How many times have each one of us heard references about tomorrow being a better day or “better days ahead?”  Most of us will agree that these are things we have either thought or heard countless times.  How many times have we made valiant attempts as well to start a day over?  Does it work?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  I would answer it by saying that sometimes it works & other times, I chase the day in an effort to see the sun come through the clouds.  Sometimes starting the day over works & sometimes it does not give us the results that we were working towards.  Is it worth trying to recoup a day that starts off on less than a smooth start point?  We will have varying answers to that.  My natural response to a day that starts off in a challenging fashion is to try to turn the day around.  Whether it works or not is to me not even the point.  The point is in the trying.  It took me decades to “get” that doing the right thing should not for me ever be dependent on any given outcome.  What a life changer that realization was!  I found that it means that if I do an act of kindness for someone it comes with no attachments to any given outcome.  It is as simple as just doing the next right thing for the right reason with no expectation of anything in return.  Now that is freedom big time in my mind.  It also means that if popular consensus is to do an action that is not the right thing then I just do the right thing anyway & again remember to not concentrate on what the outcome will be to this either.  The outcome is usually pretty obvious & that is that we can be put down for not following the crowd but right is right & wrong is wrong so not having an attachment to an outcome makes it so much easier to base decisions on right & wrong versus popularity or banishment.  I love this big time!  And I love the words “big time” big time!  As a sentimental aside, our sons & I learned just enough sign language many years ago to say without words “I love you big time!”  It is hugely animated & especially funny if we do it out in public & it is something that we have done since each one of the boys were toddlers.  Okay, so now I am way off track but oh well.

This past Monday was probably the smoothest school morning that we have had at our home this year.  All 3 of our sons got themselves up early & got all ready.  I made them a light breakfast & there was time to spare which is unheard of.  They were amongst the first 6 out of 600 kids to arrive at school that morning.  Again, that is a rare occurrence to say the least.  What was different about last Monday morning?  Grandma & Grandpa had stayed over night after bringing the boys back from their place up north for a fishing weekend.  The boys were going on adeneline big time still on Monday morning.  The boys consider Grandma & Grandpa to be celebrities to them which is very cool.  The boys wanted to get up early so that they could spend time with Grandma & Grandpa before school so they were highly motivated to get up early & get ready.  That is the difference a day can make.  It is the difference between a day seeming ordinary & a day being extraordinary.  Every day is a gift yet most of us will agree that some days it is easier to bounce out of bed then others.  I was up super early too but for much less exciting reasons.  My catapult out of bed was motivated by the limbo land of blood sugars last Monday morning.  First thing in the morning, I had yet another medical test to participate in at our local hospital.  It was again a fasting test so while I could have cared less about the growlies in my tummy, my blood sugars riding the 5.2 & was of concern.  On a normal day (what is a normal day?) I would be absolutely jubilant to wake up to see a gorgeous 5.2 on my meter.  On a fasting day, that is a little too close for comfort.  If I had a low blood sugar at any point during the almost 5 hour test (or 12 hours before) then the test would be scraped & I would have to rebook & wait 3-6 months to try again.  I had turned my insulin pump way back yet my body does funky things sometimes & sometimes my blood sugars will spike out of nowhere & sometimes they will crash out of nowhere especially if I am being hyper vigilant about blood sugar control for something that I cannot go low for ironically.

Have you had those appointments that you have made sure that you are on time for only to hurry up once you get there & wait?  Well, most of us living with diabetes will agree that we get pretty good at bringing entertainment along with us in anticipation of waits at the various medical appointments that we have to go to.  I don’t go anywhere without a book & that’s been the case since my very first job thank goodness.  If you are a fan of Monty Python then you will get the next reference.  The “machine that goes bing” was not quite ready for my testing when I arrived so I waited about a half hour.  That is not too long to wait at a medical appointment & my attitude is that waiting is not something that I am going to get upset about.  I expect to wait so I just bring something with me to enjoy the wait.  Also though I was burning through the last dozen test strips that I had brought along for use during the testing.  It is the low blood sugar limbo…it is a little like setting the imagined stick of blood sugar control at 5 & saying, “no lower.”  Sometimes our bodies will cooperate with us & sometimes we get a surprise we could do without.  Thankfully, I got my blood sugar to stop getting too close to the limbo bar.  Diabetes might just be one case where you don’t limbo under the bar, but rather at times, we want to limbo over the bar.  It is the trapeze act of blood sugar control too though because we don’t want to see our blood sugars go high & then be sick & correcting the problem for the rest of the day either. 

