Kerri Sparling from Six Until Me on the power of peer support in diabetes management

This week, we’re talking with a dear friend of mine, Kerri Sparling, from Six Until Me. She is one of the hardest-working people I know and has done so much to positively impact the world around us. I can’t wait to introduce her to you and let her share her story.

Summary

• Kerri's story with diabetes
• Why it's important to share the downs as well as the ups of living with diabetes
• Why sharing your voice and stepping out of your bubble is so important
• Kerri's work with Children with Diabetes
• Life for a Child and Spare a Rose/Spare a Frown

Transcript

Scott Johnson: Have you ever looked in the mirror and thought, wow, I ought to have this diabetes thing figured out by now? Yeah, me too. In fact, it happens more often than I'd like to admit. What's up monster tamers? Welcome to another episode of “Live, with Scott!” Thanks so much for tuning in. My name is Scott Johnson. I've been living with diabetes since I was five years old and the diabetes social media space, that's you by the way, has been an important part of my well-being for a long, long time. What do I mean by that

Scott Johnson: Listen, I've had a lot of practice at doing this diabetes thing, every single day for more than 38 years. That's a long time, right? You know what? It's still hard sometimes and there are a lot of situations where I don't know what the heck to do and I still get frustrated and depressed and fall off the horse and I'm confused and I'm beating myself up over it, a lot. But I'm able to connect with all of you for support and encouragement and information and more and that helps me get back in the saddle and tackle another day with diabetes and keep going. That means the world to me, so thanks so much for helping me along.

Scott Johnson: As your host today I'm thrilled to connect you with one of my favorite people around, Kerri Sparling. We'll be talking about the power of peer support. But first, last week's winner. In fact, this week we've got two winners, congratulations to Janice and Irene who just won some fun mySugr swag. We'll send you both a message on Facebook just after the show to coordinate details. Everyone else, please stick around to learn how you can also win some fun mySugr swag too.

Scott Johnson: While we get going, please share a quick hello in the comments and let me know where you're watching from, I'd love to say hello. If we cover anything that resonates with you, please show some love and if you know anyone that might find this helpful, please share this with them. If there's anything more that we can do to help you, please don't hesitate to let me know.

Scott Johnson: Today's episode is sponsored by the mySugr Bundle. Get unlimited strips, automatic supply refills, personalized support and more, all for just $49 per month. Learn more at mysugr.com/facebooklive.

Scott Johnson: Now more on this week's guest. Kerri Sparling was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of seven and has been a pillar of the diabetes online community through her award-winning diabetes blog Six Until Me. I'm honored to call her a friend and have enjoyed sharing many wonderful experiences together over the years. She is one of the hardest-working people I know and has done so much to positively impact the world around us. Without further ado, let's dive right into the conversation.

Scott Johnson: Hey Kerri, good to see you again. Thanks for joining me today.

Kerri Sparling: Hi. What's going on?

Scott Johnson: Well, we are connecting to talk about all the great things going on in your world, our world, and I want to share with the viewers of Live with Scott everything wonderful that's happening in your world.

Kerri Sparling: All of it?

Scott Johnson: We'll share whatever you want to share, but first I would love for those who don't know who Kerri Sparling is if you could tell them a little bit more about you.

Kerri Sparling: Yeah, sure. I'll keep it like in a diabetes sort of sense because that's clearly what people would be caring a little bit more about. My name is Kerri Sparling. I'm coming to you from Rhode Island, so like one of nine people that lives here. I've had diabetes for 32 years, I was diagnosed in second grade. I've been involved in the diabetes community since 2005 when I started a diabetes blog because I felt lonely and I wanted to find my people. That's what brought me into this whole space. I've been doing diabetes for a long time, I've been doing blogging for a relatively long time and there's just so much going on, so that's what we're going to be getting into today, yeah?

Scott Johnson: Yeah. With that, let's dive right into it. You and I, we've known each other for a long time and walked a similar path and I think feel very strongly about the power of peer support in diabetes care and how important that is to our health. Can you talk a little bit about what that's looked like for you, moving from... You mentioned starting your blog because you felt lonely and kind of disconnected and how different that is today.

Kerri Sparling: I know. It just sounds so... I always picture myself as a small sad kitten in a pet show window going, "Oh, I just feel so alone." I did, and you and you and I started around the same time. There weren't people sharing personal stories. There was a lot of medical information that was... I found it to be very scary...

Scott Johnson: Absolutely.

