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EPISODE 7: Fifty-seven Years as Type One Diabetic, Don’t be Perfect Just Be Good 

This podcast introduces a series of priorities that have paved the way for me to enjoy 57 years as a Type One Diabetic, and still counting.  Knocking on wood here, but to this day, I am still lucky to have avoided hospitalizations and emergency room visits for unstable blood sugars during those years.  Even more important, I have been fortunate to have minimized and averted many common complications of Type Ones who’ve had the condition as long as I have.  Still active, still engaged, and I remain positive about the future.  I even have all my original equipment ! In this podcast, I lay out the priorities that have made my lifetime journey enjoyable and rewarding.  The biggest surprise so far, “you don’t have to be perfect, just be good” in managing Type One every day!  Listen to this podcast and several others to follow, for more details ! 

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EPISODE 6 PART 5 “Diabetes Can Be Wild:  Mingling with the Elephants of Makhanda, South Africa” 

Well, at long last, here is the second and final part of my podcasts about how I navigated Type One diabetes on safari in rural southeastern South Affrica --- Mahkanda, to be exact.  It recounts my 5 days of encounters with the amazing elephants of Makhanda, how beautiful, respectful and, yes, how playful the elephants were, as my family and I mingled among them.  Using some special family footage dating back to the 1960s,  I add a bit of nostalgia, as I thought what it was liking splashing, playing and eating by the river back home during one of  my own family’s summertime picnics.  My safari vacation also includes re-telling some special encounters with the wonderful residents and vendors of Camps Bay, in Capetown, at the end of my family vacation.   Finally, looking back one year, I share results about the impact that 10 days in South Africa has had on managing my own Type One. The results may surprise you ! During this podcast, I am sure you’ll discover some amazing footage of the elephants in summertime, and my own family from 60+ years ago !  Truly beautiful creatures and special family times !  

Let me know any comments you have about my wild adventure, and of course, and those of your own.   Leave them at @BrianBalicki-type1-1953 or “fanlist.com/the juice”. 

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EPISODE 6 PART 4 “Diabetes Can Be Wild:  Navigating Type One and the Big 5 while on Safari and in Capetown South Africa” 

In this podcast, I reflect on 10 days of personal experience as a Type One Diabetic in South Africa.   My 10 day family vacation occurred during the Xmas season in South Africa, their Springtime to be exact.  The experience was truly an adventure.   I was reminded how I navigated my earliest days as a Type One, 56 years earlier.  It was an entirely new frontier back then, as it turned out to be recently in South Africa.  Fast forward to today, South Africa served as the backdrop for an experience in which I relied on family, along with a network of “frontier” professionals to navigate the daily, sometimes anxious and tense encounters with the Big 5 and other challenges of the South African Bush. Like my support back in 1968, this network was multi-skilled and multi-disciplinary, for sure, but with a key difference. They were not health care professionals.  Instead they were highly experienced in veterinary medicine, environmental sciences, natural resource management, South African healthy cuisine, and sincerely nice people from the land down under. All of this combined to help my family and I to NOT just survive, but to MINGLE with the Big 5 in a very profound, personal and dramatic manner.  Yes, “Diabetes CAN be Wild” in the South African Bush.  Check out the podcast.   

Let me know any comments you have about my wild adventure, and of course, and any of your own.   Leave them at @BrianBalicki-type1-1953 or “fanlist.com/the juice”.  Happy Holidays !   

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In this podcast, I compare my earliest days as a Type One, back in 1968 – 1970, to parts of a recent trip to South Africa that were eerily similar to those early days.  I review  some early thoughts when I prepared for my trip.  I also talk about certain  anxieties, and how they were grounded in actual experiences from prior vacations over my 56 years as a Type 1.  I also review important personal health metrics that set the stage for changes that followed during and after my travel.  This time, I was traveling to one of the most southern parts of the planet, to a region where diabetes is an equal, if not greater public health issue, than here in the US.  And, I would be on safari, where any number of things could have “gone south”.  On many occasions, I was within a “stone’s throw away” from the Big 5, just to add even more drama to the experience.  There were surprises before during and after the trip.  Tune in for more details about my travels “Into and Out of Africa”.  Also, be sure to listen in on the Premiere of Mark Short and the local Makhanda Orchestra’s “Seven Generations” at the Makhanda Festival in 2022, the year before my trip.  GREAT STUFF for jazz buffs with a little South African twist! Let me know any comments you have about my “early days”, and of course, your own.  

