Bluntly Speaking
Posted on March 21, 2008
Filed Under Juvenile Diabetes | 1 Comment
We waited for an hour for Congressman Roy Blunt to show up for our 3:30pm meeting regarding the JDRF Promise To Remember Me campaign last Wednesday. I thought for sure that he’d come breezing in and give me less than 5 minutes to make my presentation and then scoot us out of his office. But I was pleasantly surprised! He sat down with us in his office for approximately 25 minutes.
During this time, I got a chance to ask Congressman Blunt to vote for the renewal of the Special Diabetes Program. Currently, this program has given 443 million dollars (of which 25% of the funds are privately raised thru families of JDRF) to research for type 1 diabetes. If this program is not renewed, it will cut funding for research down to 283 million dollars and could slow down the momentum the JDRF has for finding a cure.
I’ve had a lot of respect for Roy Blunt over the years. Roy was the president of Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO when I attended there. After getting sick with diabetes my freshman year and placed in the hospital for several days, Roy made a personal phone call to my hospital room to check on how I was feeling. Maybe it was politics to win votes for his senate run the following year, but his personal concern for my health way back in 1996 earned himself a lot of admiration from me and my Republican family.
And now that he has told me personally that he would vote for the Special Diabetes Program, I find that I hold him in an even higher regard. Thank you Roy Blunt for your time and for your promise to remember me and all the other families affected by type 1 diabetes.
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Jessica
Are you on TuDiabetes yet? You can find me there at http://tudiabetes.com/profile/bernfarr.
I noticed your tweet about getting a CDE to talk at one of your meetings. Since I’d not visited your site before (I think) I’ve added it to the diabetes search engine.