“A little over five years ago our lives took a sudden turn when our oldest daughter, Megan, a few months short of her twenty-first birthday and a student at UCLA, was diagnosed with T1D,” says Debbi Nottingham. “No one prepares you for that diagnosis, nor can anyone, and it goes without saying that this is the last thing you would expect from an otherwise healthy young adult.”
As a licensed MFCC (Marriage, Family & Child Counselor) with a graduate degree from UCLA and USC, Debbi is familiar with the power and strength of a family unit during challenging times. She rallied her entire extended family and they continue to huddle together in support of Megan. “What most people don’t realize about T1D is that your life changes the second you get that diagnosis,” says Debbi. “What people do need to understand is that this is not something that they brought on themselves.”
Debbi has an innate spirit of community service and has always been involved in charitable projects – everything from raising money for her children’s schools to their athletic programs. So when T1D hit her family, Debbi stepped up, not just for her daughter but for the millions of others who face the disease. She and her husband Paul sat briefly on our East Bay Branch Board and the following year she worked on Sneaker Sales for the Walk to Cure Diabetes. When Debbi was offered the position of VP of Strategy on our Executive Board, she accepted without hesitation. “From my very first contact with Breakthrough T1D it was immediately evident that I found a group of individuals as passionate about T1D as I felt,” she says.
What motivates Debbi to stay so passionately involved? “I want the life of a person with T1D to be more manageable every year. I want the public to be familiar with T1D and to better understand exactly what it is,” she says. “As I tell Megan frequently, this is my labor of love.”
Today Megan is thriving. In the five years since her diagnosis, she has graduated from Law School, passed the Bar and is presently employed in a law firm that keeps her active and busy.
Debbi currently works as her husband’s office manager for his medical practice. She is planning on establishing her own counseling practice again down the road. She and Paul have two other grown children, Ali and Brett. They have lived in Alamo, CA for twenty-two years.