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“DEAD DOCTORS DON’T LIE”, SEASON 1, Ep6, Pt2

This podcast is the second in a 3 part series, and reviews my earliest days as a Type One diabetic.  It’s an episode that is relevant to all Type Ones and Twos, who may be struggling, frustrated, anxious, dissatisfied, or just plain disappointed in their progress managing themselves.  Looking back, I felt that way many times in my earliest days as a Type One.  I guess it was human nature to feel that way.  But the most important personal lesson that I drew from that time was, you don’t need to be perfect managing yourself, just be good.  That approach ensures you may experience a longer, rewarding, enjoyable life time, than otherwise.  I recall my experiences being treated by my first “endocrinologist” back in 1969.  I was not under his care for very long, as he was very demanding of me back then, and probably not as demanding of himself, in managing his personal health.  He himself passed away at a young age.  I learned “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie”.  Listen in for more details about that experience. 

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EPISODE 6 PART 1 EARLY DAYS

 Self-management and living with Type One diabetes has come a long way since the late 1960s.  My personal story reveals highlights and many differences and details, between then and now.  “The Early Days” points out how lucky you are to be diagnosed with Type One diabetes today.  Yes, you are lucky, very lucky.  Why?  Listen in and find out! After living through decades when the science of Type One diabetic treatment and management was just getting started, I can tell you, your world will be far better organized to help you, than when I grew up as a teenager.  Yet, I am alive, well and positive about my life experiences so far.  You should be also.  Listen and let me know about your own. 

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Episode #5 of the podcast -- “The Juice IS Worth the Squeeze. Embrace It: 56+ Years as a Type 1 Diabetic, and Still Counting”, lays out some of the uncommon medical facts that preceded my diagnosis as Type 1 in Fall, 1968.  At the end of the prior podcast #4, I recounted the events of a “violent and fateful night” in Summer, 1968, that triggered the physical changes leading to my T1D diagnosis 3 months later.   In some ways, the origins of my condition were almost as unlikely as the lifetime I’ve experienced.   More on this in later podcasts.  

The physical injuries I suffered one night in June of that year, resulted in trauma with lifelong consequences.  However, the consequences were not all bad outcomes, either health-wise, personally or professionally.  To the contrary, the consequences led to lifetime opportunities and events I could never have imagined when I experienced a truly unexpected “life quake” in Fall, 1968.  Stay tuned for more details in future podcasts on my life as a Type 1 diabetic for 56+ years, and still counting.

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This podcast recounts events of a violent, fateful first day in June, 1968, in my 55+ year journey as a Type 1 diabetic.  A growing part of the medical community believe that Type 1 diabetes is triggered when a confluence of inherited genes combine with environmental factors, to cause the body's immune system to attack its own pancreatic cells, and terminate its normal functioning.  In my case, whether I carried the genes is an open issue. But a key environmental factor is suspected to be  the trauma I experienced one day in Chicago during the Summer of 1968.   Luckily, the trauma was NOT fatal, only fateful, the consequences I live with comfortably 55 years later.   

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Episode #2, Part 2, concludes this segment of the podcast --- “The Juice IS Worth the Squeeze. Embrace It: 55+ Years as a Type 1 Diabetic, and Still Counting”.  Part 2 captures more details about the remarkable journey I’ve had being a T1D over 55 years, and more details about the part I’ve played in carrying the journey this far. With a life expectancy when I was diagnosed at age 15 in 1968 being 46 years, I’ve added 25 years to it. I am now a healthy, lucky 71 years old.  This journey has been due in part to many medical, scientific and educational breakthroughs in T1D treatment since the early 1980s.  But an equally, if not more substantial, part of this added lifespan can be attributable to my following 10 personal lifetime priorities in managing T1D for 55+ years, and making the best use of the breakthroughs I’ve been lucky to be alive during their development. The episode ends with a preview of the next episode --- I call it, “The Ambush”.  It recounts an evening in Summer, 1968, in which I was the primary victim of a gang violence incident in Chicago --- no guns, luckily, just a fairly violent physical beating, that less than 3 months later, led to a series of events that triggered my T1D diagnosis.    

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This podcast is the multi-media version of a parallel podcast that lays the groundwork for explaining how different my life story is, as a Type One diabetic (T1D) for 55+ years.  This podcast reviews facts and figures from recent T1D research, and personal stories that begin to make the case that "reasonable" control of T1D over a lifetime, can lead to remarkable health later in life.   At age 71, a key lesson learned for me has been to NOT let pursuit of "perfect" control of T1D, come at the expense of "reasonable" control.  The podcast also briefly introduces Part 2 of Episode 2, what T1D research data suggests may be the number of additional years of life my "10 Lifetime Priorities" have played in reaching age 71 as a T1D, without hospitalizations and complications.      

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