Kerri Sparling: Because I was only 25 at the time and looking at this stuff going, "This feels intimidating and overwhelming. Where are the people who are living with it?" I didn't want to see images of perfection, but I wanted to see people who were doing regular life stuff with diabetes kind of baked into it. Because I couldn't find a lot of that, I found you and I found Amy Tenderich's site, DiabetesMine, and Children with Diabetes was online at the time but there weren't a lot of other resources. That prompted me to want to share my story because I wanted to find people who were doing what we were doing and that was really important to me.

Kerri Sparling: After finding these people, all these voices started to come out of everywhere and the community just grew and grew to the point where... You've seen it. To feel alone feels less... I don't ever feel alone. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by diabetes as a thing but I never feel like I'm absent community or peer support because that foundation is so strong now that it gives me the confidence to deal with whatever garbage diabetes might throw at me because I've got my people who get it to support me through the good stuff and the tougher stuff.

Scott Johnson: Yeah. You mentioned that there's this... Before all of these great stories were out there, there existed a lot of the medical text. Also the stories of perfection are not as useful, but the middle ground. What's that?

Kerri Sparling: I just found them intimidating when people are like, "I wake up with a perfect blood sugar every day." And you go, "Oh I don't, is that okay?"

Scott Johnson: Yeah. Absolutely. What those middle ground stories did for me was it helped me feel so normal in this journey with diabetes, knowing that all those struggles, those things that I find hard with diabetes doesn't make me weird or strange or broken, at least in diabetes, but it makes me normal because that's just how diabetes is. By you adding your voice in that mix and everyone else adding their voices it brought me a big sense of normalcy through peer support and I think that's really important.

Kerri Sparling: I don't know if you've gotten this question from clinicians and that sort, but I have a lot of doctor-type people asking, but do you feel enabled by the community? Do you feel like it's easier to maintain numbers that you're not happy with or an A1c that you might not be as pleased about or that sort of stuff. I found it to be the opposite. I've never found somebody who said, "Oh, you're 200? Oh, it's okay, just go keep being 200." It's always like, "No. 200 sucks and it happens, however, we're going to work together as a group to make you feel like you can get to the goals that you've set for yourself." I never found it enabling, I always found it empowering. Did you ever...

Scott Johnson: I agree with you 100%. In fact, one of the positive aspects that I found from it is if I'm struggling at that high blood sugar or if I'm struggling with a certain problem and I'm just really kind of banging my head against the wall of getting around that problem, the peer support community brought me many more perspectives to deal with that problem or look at things from a different point of view and there were so many more kind of light bulb moments that I would have to help me get around whatever obstacle I was dealing with, or sometimes even just knowing that there were these other folks dealing with that gave me the strength and determination and resilience to continue pushing through and sometimes that's what it took, was just that pure sort of determination to keep going.

Kerri Sparling: I totally feel you. That's what prompted me to want to do this in the first place and that's why I think a lot of people get involved in this sort of... Advocacy I'm into but I feel like sometimes saying advocacy or saying you're an advocate or whatever else comes with a certain amount of pressure so I really lean into the idea of being a storyteller because there's no pressure to just telling your story, you don't have to go and do big things. You can go do big things but there's no pressure to. If you just want to say, "This is how it is and this is what I'm dealing with." There's a lot of power baked into just saying, "This is it."

Scott Johnson: Yeah. Absolutely. We've talked about that before in different channels that one of the other strengths that we enjoy is being able to participate to your level of comfort.

Kerri Sparling: Yeah, dude. There's no list of to-dos when it comes to doing this sort of stuff. It's whatever you feel comfortable doing and also what brings you joy. I feel like bringing up the word 'joy' now always gets associated with that lady who tells you to go clean all your stuff. I don't know if we're allowed to say the Netflix or even say Netflix, I don't know what I'm allowed to say.

Scott Johnson: You're allowed to say whatever you want.

Kerri Sparling: Is it Marie Kondo, is that her name?

Scott Johnson: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think so.

Kerri Sparling: I find her lovely and also terrifying because she's made the word 'joy' into something that equates to plastic bags of clothes to donate by the front door. But there's kind of a running theme with that where you don't have to do things in the diabetes space just because everybody else is doing them or you feel pressured to do them. You can find so much joy in just doing this, what we're doing right now, and if that's exactly and only what you want to do, somebody's going to watch this or watch what you're doing and listen to what you're saying and go, "That's what I've been waiting for this whole time to make me feel like diabetes is something that I can overcome."