On Monday, I went for a medical test that is not uncommon to go for compliments of type 1 diabetes.  The testing was to see if I have gasteroperesis.  Simply put, it is slow stomach emptying.  There are times when my insulin hits before my food does & I go into brutal low blood sugars so it is a possibility.  Beyond that though is that it is a diabetes complication that can crush your day because at times the nausea and pain are brutal beyond description.  The great thing is that if you are going to spend almost 5 hours with a tech, if the person treats you with kindness, the time goes by even faster.  The tech that I had was absolutely an angel.  She had several trying moments with situations that she handled with patience & kindness to all the patients that she was serving.  She had a sense of humour especially when the rubber like eggs with the nuclear substance in them arrived along with 2 slices of dry toast & an 1/8^th of a cup of water.  She joked that it was certainly no breakfast at Cora’s.  Then, in I went into the machine that “goes bing” every 15 minutes.  For the patients that had claustrophobia my heart went out to them.  It is a constricting experience but that is thankfully not something that bothers me. The very best part was that my blood sugars never did crash during the testing so there should be some helpful results that will come from the testing.  All in all, I would say that Monday was a smooth day albeit tiring with the 4:30am start to a long day followed by finding out at 4pm that 3 dozen cookies had been promised by our second born son to his class for the next morning.  We make time for that which is important & our sons are my heart so we made the cookies & you cannot put a price on the smile on his face & the feeling that was felt knowing that he knows that he is important not because I tell him this but that I show him this too.  It was the kind of day that your head hits the pillow at sleep time & you know turned out exactly right even though some would have considered it a non descript kind of day.

What is the difference a day can make?  That is a huge question.  On an extremely low level, here is one example of the day after a smooth day in our home.  I will share ahead of time that I do not consider it to be a “bad” day by any stretch of the imagination but certainly not a smooth day either.  Tuesday, the alarm clock went off & I pushed the snooze button 4 times.  This is something that I usually don’t do but hey I am human so yes, I did that this time.  That meant that everyone in the house would be playing beat the clock to get out the door on time.  It was doable though to make it on time for everyone.  Well, that would have been true if there were no hiccups whatsoever.  In reaching over to grab my glucose meter for the first thing in the morning blood sugar level with my eyes still half closed, a 3.8 stared me in the face.  It is not a bad low by any means however it was less than 5 which meant that I could not drive the boys to school.  While this was registering, our second born son appeared in the doorway with a nose bleed, the poor Dear Heart.  At the same time, our youngest son was almost hacking up a lung with a nasty cough & cold declaring the need for a sick at home day.  Even when it is a nasty cold, it is so difficult for a parent to see his or her child ill.  You just want to take it on yourself no matter what it is when it comes to illness & our children.  The day was about to change instantly however there is nothing in the world more important than our little guys & my Dear Heart husband to me.  Treating a low blood sugar & stopping a nose bleed was obviously not in the morning rush plan however these are a part of life & as I mentioned, these are not big problems in any way.  By pure chance our 2 older sons made it to school on time thanks to my husband driving them.  In the middle of helping our youngest son with breakfast & cheering him up with his yucky cough & cold, yikes, there it was again…another crash in blood sugars.  That is the nature of the beast of type 1 though & that is that we have other priorities & plans yet the blood sugar roller coasters can have a basic tantrum out of nowhere & then again just when we think that it is all over.  The thing that kept going through my mind though was that thank goodness these blood sugar tantrums were happening Tuesday & not Monday when I had to go for the fasting tests.  That is a basic example of the difference a day can make.  The cool thing is that I am pretty in tune with the signs of the presence of hypoglycemia when the stinker comes upon me.  I get the shakes, sweats, numb tongue & cannot put a coherent sentence together.  That was me this morning.  It can be a bit tougher in the summer months to pick up on some of the signs & I will admit that in the summer I second guess the signs that I have of low blood sugars.  The reason for that is that the humidity is usually pretty high in our area from June to September so if I only get the feeling of being overly hot then that is not much of a sign.  That is the main reason that I always test my blood sugars when I feel funky.  Most people will say something like “is it hot in here or is it just me” from time to time but if you have type 1 you may share more of saying something like “is it hot in here or am I in low bloods” or “are my blood sugars melting down?” 

My Heart’s Sister who is my cousin Lindy is a profound heart’s treasure.  She has & does bless my life in indescribable ways.  One of the many things that we share is a love of reading & learning & growing spiritually.  Lindy has recommended many books over the years & every single book that she has mentioned to me I have read.  They have each stayed with me because they have each contained gems of wisdom that have been timely.  One of the books contained something that really resognated as true.  It was the thought that we can have a tendency to use terms or descriptors to describe things that are inconvenient or a hassle in a dramatic way.  An example is if we are stuck in rush hour traffic, we may say either silently or outloud that this is awful or horrible.  Is being in heavy traffic undesirable & a waste of time?  I would say yes & you may be nodding your head too.  Is it horrible, awful or near tragedy?  Of course it is not.  This book in particular was very cool because I am a huge believer of cognitive behaviour therapy which in simple terms is taking our thoughts & putting them through a truth filter or a perspective filter & deciding what thoughts to keep & which ones to discard.  If we think of an unsmooth day as horrible or terrible or awful, that is our perception & it just may stick with us for the entire day.  How will that work out for us?  Personally, I would prefer to invoke humour when at all possible, challenge my thoughts when they become over dramatic or overly negative & not give in to declaring it a bad day even if it is 10pm.  We are each beautiful originals so we each make our own decisions moment to moment & day to day.  My viewpoint is that there are awful things that happen yet they are thankfully not nearly as frequent as our descriptors may indicate.  I have found that over the years changing my vocabulary when it comes to describing hassles has changed significantly.  If something inconvenient or even exasperating happens I try not to say “that is horrible” or “awful” but instead try to opt for “what a pain in the butt” or “that is a hassle” or “inconvenient” or “ticks me off.”  It is amazing how that seems to impact how the rest of my day goes even if the day does not become any smoother.  My perspective is healthier & I love that.  We all get to make a choice for ourselves.  That is exactly how I look at days like Tuesday & of course living with type 1 diabetes & its hassles. 

