Free books from Lilly Diabetes

In the summer of 2011 Lilly Diabetes and Disney partnered up to introduced a new character named Coco. Coco is a monkey (see below) and she has type I diabetes. Coco's backpack holds her D-Supplies, she wears an ID bracelet, hangs out, plays and checks her blood glucose while attending Goofy's birthday party. Arden really enjoyed seeing a character in a book that was so closely modelled after herself, sans the monkey thing of course.

Coco

This year Lilly introduced four new books that are written for the tween in your life. Allie is a soccer player, Justin the captain of his basketball team, Tim plays corner for his high school football team and Oliver is a friend of Hannah Montana. Each book is centered on a person with diabetes and the situations that type I brings to their lives. 

They also introduced a cookbook called 'Dishing It Up Disney Style'. The book calls itself a "cookbook for families with type I diabetes". The recipes are not ultra low carb and the ones that we've made so far have been very flavorful. The book considers itself diabetes friendly because each recipe comes complete with an accurate carb count to help make insulin calculations easier. The goal of the cookbook is to offer meals that your kids will actually like while keeping the carbs per serving at a manageable level. I find this idea attractive as many 'diabetes friendly' recipes can often taste like wet cardboard.

I was given each of these books at the recent Lilly Blogger Summit. The books are sadly not available online or even in bookstores. The only way to currently get them is by asking your endocrinologist. Your doc has access to these books through their Lilly rep, they are free to the doctor and free to you. I know this isn't the greatest delivery system, time will tell if they are able to find other avenues to get these books into your hands. For now you'll have to ask your doc if you're interested.

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Titles:

Up for the Challenge
Power Forward
Running Interference
Uptight (Oliver's All Right)
Coco and Goofy's Goofy Day
Dishing it up Disney Style 

Disclosure: I attended an event hosted by Lilly Diabetes, who paid for my airfare, travel, hotel and meals while I was in Indianapolis.

More from the Lilly blogger summit

At one time a $50 drug order with Lilly came with a free handmade medicine cabinet. 

When I looked around the room at Lilly's blogger summit I saw some very familiar faces looking back at me. In alphabetical order they were:

Leighann Calentine - D-Mom

Kelly Close - diaTribe

Bennet Dunalp - Your Diabetes May Vary

Mike Hoskins - Diabetes Mine

Scott Johnson - Scott’s Diabetes

Kelly Kunik - Diabetesaliciousness

Tony Rose - Blogging Diabetes

Cherise Shockley - Diabetic Iz Me, Diabetes Social Media Advocacy

George Simmons - Ninjabetic

Lorraine Sisto - This is Caleb

Kerri Sparling - Six Until Me

Kim Vlasnik - Texting My Pancreas

In the first few minutes it was just so amazing to see avatars sort of come to life in front of my eyes but after a while I began wondering who messed up when they invited me. This was a thoughtful group of diabetes advocates and as they spoke it was clear that they had insightful and valuable thoughts to add to the conversation. I began to feel a bit of pressure, I desperately didn't want to bring the level of discourse down when I put in my two cents. When I finally spoke all of my trepidation disappeared because I saw Bennet nodding along with what I was saying. Bennet may now wish that he didn't nod becasue I don't think I shut up for the rest of the day.

As the day progressed I was struck by how valuable it was to have so many different viewpoints responding to the same question. The people in the room continually gave thorough and informed responses to question after question. They made suggestions, gave advice and lent support all of which was so spot on that it could have been regarded as perfect. When all of the participants points were combined at any given moment the information was so complete that I kept thinking that combining our blogs would be the best way to help our readers. Together we were a world book encyclopedia of diabetes information (I guess I should have said Wikipedia). This feeling really is the core of what makes this community so valuable. The people in the room that day aside, we all have so much diabetes life experience and when we share it everyone benefits. It's unlike anything that I've ever experienced or expect to see again in my life.

By the end of the day I no longer felt like someone invited me by mistake. I realized that I misinterpreted the feeling I had as the day began. What I felt was respect, a bit of awe and a great deal of pride. Pride in the work that these and so many others do everyday for our community... Pride in the knowledge that I was a part of it.

A lot of good will come from our meeting, more perhpas then can be properly quantified right now. 

2012 Blogger Summit at Lilly Diabetes

Social media is a powerful communication and connection tool. A message on twitter can reach countless people. FaceBook posts receive 'likes', get 'shared' and suddenly people that you've never met know that you support a cause, watched a video or have an opinion. Being connected in these ways is the new normal to those of us that live a part of our lives online and not surprisingly, companys have noticed.

I never imagined that writing about my life as a type I diabetes caregiver would lead to being invited to Lilly's first diabetes blogger summit but that is just what happened. I didn't know what to expect but I knew that the invitation felt like an oppurtunity to represent, as best that I could, the needs of our community.

It wasn't my intention to spend the day taking detailed notes or to report back to you that 'this' or 'that' was said. I wanted to experience the day, lend my thoughts when I thought that they would add to the discussion and see what good could come from the meeting for people like us.

I believe that businesses are mainly created to generate a positive cash flow and that there isn't anything wrong with a company making a profit. That's what my head thinks about buisness. My heart wants something different. In my opinion, companies that make a living in certain walks of life should do so with as much compassion for their customers as their shared situation allows. Making insulin, lancets and other diabetes devices is one such situation. From research and development to an attractive box on your pharmacy shelf, much goes into the development of safe and effective diabetes treatments and devices. I want the company that imagines and develops those things to be compensated. I want their employees to make a fair wage and I think their shareholders should see growth and sustainability. That again, is what my head thinks.

My heart feels that people living with a chronic illness shouldn't be looked upon as a constant cash flow opportunity even though they are. Companies that make the things that keep us alive need to be respectful of the backs that they make their profits on. They also should make allowances for the people that can not, in any way, afford the medications and devices that sustain their lives. It's the right thing to do.

A cynic may say that pharma companies invite bloggers like me to visit so that I'll leave with a positive view of their company, so that I'll write on my website that they are good guys that just want us to be happy. Well, I'm not a cynic but I do think that Lilly and every other company is beholden to their bottom line. The thing is, I didn't meet with a company last week, I met with people that work at a company and these people hold geniune concern and compassion for the diabetes community and the people that make it up. I'd like insulin to be cheaper but I also need for it to remain available. Therein lies the balance that I hoped to see when I visited Lilly and I did.

The building was steeped in tradition but the people inside, the employees, they were focused on today. Something amazing is happening right now in pharma as it relates to consumers. For the first time perhaps, they see the value in us as people and that's a good thing for us. We are no longer customers, never again to be thought of as patients - we are people. We can't and shouldn't blame pharma for taking so long to come to this seemingly obvious conclusion... they didn't know us until recently. How did they finally come to make our acquaintance? Social media introduced us.

Social media is how and why this summit came to be, it gave us all a name and a face, it's how we went from being customers whose dollars were coveted to people whose health outcomes are now followed with great interest and dare I say, real concern. Lilly wants to connect with us and even though I realize that many of you will meet their interest with skepticism, I say that we should embrace this new turn. As long as we continue to ask hard questions as a community and demand that our voices be heard, this new and direct connection to the companies that produce our diabetes supplies should and will be a mutually beneficial one. I'm optimistic and interested to see where this new sensibility takes us.

I'll be talking about the particulars from the day in my next few posts.

Hope you are all well!

Disclosure: I attended an event hosted by Lilly Diabetes, who paid for my airfare, travel, hotel and meals while I was in Indianapolis.

Update on Friday, June 1, 2012 at 11:47AM by Scott Benner

You can find my continuing thoughts from the blogger summit here.