HONcode Certified.

I'm very proud to say that Texting My Pancreas is now HONcode certified.

Woop woop!

What that means (this is taken from the HONcode website):

The HONcode certification is an ethical standard aimed at offering quality health information. It demonstrates the intent of a website to publish transparent information. The transparency of the website will improve the usefulness and objectivity of the information and the publishment of correct data. 

Sites applying for certification and sites already certified undertake to respect the HONcode and the requirements for certification.

This certification required several edits and elaborations to my disclosure policy, including the addition of a privacy policy. If you're interested in what the ground rules are on TMP from now on, go have a read.

Nothing about what I do here is changing because of this certification, except for the addition of a neat-o badge on the right sidebar and a well-explained re-commitment to being as transparent as possible.

I'd encourage anyone who blogs their own health story to apply for HONcode certification. We can be official together!

(P.S. Thanks to Bennet at YMDV for the nudge - HONcode certification is something I'd always intended to go through the process of applying for, but kept procrastinating. But no more!)

Round-Up.

Stuff and things:

• You may notice in the near future (or, not, because it will be tiny) that I will have a small ad on my site for Diabetic Living magazine, which is part of the Meredith family of publications. They reached out to me earlier this month about doing some advertising on TMP, and while it wasn't a decision I rushed to make, and I think the time has come that this site could start paying for itself just a wee bit. (Basically, if people follow the link on my site and then subscribe to the magazine, I get a chunk of it.) I hope that's cool with you guys. Ads will never have anything to do with the content you'll find here - I'm not doing any paid topic insertion tomfoolery - and if things get weird, I'll swing the axe. No biggie. But, worth a try, I think.
• I'm a fan of the intersection where satire and diabetes meet, and last week one of my wishes came true. Go check out The Cinnamon (a diabetes-centric play on The Onion) and submit a ridiculous headline of your own. It's on Facebook, too. (And bee tee dubs, it's Chris that's behind it.)
• On a similar note, it looks like if I just follow these simple rules, pregnancy should be a breeze.
• Tuesday, March 26th is dubbed as Diabetes Alert Day by the American Diabetes Association, and it's "a one-day 'wake-up call' asking the American public to take the Diabetes Risk Test to find out if they are at risk for developing type 2 diabetes." Sanofi Diabetes is also supporting the effort by hosting an "event" on Facebook where they're asking folks to not only take the diabetes risk test, but also to draw a blue check mark on their hand and upload a picture to the "Check It Blue" page.
• This is accurate.
• I saw my internal medicine doctor earlier this week, and as I stood in line to schedule my next visit, I noticed that the gentleman in front of me was carrying a lot of familiar-looking items: a Bayer something-something glucose meter (his hand was over the picture, so not sure which one, but does it matter?), a booklet on carb counting, and a Calorie King book. I wanted to say something to him, but he never made eye contact with me, which was going to be my "go-ahead" cue. Even diabetes advocates don't always speak up.
• I've begun the baby registering process, and holy crap, kids have a lot of stuff. My crafty side has been rearing its head, so there are a few things I'm making instead of buying new (I can sew the crap out of a changing pad cover, you guys), and the room that shall become the nursery is now a tornado of fabric, boxes, half-finished projects, and diapers. Yes, I'm buying diapers already. They're on sale! They don't expire! It makes sense! Kind of!
• And lastly, Corgnelius is the Ryan Gosling of Corgis. (Spellcheck may not like that name, but I sure do.)

Disclosure Update.

[Side note: I love being able to title a post this way, because it tends to mean something exciting!]

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At the end of last month I made a fairly important update to this site's disclosure policy, but I know that unless this is your first time here, you're probably not reading that puppy very often. And so, in the spirit of transparency and "things I think you should know about me", I'd like to elaborate on it a bit.

At the end of last year, a guy who had an idea for a new health startup contacted me to see if I'd be interested in being a part of the diabetes side of it. We've had some really good conversations, and the more I think about what this idea can become, the more excited I am that I get to be part of it. That's a good thing, too, since I signed a short-term consulting contract (read: they're paying me) with them last month. (!)