What is the difference a day can make?  Five minutes ago I took a break from writing because ironically I went into another low blood sugar & had to treat it.  My thoughts remain, I will fight you type 1 & win every day.  There is no “woe is me” even though type 1 is a beast, a beast, a beast.  Fighting this beast though is strengthening big time for me.  I will never raise a white flag of defeat for anything & most especially not to the type 1 beast.  It beats up my body more on some days than others yet my spirit & soul will not concede even a little ever.  That is a decision I made a long time ago & I only needed to make the decision once & live the decision daily.  Do we have smooth days with type 1?  I can only speak for myself in saying no way!  Does that make a difference in living life to the fullest with big time excitement & joy?  Yes it does but not in the way that most people would think.  Excitement, gratitude & joy are magnified big time.  That is a choice too.  I woke up with a family that I love, breath in me & a purpose.  I love & am loved.  That is better than a smooth, robotic day to me.  I live life with my sentimental heart on my sleeve.  I dare to tell those I love that I love them because it matters.  What is the difference a day can make?  Ask a new bride, new mom, a student having his or her first day of university, or a young person starting his or her first job, someone moving into their first place of their own, a person who has had to say goodbye to a loved one in any form.  There is no measure for that.  Smooth days don’t really matter to me one way or the other.  Days filled with love in action are the guidepost.  How great is that to not focus on smooth days. 

My heart’s hope for you is that each day you wake up with gratitude, love & excitement for all that truly matters in life & realize that the rest is just stuff best left to robots.  We are not robots but we are each beautiful originals.

Smiles,  Saundie  :D

May today be a day with a difference for you.  Next Monday's sharing is "Choppy Waters, Reflections & Lighthouses."           :)

Loss is a word that usually is associated with frustration, pain, sadness, perhaps denial, numbing out, avoidance & so many other descriptors in my experience.  What if I told you though that some of the losses that I have experienced have lead me to a much stronger me.  It is not that we seek these experiences.  They are just a natural part of life it seems for most people.  Losing things can be frustrating but losing a part of our health & or a loved one can feel devastating.  When things are going along pretty smoothly I don’t believe that I make too much of an effort to strengthen myself or push myself out of my comfort zone.  The cliché, “why rock the boat” may exist for brief periods of time during the smooth waters.  Life is a roller coaster ride though & so is type 1 diabetes don’t you find?  There are highs & lows in life & with diabetes.  Do we try to smooth out the roller coaster ride of life?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  We don’t live in bubbles though so even if our own lives are going along smoothly, someone that we care about at any given time will be going through a struggle.  The more we are connected to one another, perhaps the bigger the roller coaster ride.  We get the privilege to be in other people’s lives through their celebrations, our celebrations, their sadnesses & our sorrows.  If we were each simply there for one another during the celebrations then it is like being on half a ride & it just feels wrong to me.  We each make decisions for ourselves.  My decision though is that if I am a friend then I am all in for the whole ride & that means the ups & the downs.  On the other hand the roller coaster ride of type 1 diabetes I would jump off of in a heartbeat if I could.  None of us choose to have a health challenge.  Why would we.  I do not for one minute blame type 1 or the other health challenges that I experience on myself or anyone else.  I loathe type 1 for the frustration that it is at times yet it has strengthened me in ways that I could have never imagined.  If it has to be in my life, something good will come out of it…that’s my daily decision big time!

What if I told you that I was born with a whisper?  As a young girl I was profoundly shy it seemed.  I did not speak up much & was quiet around most people.  I loved being around other people as well as some quiet time to read & make up wee stories & listen to music.  I loved to listen to others speak & especially loved the sound of laughter.  There was a tendency for me to sense people’s real moods or feelings even if their words were saying something different.  Maybe that was the mini budding sociologist in me even back then.  Inside I had so much to say to contribute to discussions but I kept all my words inside instead of joining in.  My confidence was minute.  How do you turn a whisper into a voice that you can hear?  The answer may be quite different for each one of us.  For me, finding my voice happened in a way that I barely noticed it even happening through life’s experiences.  Suffice to say that today there is not a person in my life that would describe me as a person without a voice or quiet or shy.  It is not that I changed but rather I got stronger, more confident, and let myself be.

