Minutes are hours long when you are
sitting in a medical office awaiting test results. Finally, the door opens, and the person in
the white coat starts flipping pages on a clipboard. The doctor says, “I have good news and bad news. The bad news is you have type 2
diabetes. The good news is this is
something you can manage.”
Every 24 hours, 4,000 Americans
hear that news. The type 2 diabetes
roster grows more than 1 million patients per year. I don’t have diabetes, but one day I
could. It’s in my family’s history. What about you?
That’s why I was glad to meet
Harvard graduate Ansley Dalbo, who is a health-care consultant. I’d like to introduce her to you. What Ansley’s doing is going to make a huge
difference in the quality of life of millions of type 2 diabetes patients. But first, let me tell you how I got to know
this petite and unselfish dynamo.
Perhaps you were in Jacksonville’s
Gator Bowl on that 1980 November Saturday when Larry Munson begged—over the
radio—“Run, Lindsay, run!” Georgia Bulldog head coach Vince Dooley
joked that he ran step for step with his star receiver as former Wayne County
Yellow Jacket Lindsay Scott was making history with his 92-yard touchdown
reception. As Lindsay sprinted, another Jesup native, Fred Bennett, was in the
Florida Gators’ end zone, photographing every inch of the footrace. (For 40 years, Coach Dooley has teased me:
“You always work Jesup into your
stories.”)
I was there, up in the nosebleed
section, with a tiny transistor radio clamped to my ear. And after the pandemonium, an exhausted
Munson growled, “I gave up. You did,
too.” Yes, I had given up. But then Lindsay caught Buck Belue’s pass and
outran the Orange and Blue. Fred hustled
back to Athens to develop the film and feed his images to the national wire
services UPI and AP. Sunday readers saw
what Fred saw through his Nikon’s Nikkor telephoto lens.
Last March, that’s what I was
after—one of Fred’s famous photographs.
Loran Smith had
I reached out to Fred. Not only
did I get permission to use the prized picture, but I got to visit with Fred
and meet his bride of eight years, Ansley.
That’s when I learned Fred had left
New York and eventually closed his photography studio to help his wife pursue
her dream—to make a difference in the lives of people with type 2
diabetes. Today, the lights in their
Decatur home burn 18 hours a day—sometimes longer—as they brainstorm at their
kitchen table on how to better develop their free website: Diabetes—What To Know (DWTK).
“Fred and I started creating this
site in July 2013,” said Ansley. “We
have felt blessed and humbled to have such a worthy project that uses each of
our individual talents. I’ve created the
program with diabetes health-care professionals, using all that we’ve learned
about diabetes and patient behavior.
Fred has been able to utilize his incredible gifts behind the camera to
create the educational videos and convey the stories of the amazing patients we
have interviewed.”
It’s been fun to witness the
back-and-forth passion and mutual admiration between Ansley and Fred over this
altruistic endeavor. Fred added, “Now
that the site is created, we can turn our attention to building it out, adding
many more patient stories, while including cooking videos, recipes, exercise
tips and more. And we can’t ever stray
from our core mission of getting the message out that it’s possible to live a
long, healthy life with diabetes.”
The other day, Fred and Ansley
drove 240 miles to Jesup to interview a friend, Patti Bryant, who has been
dealing with her type 2 diabetes for the past 18 months. When I called my high school classmate, the
grandmother said, “This just showed up when I was 65.”
Chuckling, Patti confessed, “I am
one of the electronically left-behinds, but Ansley gave me clear instructions
on how to use the website. I really am
looking forward to using it.”
The education exchange was two-way. While Fred filmed, Ansley gave Patti a list
of helpful tips. In return, Patti
suggested ideas to Ansley that could help other type 2 patients. That’s the
beauty of DWTK. You don’t have to be
alone or under-informed.
So, if you are sitting in a doctor’s office, listening
to a type 2 diabetes diagnosis, don’t let the minutes turn into hours before
you visit www.DiabetesWhatToKnow.com.
Thanks to the unbridled energy of a husband-and-wife team, help and hope are just a click away.