Being on the artificial pancreas these last few weeks has been so life-changing. Since being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 3, I feel free from the disease for the first time in my life. Research advances medicine. Research pioneers treatments. Research pursues cures. Research improves patient care. Research thrives at UVA. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 3. And of course, you know with type 1, you become insulin-dependent for the rest of your life. It's a disease that you can always attempt to manage, but you'll never be able to control it. I've always lived with that, thinking I'm going to live the rest of my life having to have a disease define me. In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas does not produce insulin. And insulin is the hormone that controls blood sugar levels. Too high blood sugar level is dangerous. It has complications over a lifetime. Too low is also dangerous, because it can trigger seizures and coma. So many times that it's been a near-death experience for me. I was driving three minutes down the road. I felt something was going wrong, and I felt my body was shutting down. The standard treatment for type 1 diabetes includes either daily injections several times a day or an insulin pump therapy, which means that there is a pump attached to the person that delivers insulin the way that person directs the pump to deliver insulin. Despite the best current technologies that are available-- so an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor-- there's still a lot of challenges to diabetes. And they're constantly having to think about the food they eat, the activity they're about to participate in. And despite people's best attempts, it's hard to avoid a high and a low. So the artificial pancreas really takes a lot of the work out of the equation. The artificial pancreas is a control system housed on a special smartphone called the Diabetes Assistant. It links a sensor that sits under the skin and measures blood sugar every five minutes with an insulin pump. The artificial pancreas receives the blood sugar levels from the glucose monitor. The device will automatically pump insulin if the patient's blood sugar levels are predicted to go high and lowers or discontinues insulin delivery if the patient's blood sugar levels are predicted to go low. If the blood sugar levels are predicted to go too low, the device will alert the wearer to check their blood sugar and eat. The artificial pancreas studies have evolved since 2008 when we did our first trial. And in those days, the technology was much larger. The algorithms were housed on a laptop computer, and everything was hardwired. So the sensor was hardwired to the computer, and the pump was hardwired to the computer. And so, even though it was somewhat mobile on a cart, it really wasn't a mobile technology at that point. We started pretty primitive. We have a little museum in our office with the first, second, and so forth generations of artificial pancreas system. The revolutionary piece was the creation of the smartphone platform called the Diabetes Assistant. By transforming a standard, everyday phone and turning it into a medical device, that's what revolutionized our artificial pancreas technology and made it mobile for the patients. So now they can actually take it home. I went home with it for five weeks, getting to do my normal life, getting to experience everything that I normally do without worrying about type 1 diabetes. For the first time in my life since I was 3, I was able to sleep through the night without worrying about am I going to leave my parents on this earth because I pass away in my sleep from a low blood sugar at night. I'm able to eat food that I would have never been able to eat before and keep a constant regular blood sugar. If I'm full, I don't have to eat anymore. If I'm not full, I can still eat no matter what. And it didn't faze me at all. I stayed perfect the entire time. I have never had blood sugar this stable. And I have never felt this good in my life. The ultimate goal of the artificial pancreas is to be available to any person with diabetes who wants to use it, which means taking the artificial pancreas out of the research realm, bringing it into practice. By wearing the pancreas for a month, we're hoping to re-establish her body's ability to fight off hypoglycemia in the future. So basically making things much safer for her. Just to think that I'm being able to be a part of that history, to bring this out, it's such an awesome feeling. And it is an absolute honor to be in this whole process. I feel like I'm a part of the UVA family now. I don't want to leave. And I'm hopeful I can come back and do more trials and research with them, because they have just been absolutely wonderful. And it has changed my life. And I feel free from type 1. And I don't feel like type 1 defines me any longer.