The Long and Winding Road: My Journey in Diabetes Education

Abstract

I am honored to represent the work of diabetes education, accomplished by me in small part and by many colleagues, and I am privileged to recognize the impact that our work has had on people with diabetes. When I got news of this award, I wanted my presentation to be tied to a theme that captured my passion and one with which a wide audience could identify. The music of The Beatles is expressive and shared across all cultures, so Beatles music it was. The Beatles song that generates emotion and illustrates the course of diabetes education for me is “The Long and Winding Road.” Allow me to rewind to the 1960s, when I was a young girl infatuated with The Beatles and, coincidentally, when I was introduced to diabetes. My father, John (Figure 1), was a World War II veteran who, like many other young Americans back then, believed the only way ahead was through education. He had dreams of being a psychiatrist, but becoming a physician was not in his cards. At the age of 30, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during the one-shot-a-day-and-no-monitoring era. No education, no team care. The science of diabetes was embryonic, and the health care system in the 1960s failed him. He died at the age of 52, a quadriplegic from a series of strokes. Today, my brother fights another kind of battle with chronic disease. Unlike our father, he has the advantages of new drug therapies and a mental health team. When I told him about this talk, he said, “Lin, make sure you tell them that without my team I wouldn't have hope.” This presentation is dedicated to my father and brother, my reasons for staying the course. Figure 1: The author's father, John Mulac, with her brother, Michael Mulac. On …