Scott Johnson: Yeah.

Kerri Sparling: That's kind of awesome.

Scott Johnson: Yeah, isn't it? Just last week I talked with Cherise about how many different voices and different stories there are out there. I think that you and I have also talked in the past about the power of those many different voices and how somebody's voice will resonate with others and that there's so much value in those voices. What are your thoughts if someone comes to you and says, "You know, Kerri, I'm thinking about starting a blog or a YouTube channel or an Instagram account or whatever the case may be, but I'm worried that my voice doesn't matter." What do you say to that?

Kerri Sparling: It's hard to not want to hug that person instantly because I've always felt very firmly that every single story matters. It doesn't matter if you're affecting the viewpoint or the perspective of hundreds or thousands of people, it's just one, all it takes is one. Sometimes the person that it affects that you're changing is you, by sharing your own story. You can help alleviate some of your own emotional burden or learn something or whatever else, so just get it off your chest. It's not about the number of people that you reach, it's about the impact of the one person that you do reach.

Kerri Sparling: I feel like that's something that the diabetes community has gotten increasingly better at because when we first started there were fewer voices, but now that there are so many people, the range of perspectives is really starting to grow so we're not giving this vacuum, silo version of diabetes. It's not just, only people in Rhode Island are sharing their story. It's like, no there are people of all shapes, sizes, colors, geographics, demographics. The community is broadening and I feel like in the last couple of years, in particular, we have started to pop a lot of these different perspective bubbles and we're starting to hear from people who might not have otherwise raised their voices in the past.

Kerri Sparling: I think that is the best thing that we can do as a community is to bring more and more people into it. I know that some people are afraid that by sharing their voice they might not have the desired impact that they want because they might be thinking that it matters about numbers and it doesn't. It's about integrity and honesty and the story that you're sharing, knowing in your heart and in your crappy pancreas that it's going to change something for somebody and that's... Again, I keep saying oh that's awesome, but that feels like the period on the sentence of everything related to the diabetes community because you can say this whole thing and it's just like oh yeah, that's awesome.

Scott Johnson: You mentioned kind of popping into different bubbles. I think we all kind of tend to have our own different personal diabetes bubbles. You mentioned the importance of stepping outside of your own personal diabetes bubble. Talk on that for a little bit.

Kerri Sparling: Sure. I guess when I look at my own themes editorially that I've shared with my stories, I center a lot on pregnancy and parenting because that was such a huge part of the journey that I chronicled online for the last 14 years was the desire to become a mother, the hurdles that it took either to get my Dexcom covered by my insurance company or get my A1C into that range for pre-conception planning sort of stuff. That was a huge part of what I shared and my kids are six years apart so that kind of dominated a lot of my narrative because there was a lot of pregnancy stuff going on.

Kerri Sparling: But I needed to step outside of that too because just because, for example, getting my CGM coverage for my pregnancy, that to me was very important because I had access and the benefit of not questioning where my insulin supply was coming from. But then when I step outside of that, oh well I just wanted to get my CGM. It's like, there are people that have no idea where their next injection of insulin is coming from and that is a vantage point that I'm thankful not to have but I have to be aware of in order to help make a difference in order for people who might not be in a position to raise their voice, who might not be able to say, "Gosh, I wish I had this device..." because they're sitting there thinking, "Man, I need to get this insulin."

Kerri Sparling: Efforts like... It's February or maybe closing out February by the time we're done, but that's why this Spare a Rose campaign is really important to me because it's that idea of taking just a very small donation that can help provide access to tools that people in developing countries really need. And it doesn't take much from us but it can make such a world of difference for them. You know that skipping your coffee can help save someone's life for a month, that is the kind of bubble that we're talking about popping and I think that's really important to remember as you sit in the comfort of your home knowing that your butter compartment is stashed with at least a bottle or two of insulin, you're lucky man and I am too and so to think of people who might not be able to confidently say those things.

Scott Johnson: Yeah. You're so right about that. Speaking of Spare a Rose, you're right, February is... We're in the midst of February. I want everyone watching to stay tuned for a special Spare a Rose surprise that's going to be coming from our friends Renza and Grumpy Pumper.

Kerri Sparling: No, that's just.

Scott Johnson: I don't want to spill any more details than that but we've got something special cooking up that my dad (hi dad!) was partly involved in. Yeah, I'm excited about that and we'll stay tuned.

Kerri Sparling: That's awesome that you guys are doing that too because that's popping that bubble, so well done you.