This past winter I have literally lost my voice a few times.  This spring again, I lost my voice temporarily literally.  With strep & several super sore throats, my voice took a bit of a beating & had to rest for a wee amount of time.  I was back to a whisper but a different kind of whisper then I had experienced while I was a wee girl.  Can you whisper with enthusiasm?  I do now.  Why?  It is a choice.  I don’t ever want to lose my voice again.  I don’t mean physically lose my voice.  I mean the strong voice that speaks up to encourage others, love, care, reach out, tell others that they matter, the feisty voice that says when it is not okay at times, the let’s celebrate the little big things in life, the voice that makes me me.  My heart’s hope for you is that you have found a strength & your own voice too.

The funny thing about losing my voice temporarily a few times during the last number of months is that my mind sounded louder.  Man, humans think a lot right!  That’s a great thing.  Getting quieter helped me to get even more in touch with my thoughts so something good came out of the loss of my voice for those times.  Recently I learned that my Grandma M use to lose her voice a great deal & also got strep pretty severely.  We share that in common.  The thing that I love to remember though rather than a shared lost voice is the sharing of moments that we both loved.  Gran & I both loved tea time together.  She always brought out her very best teacups & saucers for our teatimes together.  To this day, every single day I drink my tea in the loveliest teacups & saucers that I cherish.  I love the clinking sound of a teacup landing on its saucer.  I kind of think that tea is the perfect drink through every moment of my life because it has a way of bringing cheer when I have felt unwell, a feeling of extra celebration when a happy announcement is made by anyone, comfort when there is a sad time, and gentleness yet strength all at the same time.  Yes, I really, really love tea big time.

It is difficult to pinpoint when I started to find my voice.  It may have begun slowly in university.  When I became a mom my voice really became vividly present.  The thing is though, I am not sure if it was motherhood so much as what it took along the way.  Our first born son as I have shared before went through quite a scare when I was 6 months pregnant.  The doctors & specialists told my husband & I that we were going to lose our son.  The voice I heard louder than anyone else’s including the doctors though was the voice of faith.  I had never felt so much peace in what would be anything but a peaceful situation.  The peace was the absolute knowledge that our baby was going to be fine & we were not going to lose him.  Now 6 foot 4 inches, our” little” boy is one of our greatest joys.  Going through this instantly strengthened me as a person & as a mom.  Once I found my voice there was no turning back.  I had to live to the fullest, love to the fullest & be grateful every single day.  I do & I am. 

Almost 7 years ago I got the news that I had type 1 diabetes.  None of us want to hear that news for ourselves or for anyone that we love.  My voice though has gotten stronger exponentially.  None of us want to have diabetes obviously.  It is in my life though so you better believe that I am going to make something good come out of it.  It means that everything in my life is lived with an exclamation mark as I have shared before.  A whisper is a question mark.  An exclamation mark is enthusiasm, joy chosen despite type 1 & other “365” challenges. 

If we have the blessing of finding our real voice, what do we do with that?  How do we use it for good in the world?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  Perhaps we speak up for others by advocating when they have not found his or her own voice yet.  Or we can gently say the words that I know mean the world to me, “me too.”  If each one of us finds our voice, we can gently change the world for the better by giving care & understanding to one another unapologetically, enthusiastically & boldly.  Big,bold love.

That’s what my heart’s hope is for you always:  big, bold love.

Smiles,

Saundie :D

May this week ahead be used with our collective voices to send out more good into the world.  The world needs more of that big time!  Next Monday's sharing is "The Difference a Day Can Make."        :)

Where is your well?  Where do you go to fill yourself up with what really matters most to you?  Have you built or found, happened upon, searched for & located multiple well sources for yourself?  Do neon signs emerge to let you know that you need a trip to a well that will meet your needs? 