Because the company is so new and still finding its identity/brand/mission/whatevs, it's hard to specify just what exactly my role is there yet, but I can tell you this much and hope to have more information for you soon: the company is called Whitewater Health, and we're creating personal information platforms for people living with chronic disease. Diabetes is the first "thing" we're working on, and I feel very lucky to be part of this - and I hope the relationship can continue for quite some time.

This is something that I'm doing part-time for now, from home, in addition to my regular full-time job, so things have gotten a little busier around here! And if the relationship changes or when I'm finally able to elaborate a bit, you guys will be the first to know. It's important to me that I make clear the relationships I have with those in the diabetes industry to you guys - everyone has biases, and I don't feel I'm doing things the right way if I don't disclose what mine are.

So there you are, and Happy Friday. (Aaron and I - okay, mostly Aaron - will be digging ourselves out of several inches of snow this morning - who's ready for spring??!)

Disclosure Update.

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Keeping things transparent is important to me, because I know that as a reader of blogs myself, it's nice to know what people's "deal" is.

I like knowing what may influence a person's opinions and preferences when I read their blogs/articles/videos/tweets/whatever. If someone's making money somewhere, that's a good nugget of information to know. It helps me understand where they're coming from, and how I might filter what they're saying/doing.

Generating an income from an online presence isn't a bad thing at all - heck, that's something I've dreamed about for a while now - from my perspective, as long as everyone knows what the situation is.

In that spirit, I need to update my disclosure statement a bit. My "situation", as it were, is changing.

If you saw my Facebook post or tweets from last weekend, you may have seen that I drew a cartoon that appeared on DiabetesMine.com on Sunday. As was expressed at the bottom of that post, DMine was/is still looking for people who create diabetes-related art in the "snarky but true" category, and they're offering a cash stipend for those contributions.

I wanted to make sure you guys knew what the deal is with me and them - I'll be contributing cartoons for DiabetesMine on a once-a-month basis for a few months (Yay!) as a "testing the waters" sort of thing. We want to make sure that all parties (DMine and myself) are happy with things before we make anything official out of this.

This means that I'm getting paid to draw cartoons (hang on a sec while I do a little happy dance - never thought I'd get to say that!). Not a quitting-my-day-job kind of income, but it's money, and I'm grateful for the opportunity. And in the interest of being straightforward, I want those who read this blog to know about this relationship.

I can also tell you - without being able to tell you very much at all - that there will be some other things over the next few months that I'll be wanting/needing to disclose as well. Exciting things! I just can't tell you, yet.

What I can tell you is that I think it will be awesome, and I hope that you'll think so, too.

Also, thanks for sticking with me, my ramblings, arguably childish drawings, and incessant dog pictures. You guys are troopers. :)

Disclosure.

Hi, friends - I'll get back to recounting JDRF Government Day on Monday, but for now, I need to get this out.

It's time.

My name is Kim Vlasnik, and I write this blog.

*whew* That wasn't so bad. I have a last name! And there it is! And good luck pronouncing it correctly!

About a month ago, I wrote this post. Until recently, I have been pretty protective of who I am "in the real world" - and because of that, I've never used my full name anywhere on this site. I've frankly been a little bit scared to do so. (And don't call me Frankly?) But...

I've recently come to the decision that that's something I want to change.

This has been something I've been thinking about for a while, and now seems like a good time to make that edit to my blog (and online interactions). Why the change of heart? I've got a few reasons.

For one: there isn't much point anymore. Googling my name brings up a lot of diabetes stuff - which I'm starting to think of as a good thing. I'm friends with several DOC people on Facebook, so I'm "out" there, too. And with the addition of all the JDRF Government Day coverage, my name is all over the diabetes interwebz now. (I did realize that going in - and was waiting to decide until after I got back on how I wanted to proceed.)