Scott Johnson: Yeah. And also you bring up all the work that's happening around there and that also, I think we'd be remiss to not mention all the work that's being done to work on just the insulin access and affordability here in the states, so a shout out to all the folks that are doing all the great work there, so thank you everyone that's doing that.

Scott Johnson: You mentioned Children With Diabetes, let's talk about that organization that we both love so much a little bit. What's your...

Kerri Sparling: What can I say about it, it's awesome.

Scott Johnson: I'm not sure how to start with Children With Diabetes. Maybe you want to give a quick overview of what it is and how we got along.

Kerri Sparling: Let's do like a big fat real big plug because for the last couple of months we've been working on relaunching the website.

Scott Johnson: Yes.

Kerri Sparling: I'm on the board for CWD but I'm not part of the inception crew for CWD so I don't want to speak out of turn and get my timeline wrong, but I'm fairly certain that the organization online was launched in 1995, which blows my mind because I think we were early but they had us beat. The website has gone through a couple of different iterations, but it's been looking a little older, it was looking a little older for several years and it's had the benefit of a complete makeover.

Kerri Sparling: I've been working closely with Jeff Hitchcock and Laura Billetdeaux and the rest of the board and the team for CWD to bring Children with Diabetes into the digital age because the conference itself is absolutely mind-blowing. You and I have been part of the faculty for years and I feel very, very special that we're able to do that. But when people look online for resources about the community they didn't always find stuff but now there's a huge social media presence, we're sharing stuff about the conferences and the community, we're giving people access to information that they really might need. I'm really proud and everyone should go currently to childrenwithdiabetes.com. There's probably a place to put a link somewhere.

Scott Johnson: We'll make sure to put it in, absolutely. ( -> https://childrenwithdiabetes.com/)

Kerri Sparling: But it's been a labor of love, man, so to get some more people to go take a peek at that would be great.

Scott Johnson: Absolutely. Regarding the conference itself, so there's a big, the annual Friends for Life conference, July in Orlando. It's a place where it's like magic for people with diabetes. Thinking about kind of circling back to feeling alone when we started our blogs. People who come to Friends for Life, especially those who start coming to that conference as young children, they grow up experiencing life with diabetes knowing that there's this incredible community and family around them and they're not alone. I think that's a very special thing that I wish every person with diabetes had an opportunity to experience.

Kerri Sparling: It's really wild. You and I have been part of it for what, like eight years now or so?

Scott Johnson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Kerri Sparling: It's been a while. My daughter is eight and so this year... She's come a couple of times but she's coming back with me this year and she's very excited to go because she puts on an orange bracelet and she represents a group of people that I never thought that would exist in my lifetime and I'm glad that they do, The Children of Adults with Diabetes. You and I, if we had known, could have gone to this conference when we were a lot younger but we didn't, we went as adults and we were embraced as adults, but now we can bring our kids who wear their orange bracelets and they're part of a community of kids who don't have diabetes but are involved in diabetes intimately in their family.

Kerri Sparling: I think that that is it's own new generational magic that our kids get a sense of what maybe it's like for us and then they get a place where they can talk about what it's like to be the child of an adult with diabetes. We don't have those conversations in my house here and we generally don't have them in our family, but my daughter gets to have them there and I think that's really cool.

Kerri Sparling: As a total sidebar, my best friend is coming down to the conference with me and her daughter does not have diabetes but she has celiac and there aren't a lot of kids in her school with celiac so when she gets to go into the Children with Diabetes conference and put on her yellow wristband and see that there's a buffet table that's safe for her to eat and she doesn't have to question the integrity of that meal, that gives her a sense of community that my friend and I were like, we didn't even consider that this might be powerful for her but she looks forward to the conference just as much as you and I do because she's like, "These are my people too." I think that's amazing.

Scott Johnson: It is amazing.

Kerri Sparling: Yeah. You can just look around and say, "Oh, green bracelet people, oh they're my people." She's looking for the yellows going, "Oh, they're my people." My daughter is looking for oranges going, "Yeah..." That, I don't know, I just think it's really nice that you can find family where you never knew you had family, it's instant.

Scott Johnson: That's amazing. I think... Again, it brings the power of connections around. Folks, again, head to childrenwithdiabetes.com, connect of course online. If you can find your way to make it to the conference in July, do that. I know it sounds cliché to say it's life-changing but it really is. There are also sponsorship opportunities so look for those and apply for those and find a way.