One philosophy that has served me well in adulthood so far is to have wells in place before I need them.  I know big time that I will need them.   Life’s storms will come since it is part of the human experience so it would be a little like going purposefully into the desert for a week & not taking one drop of water.  The wells though that I am talking about are the wells that keep my perspective, perceptions, thinking & attitude on track.  It can be the easiest thing in the world to give in to faulty perspective, perceptions & thinking I have found.  With this in mind, I have found that for many years I automatically seek new wells for my well being…well thinking, physical & emotional health & ways to stretch my thinking.  Sometimes I will receive a snarky response from some people that say something along the lines of “motivation & inspiration” & spiritual & emotional growth is a bunch of nonsense.”  That is what it is.  We are each allowed thankfully to have our very own opinion & my world will not crumble if someone disagrees with me.  I do not measure my values & principles against opinion & that serves me well.  Right is right if one person is doing or saying something that is right & wrong is wrong if one or many are saying or doing something wrong.  We each figure out what is right & what is wrong based upon our own set of principles & values.  Then we live our lives out from that centre.  It makes decision making a lot easier right?  Hmmm, honestly, even to this day I am challenged by that one.  Why is it that if I know better there would be a problem?  It is simple & that is frankly that I have a natural tendency to be a people pleaser if left totally unchecked.  I would rather give up every ounce of my energy to say yes to everyone & most things if these things are going to make someone else happy.  That is my short term thinking.  It is a little like spending all our money in one day though in terms of the amount of sense that makes I have found.  Of course all of us know about the realities of for instance planning ahead financially.  We do not go out & spend our paychecks in one day as this would make no sense whatsoever.  Are our time & hearts & our selves worth less than money?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  The problem comes into play though big time as a neon sign for me if I say my time & heart mean more but behave contradictory to this.  Yikes, that is a tough one to look at head on.  Have you found though that life is like that?  The tough things are the big things & they matter?  That is what I experience.

Okay, so filling our wells is about checking our thinking, perceptions & attitudes & keeping track of what matters most.  Is it about making sure that we don’t hit the wall of burn out in one form or another?  Yikes, if you are have a natural tendency to be a people pleaser, this may be something you think about often too.  How about if you are a Mom?  Make that a double yikes.  We just seem to think that we are behaving badly if we go ahead & recharge our own batteries.  It is counterintuitive to properly take care of the needs that we have by nature & visit those wells purposefully & timely.  It can feel sometimes like when we make it to the well that we have dragged ourselves there reactively.  What if we turned that upside down though & went to the wells often & proactively?  Any guilt?  Why is that?  What if we challenge those feelings?  I have come to realize over the years the hard way that when I get exhausted that the time that I spend giving or spending with our sons is not at the energy or presence level that is important & of value & principle to us as a family.  To take 30 or 60 minutes at least once a week, what a difference that makes though.  The quiet reflection guides me easily back to what is important & what is not.  Without this quiet time though, thinking, perceptions & attitudes look further & further from who I am & what our family is all about. 

Sometimes, it can be as simple as connecting with our 5 senses I have found.  The smell of fresh baked butter tarts in our tiny oven, anything baked with pure vanilla, going outside & taking a few moments to smell the hydrangeas that we have planted in our outside garden in abundance puts an instant smile on my face too.  If we are moms we can even break open the bubbles & blow them with our kids & not worry about what the neighbors will think.  The reality in our neighborhood anyways is that the neighbors would think that was big time cool & many would join in.  Here’s another sense that is big time an instant smile maker & that is sitting down & petting the soft fur of our smiling golden retriever.  I love dogs & I have a huge soft spot for golden retrievers especially.  There is no way that I can be in the vicinity of a golden retriever & not stop to pet their silky fur & talk to them & then watch for the flurry of tail wagging.  Music is a gift.  Right now I am listening to soft, classical music & it helps to add to a peaceful feeling.  Other times of the day, the boys & I love to play & dance to other types of music & of course sing the wrong words & take ourselves pretty lightly.  Speaking of music, the song that is being played a great deal on the radio currently is “happy.”  That is pretty cool that an artist purposefully released a song that can add to feelings of gratitude & levity & happiness.

Are you a collector?  God gave me a sentimental heart so I find that so many things are attached to memories.  There are tea pots & tea cups that I know exactly who gave them to me & when & times shared with Dear Hearts over these cups & saucers.  The cups & saucers could tell so many stories.  Then there is the priceless artwork that our sons have brought home over the years.  My own viewpoint is that I do not want to get attached to things yet I will admit that the memories of some of the things in our home contain sentimental meaning.  Teapots & books are my 2 biggest items to collect & they are each enjoyed big time.  Just the sound of a tea cup landing on the saucer & the sound of the golden tea nectar being poured into the cup makes me smile so big.  The smell & the waves of steam from the cup is like art to me.  Everyone is passionate about something & I have many passions & when I love something I am all in so I get what is referred to at our home as “over happy.”  What do you get “over happy” about?  Do you allow yourself the time to go to the well that contains the ingredients for you to be “over happy” often?  I do.  One of my t-shirts says it best, “at three thirty everything stops for tea.”  I am flexible on what time tea time will be but inflexible on whether tea time will come on any given day.

Do you like the taste of cold tea or coffee or a cold meal?  Most of us will say that is not something we are fond of to say the least.  Are we giving ourselves and or others in our lives emotional cold tea, coffee or undesirable “meals?”  Or, are we going to the well & getting our own needs met & then giving the best of ourselves to those around us?  It is a purposeful choice & that means it will not happen on its own.  The important things just don’t work that way.  The great news is that if we know this then we can do something about it.  Have you heard yourself say to yourself in one form or another that you will re energize your own battery once basically your whole to do list is done or some other condition?  That is cold coffee, cold tea or an undesirable meal.  We make time for that which is important period I tell myself daily.  When we get into situations where we find ourselves over committed to tasks & obligations with hardly a moment to ourselves it can be brutally difficult to give ourselves what we need when we need it the most.  That is the reason that I literally schedule quiet time into my schedule each week like it is an urgent appointment with a specialist.  It is every bit as important to my well being I believe. Without this scheduled quiet time it would be profoundly difficult to figure out each day what I need to hold on to & what to let go or in other words what to say yes to & what to say no to.  For me I realized a long time ago that it is so so easy for me to say yes to so many things that would be better to say no to. 

