Prior to meeting my girlfriend, who is an insulin-pump wearing type 1 diabetic, I didn't have all that much exposure to the disease. I remember my friend's mother having diabetes (though I didn't know at the time that she had type 2, and that there was a difference between type 2 and type 1), and years later a friend of mine dated a girl that was type 1 (who also wore a pump). I may or may have not mentioned her in the past, but she once threw a pumpkin at his car -- not because she was diabetic, but because she was a lunatic. Anyway, the point is that my exposure to, and understanding of, the diabetes was very limited. But now that I am used to being around someone with diabetes, I find myself more tuned in to the statistics, news stories, research, etc. that was always out there, but for some reason never seemed to get picked-up by my signal. I also catch myself quite often almost "looking for it."

Case in point: I was on the subway the other day when a young girl jumped on with a decent sized .mp3 player on her hip. I didn't notice the headphone cord stemming from it right away, so I almost immediately thought that it was an insulin pump. This actually happened a few different times, only with cell phones and other hip-attached items. Another time, I sat next to an older man on the subway and noticed his medic alert bracelet. Call me nosy, but I sort of glanced over at it to see it mentioned him being diabetic. It didn't, but for some reason I sort of just expected that it would. Trying to make sense of where my sudden ultra-awareness is coming from, I can only think that it comes from the most obvious place that it possible could: My Mind. The place where this new knowledge has been stored. Knowing that the number of people diagnosed with diabetes is growing tremendously with each passing year, my mind logically leads me to draw conclusions -- sometimes inaccurate ones, but others being right on the money. Like the time the guy who looked like he was skipping onto a new song on his iPod when, in fact, he was actually programming something into his pump -- bolusing, perhaps. I was right about that one. I'm not sure what me being right about that means, but I consider it a good thing, chiefly because I don't feel as ignorant about the topic as I clearly once was.

Far more funding must go into diabetes research, but before that ever happens, the public at large is going to have to know what it is. Plain and simple. For people with diabetes, and for people who are very close to people with diabetes, the education on the topic comes free (and based on how much it costs to maintain the disease with test strips, insulin, etc., that's about the only thing that seems to come free). As a result, it is understandable how it could then become assumed that just because you know just about everything there is to know about diabetes, everyone else must, too. But, I represent only one example of someone who knew almost nothing -- until I met my girlfriend, anyway. Now, armed with a great deal of knowledge on the topic, I am in the strange position of knowing how little the public actually knows, but at the same time knowing how much some people with diabetes think that the public knows. The truth is, the public does not know much. It's time they learn, don't you think? It may lead to more people staring at each others' iPods on the subway, but we'll just have to live with that.