Scott Johnson: Let's kind of wind things down, Kerri, by talking about this big transition that you're approaching on the blog.

Kerri Sparling: Because I'm old now? Yeah.

Scott Johnson: I say it feels a little bit... I'm super excited for you, but it's the end of an amazing era and I'm so grateful for all that you have done and the sacrifices and hard work that you've made, so thank you first and foremost for that, but talk a little bit about what's going on.

Kerri Sparling: I was afraid I'd feel sad, and I do feel a little weird so I don't want to get super weird on the video because I have no Kleenex right here and I don't want to blot my... But I do feel emotional about it. I started doing this 14 years ago and I decided... I just turned 40 two weeks ago and I always thought when I was a little kid that 40 would look... And actually, less how it would look and more how it would feel, that I would feel very sick and that I would feel very physically compromised. I was kind of scared to get older because I didn't have a lot of good examples of what getting older with diabetes long-term would look like, so I found a really scary to think about as a little kid.

Kerri Sparling: Then this birthday approached and I was like, it feels all right. I feel like I'm okay, I feel like it's going to be okay. I felt very empowered by that but I also felt like that birthday marked kind of like a closure to a chapter that I'd been writing for a really long time. I've enjoyed blogging... Enjoyed, that's like such an understatement. I feel fulfilled in a way in my soul that I can't put words to about what it's been like to be able to share my story and then to hear other people's stories. That's like... It renders me speechless, which is a rare thing.

Kerri Sparling: But there comes a time where you don't maybe want to do that anymore and maybe you want to change the way things are going and I want to tell my story in a different way. I decided that on the 14th birthday of my blog that I would kind of cut it loose and stop doing that particular version of diabetes storytelling and move into something that was a little less pancreas-ly centered, or pancreatically centered, and kind of flex my writing muscle in a way that had nothing to do with diabetes.

Kerri Sparling: I am stoked about that. As sad as I am to leave the blog behind, I am really excited to sit down and write stories that are made up, you know what I mean? Story development where the people aren't either people that I am or that I've given birth to, let's go fully into fiction. That sounds awesome, so I really want to do that and I'm really, really excited. I have no idea how it will work out, it could be a complete disaster, but I'm excited to try something totally different.

Scott Johnson: What a fun adventure. That sounds amazing and I'm so excited for you. I know that you will... One, you'll have fun and two, you will find ways to change the world in more fun, amazing ways. The amazing thing about content on the internet is that it continues to live a long life of its own and so people will continue to find all the amazing stuff on Six Until Me for many, many years. Just because you're not updating it after the...

Kerri Sparling: Covered with spider webs.

Scott Johnson: But I'm sure that this happens to you and many others as well, but I often have people who find posts on my blog from very long ago who find... They write and comment with questions or say that it's helped them in certain ways. It still helps those people out there and so it's not like you're turning the lights off and... Anyway, this is …

Kerri Sparling: I'm excited to do it. This kind of circles back to what we talked about at the beginning of this, which is there's no obligation to do in the community. You do what you feel comfortable doing and so if there ever comes a time when someone's not as comfortable doing this part of it, they don't have to. You have to continue to maintain your diabetes protocols and take your insulin and do all that sort of stuff, but how you decide and if you decide to share your story is entirely up to you. I feel like it does kind of dovetail into what we had discussed before.

Kerri Sparling: Besides, I want to spend a lot of time with my family. I feel like looking at my kids now, they're eight and a half and two and a half and I'm like, I remember when both... Obviously, I remember when both of them were born, but I feel like it's going by at an incredible clip and I don't want to feel like I had my nose to a digital grindstone when I would rather be at my kids' softball games and potentially changing diapers. I don't know if I'm into that as much, but I really like the kid anyway so I'll continue to change his diapers. But you know that sort of thing, I want to be a little more present at home and I know this will contribute to that too, and there's no change in that.

Scott Johnson: No shame at all. I think it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. I think it's a brave decision and I'm excited for you Kerri, I'm very excited for you, so congratulations on that, congratulations on all the success that you've had so far and, again, thank you for all the work you've done, all the changes that you've empowered in the world and all the people that you've helped start sharing. I'm excited for the success and new adventures that you're embarking on.