Each week, my scheduled time includes different activities because I like it that way.  Some scheduled times will be for reading & other times for meditating & other weeks in the time I will listen to music or a podcast that is life giving.  Going for an additional walk sometimes is the scheduled activity.  Writing at least once a week is another scheduled quiet & beautiful time that is so looked forward to every single time.  This may not sound like a quiet activity & it is one that is a rare treat but it sure is scheduled & that is to have opportunities from time to time to listen to a favourite speaker that I admire.  Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend a speaking engagement by one of my top 3 favorite authors/speakers.  He does not often come to Canada so when I heard that he was coming to a city about an hour away from where we live I was elated.  Also, I knew that the tickets would sell out quickly.  I ordered the tickets to the conference almost 6 months ago before I had knowledge of my additional chronic “365”s.  I hope that even if I had known about those challenges in advance that I would have taken the plunge & ordered the tickets anyway & found a way to go anyhow.  Let’s face it, there are reasons & there are excuses.  If something is important enough to us, we will find a reason & if not, we will find an excuse.  This was a good test of this belief in action for me this past weekend.  On top of the additional 365’s, I had caught a nasty cold the week before the speaking engagement & was run down & fighting the good fight with blood sugar roller coasters.  I felt well, what is the medical term…oh yes, “crappy.”  I had to ask myself if all these physical feelings were an excuse to miss out on the conference that I had been excited about for nearly 6 months or if I would come through with a reason bigger than the excuses to get my butt out of bed at 6am on a Saturday even though I had a banger of a headache, the continuation of the pesky cold, the fading yet present red spots of guttate, elevated blood sugars & sleep deprivation.  The combination of Tylenol & coffee took the edge off of the headache & sleep deprivation halfway to the conference.  Feeling like going I know for me is beside the point nearly every day in many situations.  If I don’t check my thoughts but rather simply bow down to the feeling like doing something or not would be a huge mistake.  Thoughts can be wrong & feelings are not always in our best service to us.  We are adults so we can question our thoughts & choose better ones & better actions versus giving in to how we feel about something.  Please don’t get me wrong, it is one thing to listen to our bodies say if we are in low blood sugar & make the necessary care decisions.  I am really talking more about my own decision about continuing with an activity that I knew was going to be really great short & long term & persevering with the cold, headache, tiredness & spots. 

How do we decide what we give up & take on?  We each answer that for ourselves.  The conference speaker, M. Kelly said it beautifully when he began his talk by telling the audience that in order to live with passion & purpose we had to get really proficient at 4 things:  knowing who we are, what we are all about, what matters most & what matters least.  I find that I feel pretty right on about 3 out of 4 of these things.  The thing that is still a work in progress for me is knowing consistently what matters least.  That is compliments of the people pleaser in me that left unchecked like I mentioned would say yes to things that matter least.  That is too high a cost though for me I have learned from experience.  The things that matter most cannot be placed at the mercy of the things that are not my passion, or mission or purpose, or calling.  If I know who I am & what I am about then I have to get better at recognizing the things that are not for me & learning the “n” word.  Yikes, that is a work in progress yet one well worth my effort.  That is why the quiet time each week is needed so much I find.  Years go by in the blink of an eye & I don’t want to wait to live my purpose.  Every moment is an opportunity.  A no can open up the world to our bigger yeses…our reason for being here.  We are each beautiful originals with a purpose all our own.  Is it difficult to stay on track?  I answer with a huge big time yes!  Is it impossible?  Of course it is not.  Does it take effort?  Yes, it does, big time!  Is it worth it?  That is rhetorical.  The cool thing about type 1 & the other “365”s in my life is that they have magnified the 4 guideposts mentioned by M. Kelly. (While there is nothing cool about having type 1 or “365” health challenges, it is big time cool what we can choose to do with these challenges with passion & meaning).  Have I heard these 4 things before?  Of course I have & I bet that you have too.  Here’s the thing though & that is that the timing of a received message can make all the difference.  I felt a tap on my shoulder in the form of the message that I had best keep my wells located & frequented because my natural ability to use the “n” word is still very much a work in progress.  Thank goodness for the wells.

My heart’s hope for you is that you have constructed, discovered, created, located & found many, many wells that help keep you living your life with big time meaning  &  your very own beautiful purpose.  We each have our very own gift to give the world.  Let’s all give that gift with enthusiasm after we each drink from the wells.

