Thursday, February 11, 2010

Walk Award Ceremony Highlights (with SCD bonus Performance)



On Tuesday, Jon, Sam and I attended an award ceremony honoring the teams that participated in the 2009 Walk to Cure Diabetes. The combined efforts of the families and teams across the country raised over $3 million for diabetes research. This was our third time attending this event, but the first time we brought Sam. Part of the reason I felt that we could bring Sam to the awards is because the tone of the evening is one of shared accomplishment - not sadness. While Sam understands the difference between veins and arteries, he doesn't necessarily comprehend the difference between $10 and $10,000. To him, we met our goal (and he got a trophy). Explaining the goal has it's own challenges. The night before he had asked me to tell JDRF that he would like to change his pump every thousand days instead of every three. We discussed how JDRF was working on technologies that would make diabetes easier and had a pretty scientific conversation about the pancreas. Help out the pancreas = goal. Sam's understanding of the body is amazing to me, but not as amazing as his positive and beautiful spirit.

Note: We believe that unique "move" in the video is Sam's air guitar.