Ever heard of the Mystery Bolus? That’s a new term that we came up with at camp this year to describe the discovery of random bolus activity on our camper’s insulin pumps. It was truly amazing how many of these we found and what was more amazing were the explanations we got from the campers; “I don’t have any idea how that got in there?”.

Other noteworthy events at camp included:

• skills mastery and new friendships
• peer group problem solving
• profile of a diabetes drug bust
• carb swapping and unmanageable blood sugar
• alcohol swabs alone increase risk of severe hypoglycemia
• devices with history vs devices without history

These are just a few of the blog-worthy experiences from camp this year. Honestly, for anyone who thinks they might want to work in the field of diabetes care, a week at camp can add invaluable insight. Any camp experiences that you might want to share?

Challenge Diabetes will be a little more quiet than usual over the next week and a half to two weeks as we head off to Kerrville, Texas to participate in one of the largest diabetes summer camps for kids with type 1 diabetes. Steve is the Camp’s Medical Director and I volunteer as a member of the Med Staff.  I’ll be working with the 12 -13 yr old boys this year - quite a change from 15yr old boys.  That will be an interesting post when I get back. Also, my 8yr old will be at camp for the first time this year so we’ll see how that goes, too.  Lots of fun I’m sure.

Busy, busy….  it’s always too much but I don’t know any better solution.  Oh well.  Today I spent some time in the exhibit hall and in a presentation about cgms including Roger Mazze from the IDC.  I ran into my friend Heather from CHOC and caught up on all things diabetes and kids in So Cal.  A few anxious moments prepping for my presentation in the afternoon.  An $8.50 sandwich that was worth about $2.50 at 7-Eleven. Then off to the symposium where I first listened to Lois Janovic tell her story of insulin delivery algorithms.  They were first tested in the early 80s.  Further refined since and still nowhere in sight.  I’ll have to see what’s up there.  Amazing how good research has a way of never finding its way into the hands of patients.

Then yours truly was on stage.  Not quite a packed room but maybe 50% - 60% full and probably 300 people or so.  I’ll post the preso shortly so you can check it out without the high cost of attendance.  Good questions following my presentation included a need to know about our demographics (which we will include when we publish shortly) and of course I found a mom of a recently diagnosed kid w type 1 in the audience.  She came up afterwards and shared her experience and her frustrations with not having tools that she needs…  It was all I could do to not put my arm around her and tell her it’s going to be alright.  Hopefully she’ll follow through and get her daughter into the RightNow Study.  That would help her family a lot I think.

Steve Edelman gave his humorous talk about TCOYD.  Make sure you check it out at tcoyd.com  That sounds like the great conference series and I’ll definitely refer people to attend.  Then Mayer Davidson (pronounced May-er… he’s sensitive to this since everyone gets it wrong ;)    gave some great results data and process data regarding nurse based and pharmacist based programs.  Bottom line - it works!  Then there was some frustration with public policy and the insurance company’s unwillingness to pay for those nurses and pharmacists.

CGMS is big news here.  Satish Garg was our symposium chair and we got talk a little about how he sees it going forward.  He also asked me how Diabetech could incorporate cgms into our system and manage in our programs which is very encouraging as that makes it seem that he gets how managed devices and intensive management protocols are key to these data intensive devices.

More tomorrow