical side of the conversation. I induce reliable many meters, numerous pumps, galore insulins. I know what I don't like about all of them and have a great deal of feedback to offer to make products employment better for patients.

How can this kind of advocacy potentially affect your life and the lives of early PWDs?

When I stare at a vial of insulin, I'm sometimes overwhelmed with how much of my domain depends happening that little bottle. Everything I've known from geezerhoo 10 to now — my husband I bang, my children I'm raising — none of it would constitute here were it not for that small, fragile bottle of reactive musical. I depend on insulin to work when I'm sleeping, when I'm teaching, or when I'm ambitious a stroller in the Texas summer oestrus. I need manufacturers to put up ME with the means to chit to visit if that insulin is safe to use — other than waiting for adverse reactions and unexplainable high blood sugars. I Don't like wondering. I'd like to know.

What else hasn't been said, but you want to say?

I'm an enthusiastic primaeval adopter of new technologies. In our house, I think information technology is safe to say that we have tried most phones, nigh tech toys, and most insulin pumps. I am on the far side grateful for the opportunity I have to try freshly technologies, but at the end of the day, it's still me managing the numbers and dieting and activenes of diabetes. And it's still problematic.

Diabetes technology adds new dimensions and variables to an already difficult game. I have had my dea of D-failures managing my diabetes as a performing artist, a teacher, and a mom, but you antitrust have to get back out happening stage, second to the chalkboard, back to the cuddles. I want my children to learn me trying my best to attend of my health and not being bullied to try new methods of doing so. Their world will be more technologically advanced than ours anyway… I have to livelihood up.

We have to sustenance up, too, Genus Melissa! That's why it's so decisive that we have got great advocates like you raising your voice and helping shape the direction of future D-tools. We can't wait to construe you at the Summit!