Kerri Sparling: Thank you. You have to stop thanking me because it makes me want to just sort of slide off this screen. Thank you for thanking me. That's the thing about diabetes, you don't really go anywhere. You could stop doing what you're doing and I could stop doing what we're doing but if I need you or if you need me or if anyone in the community needs somebody, it's there all the time. I think that the safety net of community is an amazing thing and I'm grateful that it will still be there whether or not I am sharing my story. The fact that it continues to go on and it's not centered on one person or one site or one conference or one whatever, it's so vibrant and so huge at this point that I could not have imagined this, but I'm so glad this is the way that it is.

Scott Johnson: Yeah. It's again something Cherise and I talked about last week but the community creates what the community needs and I think that's so, so amazing.

Kerri Sparling: Yep.

Scott Johnson: Yeah. With that, is there anything else that I maybe didn't ask about or that you want to spend any more time on?

Kerri Sparling: I mean, do people watch really long videos? Probably not, so this is… time to call it. But no, I think just the thing that the site will be going off at May 4th and will probably remain up but I'm not 100% sure that it will, so I'll kind of work on announcements going forward with that. But aside from that, no we've already kind of hit all the good stuff, I think.

Scott Johnson: I think so too. Well, thank you for sharing so much time and... There, I thanked you again. I'm sorry, I'm sorry for thanking you.

Kerri Sparling: Stop!

Scott Johnson: I think we should go find a four-way stop sign and just get stuck at it forever.

Kerri Sparling: No, you go. No, you go. No, you go. Yeah. You blink and you wave. I know people who don't do that, they will drive right into other cars.

Scott Johnson: All right. Well thank you Kerri

Kerri Sparling: Thank you, Scott.

Scott Johnson: I'm going to push the button. Folks, thanks for watching. All right.

Scott Johnson: All right, there you have it. I hope you also enjoyed the conversation with Kerri. I don't know about you but I always have fun chatting with her, whether it's about serious business or non-serious business or... Somehow she finds a way to make even the most serious business super, super fun. You heard us, maybe you heard us chat briefly about Spare a Rose project and a fun thing that was cooking up with a mutual friend of ours, Grumpy Pumper. Grumpy Pumper, if you don't know him, is famous. He's a friend in the UK who coined the term Grumpy Pumper because he is famous for never smiling in pictures that people take of him online.

Scott Johnson: My dad (hi dad!) thought that it would be a wonderful Spare a Rose fundraising push to get him to promise to smile if a fundraising goal was met. It happened and I'm so grateful for Renza and Grumpy Pumper for playing along and dad for the idea and so much good came out of that idea and so many people were helped through the Life for a Child, Spare a Rose campaign. Thank you to all of the amazing companies and people that donated.

Scott Johnson: Our friend Renza has a great blog post and some Instagram posts kind of documenting the whole thing, so we'll get those in the video comments just after we go off the air here, so you can read about that fun story too if you're interested.

Scott Johnson: As usual, and as a special thanks to everyone watching, I have some fun mySugr tote bags with some goodies inside like pop sockets and a few stickers that I want to give away. To enter, leave a comment below, let us know if you enjoyed the episode. Before next weeks' show, I'll randomly pick lucky winners and announce them during the start of the broadcast.

Scott Johnson: Once again, today's episode is sponsored by the mySugr Bundle. Get unlimited strips, automatic supply refills, personalized support and more all for just $49 per month. Learn more at mysugr.com/facebooklive.

Scott Johnson: Next week the amazing Quinn Nystrom, who you may remember from an episode that we did back in December, thanks to her work with the Center for Change, they focus on eating disorders and they have a program on diabetes and eating disorders. She's actually coming to North County San Diego next week for a special event at the beautiful San Diego Botanical Garden on Thursday evening, the 7th, to talk more about diabetes and eating disorders. That event is completely free. You do have to RSVP, so for anyone who may be close enough to join us for that we would love to see you there, we'll put the RSVP link in the comments as well.

Scott Johnson: But Quinn is going to join me in the mySugr offices next week for the mySugr Facebook Live episode to talk a little bit more about what the event at the botanical garden will be all about. There's also been some really interesting and amazing advocacy action happening in Minnesota where Quinn is from and my old home state around insulin pricing, so I'm anxious and excited to get an update from Quinn about all of that that's happening there too. I can't wait for a week from today where we will catch up with Quinn live in the mySugr offices, so I hope you'll join us for that as well.

Scott Johnson: Thank you so much for joining today. Please give this a like and share it with your friends. Be sure to reach out if we can do anything to help you as well. If you have any cool news or fun stories or anything that you need a hand with, don't hesitate to reach out, I would love to help you with that. Have another amazing day and I will see you guys next week.