Smiles,

Saundie :D

May the wells always be in abundance for you exactly when or even before you need them.  Next Monday's sharing is "Sometimes You Have to Lose Your Voice to Find It."  :)

Dear Hearts,

Next Monday, the sharing will be "Holding On & Letting Go" which is a writing piece that I sat down & wrote a couple of days ago.  It kind of lightens things up a wee bit.  In the next couple of weeks, I will also post "News Feast" yet will strive to lighten things up as well with some other writing ideas that are "percolating" in my creative brain.

Blessings for a beautiful weekend.  Sometimes we may find that we have to go out of our way to find ways to lighten things up to get back to that peaceful place within each one of us.  That is what this weekend is all about at our home.  So far, it has been a weekend of presence & deep gratitude complete with being a kid at heart & getting a balloon on National Donut Day yesterday yet still respectful that it was the 70th anniversary of D Day.  The beauty is that because of the indescribable sacrifice of my Grandpa & so many other brave men & women during WW11, I can choose to have these kind of freeing days.  That is a gift that was just one of the legacies left by these brave soldiers. 

Today is about new adventures...and how sometimes just wee adventures can leave a lasting place within our hearts.  It is about a wee tour our oldest son & I have been looking forward to for 7 months, a walk for 3 (with tea) to the Lake for literal reflection & those amazing endorphins, the petting of golden fur of our smiley golden retriever who is just so full of natural joy that it is contagious.  And there is more to come that is not even planned yet looking at the day like a mini adventure lightens the day & adds to the thankfulness within my heart.

My heart's hope for you today & every day is that you give yourself the moments of peace & gentleness whether you feel like it or not.  It is a gift that we can give ourselves that truly matters.  We make time for what is important.  Being gentle to ourselves  & the world is what matters don't you think?

Smiles, Saundie :D

Have you ever had something stolen from you?  Or perhaps it was more a case of something being borrowed permanently from you. 

Health can be a little like that at times don’t you think?  If we live with either type 1 diabetes or another “365” challenge then we may share the feeling that part of our health was stolen from us.  Out of nowhere our lives change because of this diagnosis in at least physical ways.  The demanding job of becoming our own process engineers is our 24 hour, 7 day a week job.  What if you have more than one chronic illness?  There is still only 24 hours in a day so the job of managing our health becomes even more grueling at times.  Type 1 is a thief in my experience.  It steals time…so much time.  It demands that we take care of it every minute…not just every waking minute but rather every single minute of every single day & night until there is a cure.  Type 1 steals happiness some days & leaves us with feelings of exasperation, sadness, and profound anger at times.  It also magnifies the joy & the really right on days.  I don’t have “good days.”  I have great days when I feel well & I live every single minute as if it were a year.  The gratitude felt for those days is indescribable.  The great days are presents that have infinite value.  The really brutal days I find are sustained with either the memory of a great day or the anticipation of one and always with faith & hope. 

If we let it to a certain degree type 1 can borrow some of our identity.  There may be circumstances where either a well meaning or robotic acquaintance refers to us as “the diabetic.”  Diabetes is neither a noun nor a verb & I get pretty feisty if someone who does not have diabetes refers to me as a diabetic.  Diabetes does not define us nor become our identity.  A phrase that serves me well in life in more ways than just pertaining to diabetes is, “that is not okay.”  I am not going to choose to die on every hill so to speak that I come upon yet the important ones I will big time. 

Type 1 at times steals spontaneity.  If you are a gal with type 1, how large is your purse for instance?  Let’s face it, we have to carry a number of type 1 “pieces of equipment.”  The idea of merely pulling our shoes on & off to go with a friend who drops by & asks us to join them in any given activity is nonexistent to us.  We have to figure out what our blood sugar is right now & how much acting insulin we still have in our system.  Are we going to be exercising?  Do we need to figure out any stress basal for either good or negative stress situations?  Do we have our meter with us?  How many strips are in it?  Do we have a fast acting & slow acting sugar source in case of a low?  How much insulin is left in our pump cartridges?  That is the beginning of the list of questions that automatically tend to go through our minds every single time we leave our homes for any duration of time.  Type 1 steals enjoyment.  There are consequences to eating certain things at certain times.  As an aside I am really super relieved that our sons are finally through the stage in life where they like to go on occasion to Mcdonald’s.  I have never eaten there & not had a huge high blood sugar problem to deal with for 5-8 hours afterwards.  I bolus the proper amount but it does not seem to matter since the outcome is always the same-- profoundly high blood sugars.  That’s okay though because it was never my place of food bliss anyhow personally.  We have to think about what we are eating & literally be doing math to figure out how many carbs are in every morsel & how much fat content to figure out how our insulin is going to behave for us.  It kind of sucks the fun out of eating out with others at times I find especially if I am at someone’s home & I have no idea what is in the dish prepared & the carb content so I have to take my best approximation of what my insulin needs will be. 

