Tomorrow Neil stands in front of a room at Akron Children's Hospital on World Diabetes Day. Kids with sensors on their arms. Parents who haven't slept through the night since diagnosis. Nurses and doctors who send those families home and hope....
The episode, word for word
Tomorrow I'm standing in front of a room at Akron Children's Hospital. World Diabetes Day. Kids with sensors on their arms. Parents who haven't slept through the night since the diagnosis. Nurses and doctors who have to send those families home and hope.
And I've been thinking all week about what you say to that room. What's the one thing.
I'm Neil Greathouse, this is Your Best T1D Year.
The talk's called "You Don't Travel Alone," and I want to give it to you first, the 5-minute version, because this room is bigger than that one.
Okay, here's the principle. It's the thing I most wish somebody had said to me at 20, and nobody did. This disease is going to try to convince you that you're the only one. It's lying. It's the only part of type 1 that's actually optional.
Here's the science, and I'm going to say it carefully. 2015, a researcher named Julianne Holt-Lunstad pulled together 70 studies, 3 and a half million people, which is about 50 Super Bowls' worth of humans, and asked whether being alone shortens your life. The answer was yes, by a lot. Loneliness raised the odds of early death by about 26 percent. Social isolation, about 29. Living alone, 32. Those numbers are in the neighborhood of smoking. Not the same house. Same cul-de-sac.
Now, nobody has run that study in us. In type 1 specifically. I looked. There's a 2025 review that says about 1 in 3 people with diabetes report being lonely, but it lumps type 1 and type 2 together and nobody's pulled us out. So I can't tell you what loneliness does to a type 1 body. I can tell you what it did to mine, and I can tell you the general research is loud enough that we don't need the specific study to take it seriously.
To the kids in that room tomorrow, here's what I'm going to say. You're going to meet people who make you feel weird about this. Teachers who don't get it. Kids who ask dumb questions. A grown-up who tells you about their uncle. There is always an uncle. And you're going to want to hide it, because hiding feels safer. I did that for 10 years. It's not safer. It's just lonelier. The sensor on your arm isn't a thing to cover up. It's how your people find you.
To the parents in that room. Monday I told you the parents feel the stigma worse than anyone, 83 percent. Here's what I'm going to say to them. You did not cause this. You are not handling it wrong. And the thing your kid needs most isn't a better carb ratio. It's to watch you not be ashamed of it. Kids learn whether a thing is embarrassing by watching the grown-ups' faces. Make your face say "this is just a thing we do," and they'll believe you.
And to the nurses and doctors in that room, I'm going to say thank you, and then one hard thing. The ADA told you in 2016 to screen for distress at diagnosis, and most of us never got asked. You've got 11 minutes and I know it. But "do you know anybody else with this?" is a 4-second question, and it might be the most important prescription in the building. It costs nothing, and it's the only prescription in America the insurance company can't deny. Write it on the pad.
That's the talk.
So Saturday is World Diabetes Day, and here's your ask. It's the same one as all week with a Saturday twist. Say it somewhere. The 7-word DM. The 24-hour story. A comment on somebody's blue circle post. Or, if you're ready, the full sentence. What happened, what it cost, what you'd tell yourself then. Saturday is the one day a year the whole internet is already looking. Let them find a human.
Parents, you too. Especially you. Somebody outside the window is a parent who got the diagnosis Tuesday.
And Saturday I'm going to spend the whole day resharing every one of you who posts. That's my World Diabetes Day. You talk, I point.
Poll closes Sunday night at yourbestt1dyear.com, and I'll read our numbers back to you in 2 weeks.
You're not doing a bad job. You're doing a difficult job, and tomorrow a room full of 8-year-olds is going to hear that you exist and that you made it, right before one of them asks me if I've met Spider-Man.
We are the ones. The ones living with it, the ones loving somebody who has it, the caregivers, the kiddos in Akron, and the nurse who's going to ask the 4-second question on Monday. All of us.
My name is Neil. Monday, a coach who's also a type 1 mom, and she's going to teach us how to show up for somebody without smothering them. See you then.
This is the episode script as read on the mic. It's education and encouragement, not medical advice. Talk to your care team before changing anything about your management.