The following is a blog from Sarah Horn, the 2013 Children’s Congress delegate for JDRF Greater Iowa chapter. Participants in Children’s Congress visit Washington D.C. to testify before Congress on the importance of type 1 diabetes research funding. Learn more here.

Day Two:

On Day Two of Children’s Congress, we learned about how to conduct our meetings on Capitol Hill, thanked our sponsors for giving us a great experience with the help of Nicole Johnson (Miss America 1999), and had a chance to meet more of the other delegates. But the most exciting thing that we did was have a town hall session.

At the town hall, we got to meet some great people with T1D who have been able to be really successful in their lives.  We got to ask them questions about how they handle their T1D and do their jobs.  It was awesome!

The town hall included:

– Brian Kenny from MLB Network worked as the host of the town hall. His daughter Camille has T1D.

– Mary Mouser is 17-year-old actress who was diagnosed when she was 15. She was great to listen to because she could really relate to all the CC kids. I also met her again when we were doing Capitol Hill meetings.  She is super nice!

– Sam Talbot is a chef, and was a semi-finalist on Top Chef. I was surprised that he didn’t have a hard time keeping his carbs down even though he cooks all day.

– Leslie Adkins is a journalist who works on Dateline. She said that sometimes T1D does get in her way, like when she couldn’t go to Haiti for a story after the earthquake. That was sad for her. But she had great advice on stopping to take care of yourself when you need to.

– Charlie Kimball is an Indy car driver. He is my favorite! I met him once before, and he definitely doesn’t let T1D slow him down!

– Aaron Kowalski was the other celebrity advocate. He works for JDRF is a marathon runner.  He and his brother have T1D.

It was great to hear from all of them about how T1D impacts their lives, but also how they still do what they want to do.