DOC in DC: Part Four.

Some reflections to wrap up the bigger ideas left in the "DOC in DC" series:

• In what was possibly the first group #sweatbetes session ever, I got to see Scott Johnson do turkish get-ups in person. (And I totally chickened out when he asked if I wanted to try doing one. He's a total rockstar!) I also found out that, apparently, I don't have to bolus for post-workout ice cream at midnight - never went above 150 and woke up at 123 the following morning! It was a diabetes miracle!
• Hearing JDRF's new CEO, Jeffrey Brewer, talk during Sunday night's dinner and again the next morning with our blogger group was pretty cool. Like most everyone else, I was previously only familiar with the infamous diaTribe interview he had done, but it's hard to get a sense of a person from words alone. (P.S. I did ask him, in our blogger meeting, if we could get him to do a webcast. It sounded like a possibility - I'm keeping my fingers crossed!) I can tell you that after Government Day weekend, I'm totally a fan of the guy. As I tweeted during that Sunday night dinner: "He totally gets it." He understands the need to engage the online community, to include type 1's diagnosed as adults, and the value of those of us who grew from "juvenile diabetics" into "adults with type 1". He also had the guts to admit he "could have worded some things differently" when talking about the expansion of JDRF's mission to not only work towards a cure, but treatments to live better with the disease right now. Admitting fault isn't an easy thing to do for anyone - and that earned him some major points in my book.
• Switching gears - I had cheese pretzel hotdogs from Auntie Anne's in the Washington Reagan Airport for the first time - OMG. So bad, but sooo good. (Okay, maybe these aren't all "bigger ideas"...)
• The JDRF Grassroots staff in D.C. is awesome. (That includes the interns! You ladies rock!) They were all so enthusiastic, so helpful, and put together a fantastic event. We have some great people working hard for our cause there.
• Monday night's cupcake dinner. I can't even tell you how awesome it was to meet Dayle, Chris, Sarah, Miriam, Kevin, Lindsey, and to hang out with everyone there - I mean, just look at how happy we all look in this picture! :) My CGM graph even resembled a cupcake that night:

• Sunday was the Blogger/DOC Roundtable session, and my only regret is that we didn't have more time! I felt like we could have gone on for the rest of the afternoon, with as much as all of us wanted to share, and all of the questions that came in. To everyone who watched/participated/cared, thank you so much. I think all of us there, representing the DOC, felt so proud and honored to be able to share what this community has done for us, and what it can do for others.
• How is this for ironic: a weekend all about diabetes advocacy included many of our DOC group having really bad highs or really bad lows?
• And finally, Cherise and I found these at the airport on our way out of town. We took it as a sign of good things to come. :)

Not quite as fancy as Sprinkles, but he's still pretty cute.

*You can find my other posts about JDRF Government Day here, here, here and here, and a bit of a "master list" of blogs (not just mine) who have discussed the event here. As I've mentioned before, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has not asked me to write about their Government Day experiences, and the opinions expressed here are my own.