Secondly, and more importantly, there's the whole "future employer" issue. (You might have heard me mention that among my points in the Blogger Roundtable video from JDRF Government Day. Even as I was saying that I don't use my last name on my blog, I thought "...but that doesn't make much sense, because I'm sitting here in front of you right now with my full name on the projector screen.") While I can be happy staying where I currently am job-wise for a while, it's not the sort of thing I will be making a career out of. The work I currently do will run its course, and unless I get hired to another department, I'll be looking elsewhere in a few years. What I'd like to do - what I'd really love - is to communicate about diabetes for a living. (I think that's the endgame dream for many who blog about life with diabetes, isn't it?) I don't know exactly what that means yet, or even what all of the possibilities are with that kind of goal, but I do know that I don't want to build a career doing something I'm not passionate about., At some point I need to take that leap. I realize there is risk associated with that plan, but it's one I want to take some day in the future. And people don't build work experience under a first name only (unless you're Cher).

And lastly - it just feels like a natural progression. I write about personal things here; it's a little weird that most of you wouldn't have recognized my name if you saw it. (Right?) I want to be as open and honest here as I can be, and to that end, here I am.

Here's hoping this doesn't come back to bite me in the butt.

Deciding on Disclosure.

Life is weird.

Even though I see the amount of traffic this blog receives, I don't often think about who is reading what I write here. My mind doesn't tend to connect those numbers with actual people, and certainly not with people I'd encounter "in real life". Okay, so my mom reads this, and so do several of my friends - but strangers who I might meet one day? It's hard to wrap my brain around that.

See? They're awesome!

This past Saturday, I grabbed some lunch at one of my favorite places with a couple of my DOC friends, who were visiting from Kansas City. I've written about this restaraunt before and how cool it was that they had so many JDRF sneakers displayed last fall as they raised money for the Walk to Cure. As we stood in the foyer, I was telling them this was that place, and gesturing to where the sneaker displays had been. And as is customary for me when I get excited about something, I was using my "outside voice".

Then, I heard from behind the hostess' table:  "Wait - are you the infamous blogger?"

Bewildered and slightly uncomfortable with that wording, I turned around and incriminatingly answered, "....maybe?" The hostess told me that they had seen my blog post, printed it off, and it had been laying around for people to read.

Then, my friend chimed in: "And she's in a magazine!" She pulled the new issue of Diabetic Living out of her purse, flipped to page four, and pointed me out. The girl's eyes widened, and she responded, "Oh... wow!"

I wanted to hide under a booth.

When I started out this blog, I put as little personally-identifying information about myself as I thought was necessary out there. I didn't have my picture anywhere on here, I didn't specify what city I live in, and I didn't (and still don't) use my last name on my blog. I didn't use people's real names when I spoke about friends or family.

Some of that has changed over the past few months - if you really look, you can find a lot of those pieces of information in different places now. And, when you Google my name, a lot of diabetes-related stuff comes up. I guess the cat's sort of out of the bag, now.

I'm still not comfortable being "totally out there" with everything. My hesitation and reasoning for not using my last name on my blog, or anywhere in the DOC, had been that I didn't want to give any future employers a reason not to hire me when they searched for my name online. Due to some recent happenings (which are really, really cool, and I'm super appreciative of the opportunities I'm having - more to come on this), this won't be a "clear" search anymore - and I think I'm starting to be sort-of okay with that. The job I'm in right now is totally okay with my DOC involvement (and very supportive in the time off I've requested to participate in some of these things), which is super - but this isn't the sort of thing I can see myself doing for the rest of my life.

They say there are three criteria for the perfect job: Something you're good at, something you enjoy doing, and something you can get paid to do. When you can find something that fits all three, it's like magic - and I haven't found that magical trifecta yet.

I feel like I've smooshed two completely different topics into one very incohesive post here, but that's how I'm rolling today. I realize the irony of someone who writes about their personal health (and submits a photo to a magazine) being shy and protective of their identity, but that's where I am.

Life is weird, and to some extent, so am I.