Autoimmune Life Blog

Like many people with a connection to a chronic disease, I do my best to keep up with news about trials and studies that could, just maybe, yield new preventions and treatments. Unfortunately, science does not always succeed in the traditional sense.

Your early 20s are often a time of major life change. You may have just moved away from home for the first time, started college, or joined the military. Your health care or medical routine may have become unbalanced or even nonexistent.

Type 1 Diabetes doesn’t stop Michelle Peterson from a leading a fulfilling life with family and as director of communications and PR at Virginia Mason Medical Center.

Most toddlers spend their time finger painting and making mud pies.

Researchers at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) and Seattle Children’s Research Institute are making key progress in their quest for an immunotherapy that cures type 1 diabetes once and for all.

The Morris family was celebrating Christmas when they realized their nine-year-old son Jordan needed to go to the doctor. Recently he was losing weight, urinating often, extremely thirsty and exhausted. His mother, Leslie Morris, a nurse, suspected type 1 diabetes (T1D).

Three sisters, Jeanne, Marilyn and Carol Kleyn, all joined the early research project SERA and the follow-up TIP-RA study. Their mother Peggy Kleyn was diagnosed with RA around 76 years of age.

What does it mean when scientists say they want to “prevent” a disease?

"I was 18 and an undergraduate at the University of Washington. I was a member of the women’s rowing team and majoring in public health at the same time I was learning how to manage this new disease."

We survive with modern medicine. It has to be said. Peter and his squad of bad-ass dia-buddies are blessed with insulin, technology and care that have changed what it means to live with Type 1 Diabetes. And, they have reason to hope that the future will bring even better tools and outcomes.