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In the past few months, I've really noticed the media attention given to diabetes. Countless times the "d-word" gets thrown into a media line, leaving me clinch to the familiarity of my disease and cringe at the inaccuracies they portray. Unfortunately, too much of this media hype is giving diabetes the wrong kind of attention. Too much of it is snide comments about the disease and not about funding for a cure or the pitfalls of diabetes.

Just yesterday, I was watching the new Lifetime movie "Maneater" and felt those familiar clinching and cringing emotions. The line (from a hypochondriac character) went something like this: "I always carry insulin in my purse, because I'm convinced I'm diabetic." I clinched to the words...insulin and diabetic. Two words that I know very well. But I cringed at the information being cast by this line. The kind of information that says that insulin is readily available, the kind that says someone should carry it because they might be diabetic, the kind that says anyone would know how to use insulin without a doctor's supervision.

Sure, I could handle one line like this in all of TV. But what I can't handle is that fact that so many shows now are embracing these diabetes lines. Like the line on FOX's "House" where they refer to a diabetic wanting cake for its "chocolatey goodness" but being forced to withstand this temptation. Again, I cling to these familiar lines. But I mostly cringe at the fact that now it's thrown back into the world that diabetics can't eat chocolate cake. The myths that we've fought so hard to dispel...they are still being thrown into audiences' homes everywhere.

So many other TV shows bring up diabetes (like the Private Practice episode that I blogged about so many months ago) in the same kinds of ways. They embrace the fact that diabetes is 180+ million strong in the world, that diabetes is a commonplace disease. But unfortunately, they don't embrace the realities of this disease. They don't cover the mundane (the endless finger pricks and insulin shots). They don't show the recent technology. They don't cover complications in the way that they truly affect us (just the gruesome infections and amputations).

I don't expect everyone to get diabetes right all the time, after all diabetes is different for everyone so it can't be portrayed in millions of different ways. But I do expect the basics of this disease to show up in media everywhere. I don't expect diabetes to be a laughing joke, to be the punchline in an argument of wits. I don't expect the media to cling to their familiar world of diabetes (the one from the 1990's).

I expect them to cover diabetes in the same way that other diseases are covered. After all, how many cancer jokes do we hear? How many times has MS or Parkinson's come up in the jokes and the inaccurate portrayals? They don't, at least not to the extent that diabetes does, because everyone knows that MS and cancer and Parkinson's are serious...deadly. But diabetes gets the brunt, the laugh because no one understands how painful and difficult and torrential this disease can and will be. And personally, I'm ready for a media change...how about a day in the life of a diabetic for every TV producer out there who's willing to take stabs at this disease? Let them feel the brunt of their own fallacies for once.