The Diabetes Dude

Have YOU heard about the Diabetes Dude?!?

If not, here's the scoop!

A boy named Noah is the Diabetes Dude! He was diagnosed with Type 1 when he was in first grade. He is now 9 years old. His motto is: "I may have diabetes but diabetes does not have me!"

Soon after his diagnosis, Noah began putting a penny in a jar each time he
checked his blood sugar or had an injection, then donated the entire 22.2 pounds
of change to Children's Hospital of Boston, where his diabetes was first
diagnosed. He decided after seeing the impact that the big container of change
had on people who didn't know about diabetes, that he wanted to do more to
educate people on his disease. The Flamingo Flock began as one of Noah's
fundraising ideas for the American Diabetes Association. In 2010, Noah came up
with the idea of a using a flock of flamingos for a fundraising campaign. Each
flamingo would be blue - because blue is the color of Diabetes Awareness, and
each flamingo would have a name starting with "D" for diabetes, like Doug,
Darla, Dennis and Derby. Each bird would wear a tag with a letter explaining
Noah's fundraising goals. The flamingos, from one to a dozen or more, would be
secretly placed on the lawn of a home or office nominated by a friend or family
member for "flocking."

Soon the flocking idea took flight, when people saw the blue flamingos, they became curious about the young boy with diabetes. The flamingos gave Noah the opportunity to talk to more and more folks about diabetes and how they could make lifestyle changes, not only to better manage their type 1 diabetes, but also to prevent developing Type 2.

From Diabetes Health - to read more of their article about Noah, click here.

On Thursday, August 26th, Noah and his friends flocked the Today Show! It was fun to see all those blue flamingos in the crowd. Then.... Later in the day, he flocked Times Square!

After reading about the Diabetes Dude on Laura's blog, Houston We Have a Problem, I knew I wanted to get involved. And then I had my chance! Laura, being the awesome blogging Momma that she is, posted that the Diabetes Dude wanted people to send in pictures of their children with Type 1 to help flock the Kodak jumbo tron in Times Square. His goal was to show everyone in times square what we, at people with Type 1 and parents of children with Type 1, deal with on a daily basis.

So I sent in a picture and....

Guess what I saw on the jumbo tron?!?

ME and SWEETPEA!

Here's the original....

Actually, I was not there in Times Square to see it. But.... being the awesome dude that he is - they took pictures and posted them on facebook!

We LOVE you Noah! Thank you for all the work you are doing to raise funds and awareness of diabetes! You are one cool dude!

To find out more about Noah and his mission .... and how you can help, click HERE!

ps.... We would love a flamingo to visit us! We promise to take good care of it!