Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah to discuss her diagnosis and life with type 1 diabetes and her new children’s book Just Ask!: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You.
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In this interview with Trevor Noah, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor talks about her life with type 1 diabetes. She tells the story about being in a restaurant when someone assumed that she was using drugs. She told the person, “If you don’t understand when someone is doing something different than you expect, just ask. Don’t presume the worst in people.”
For parents of teens and college-aged kids with diabetes, her party story is a very important lesson. People with type 1 diabetes should always let someone know that they are diabetic when they are drinking because alcohol can affect your blood sugar. People may assume you are passed out drunk when you are actually having a severe low blood sugar.
She also says, “I don’t need help all of the time. But I do sometimes. And people should know that. And you should know that about the people you love and care about.”
Watch the video:
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Just Ask!: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You
The children in Sonia Sotomayor’s story have many different abilities and medical diagnoses. I think this is going to be a great book for children to learn about others who might be different from themselves. I can’t wait to read it!
From the book:
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Feeling different, especially as a kid, can be tough. But in the same way that different types of plants and flowers make a garden more beautiful and enjoyable, different types of people make our world more vibrant and wonderful.
In Just Ask, United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor celebrates the different abilities kids (and people of all ages) have. Using her own experience as a child who was diagnosed with diabetes, Justice Sotomayor writes about children with all sorts of challenges–and looks at the special powers those kids have as well. As the kids work together to build a community garden, asking questions of each other along the way, this book encourages readers to do the same: When we come across someone who is different from us but we’re not sure why, all we have to do is Just Ask.”
Purchase Just Ask!: Be Different, Be Brave, Be You from my affiliate Amazon. It is also available in Spanish: ¡Solo pregunta!: Sé Diferente, Sé Valiente, Sé Tú
Understanding Insulin Pumps: For me, this book was the perfect amount of information–not too little, not too much–to get me prepared to start the insulin pump and demystify basal rates, the risk associated with DKA with regard to the pump, etc.
Until There is a Cure: I say time and again that I think it’s important to keep our children in the best of health for the time if/when there is a true cure for diabetes. Gary’s book Until There is a Cure is founded on exactly that premise: let’s do the best we can with the current and emerging technologies, medicines, and approaches in diabetes care.
Insulin Pumps and Continuous Glucose Monitoring: I think this book would be a great resource for people exploring the use of an insulin pump. I wish I had read it as we began thinking about a pump a few years ago. It does touch upon all those topics listed on the cover. But I think the book provides more general knowledge than nitty-gritty how-to.
Kids First, Diabetes Second Book: I wrote the book Kids First, Diabetes Second because I wanted to share all that I have learned over the years. There’s no reason why you have to start at square one!
My Interview with Open Up Your Bag author Mike Lawson