At times type 1 has borrowed my reputation for being a go to person that can be always counted on to follow through on everything that I give my word to & replaced that with a feeling of me feeling like a flake for having to take a rain check on certain activities already planned.  Giving my word is a huge deal to me so this bugs me big time when I become either in such low blood sugar that immediate plans have to be put on hold or high blood sugar that makes me extremely sick for hours & hours.  If you have type 1, you will know exactly what that feeling is like.  The thing is that type 1 is an invisible chronic illness for the most part in my mind.  Most people cannot look at someone else & figure out that we have diabetes.  I am glad about that because I would personally hate that.  I choose to wear my insulin pump in full view so that I can easily access it.  The great thing though is that I can count on one hand the number of times that people have said a word to me about my pump.  Most people figure that it is a cell phone or something like that.  When we have awfully low or high blood sugars there still is no neon sign that says that we have diabetes.  We feel horrible but the rest of the world tends to not take much notice to the fluctuating blood sugars.  It is an invisible roller coaster living on our insides.

How many times have you been told that you don’t look like you have diabetes?  I have personally lost count.  “Oh but you look so healthy” is a response that I get often when people know that I live with type 1.  Other times, people will say that I must be getting better because I look so well.  That’s a pretty strange thing to say to someone with a chronic illnesses I believe.  People’s hearts tend to be in the right place though so I just say “thank-you.”  Let’s face it, unless you or someone close to you has diabetes, you have no real clue about what this disease is all about.  I remind myself on the days when I feel exasperated by someone’s ignorance of diabetes that prior to 7 years ago diabetes was not on my radar screen either.  Why would it be?  Unless we or someone we love is living with diabetes, why would we know or think much about it?  We could fill in the “diabetes” with any chronic disease. 

What I don’t want diabetes to steal or even borrow from me is my sense of humour, my dignity, enthusiasm, love for others, and hope.  Diabetes must not be allowed to take us away from ourselves & our loved ones.  By this I mean, if we had a passion for life & adventure before our diagnosis then diabetes should not take this from us.  Instead, it can if we choose, be a reason to pursue our passions with greater “big timeness!”  For me that means that diabetes is a launching pad for greater big time humour, enthusiasm, love for others, faith, hope and feistiness.  Type 1 does not get to rob us of all that truly matters to us.  We may find that we have to have many offensive & defensive moves ready daily for diabetes.  For instance if we left our front doors to our homes open every day, sooner or later a robber may enter our home & steal our possessions.  That is similar to type 1 diabetes.  Physically & emotionally without offensive & defensive strategies, a robber can enter our lives & steal our joy, hope & the essence of what makes us beautiful originals.  The great news is that we have the ability to choose to put these strategies in place so that we have mini Fort Knox’s in place when the robber of diabetes appears.

Here is an example of what I mean.  While diabetes tends to be invisible, I have found myself with an illness that is far from invisible.  It is freakishly visible I have found.  Since the end of March of this year, I have had large red welt like spots on 90% of my body.  To say that there is discomfort would be an understatement.  I got these spots after I came down with a very severe case of strep throat.  There was an extremely bad strain of strep throat that went around our region last winter.  A young lady in our area in fact even died due to this strain.  She was only 30 years old, athletic & in incredible physical shape.  It is profoundly sad that this happened to her family & my heart goes out to them. 

Over the past few months as well, I have been going for many medical tests.  Prior to the spots, I could sit in the waiting room with my invisible type 1 & wait my turn.  Now as I wait in my stripped hospital gown over & over again, I am getting these stares of “yikes, is that contagious!” Ironically, I have been going for testing about a 3 year abdominal pain that is getting worse.  The spots are freakishly visible & it sure leaves type 1 in the shadows as far as other people are concerned.  Over & over again I have been reassuring anyone around me that they are not going to catch what I have from me.  My attitude was that soon these spots would disappear & I would laugh about it all.  I find myself not in the laughing mood about it today though.  Yesterday I went for a follow-up visit with my doctor & he told me that I appear to be the 1 in 3 people that get stuck with this guttate psoriasis permanently.  I was not prepared for that news.  This morning I had a big time cry because it is truthfully getting to me.  The abdominal thing seems to affect my blood sugar control & the psoriasis does too & just having type 1 on its own frankly is exhausting enough.  It never dawned on me that I would be stuck with this.  My hope almost got stolen as far as this newest diagnosis is concerned.  Then I realized that it is only being borrowed because there is no way that I am going to accept that I am stuck with this for the rest of my life without first exhausting all levels of help.  There is a clinic that specializes in this type of thing in Toronto & I will go there & find out more about this & find a way to either get rid of it or improve it.  I will get another offensive & defensive team in place for this too.  Hope restored.  It was always my position that diabetes cannot be allowed to steal my hope, joy or my life & guttate psoriasis & this abdominal thing are no exceptions to this rule either.

One of my friends once made a joke about me having the enthusiasm of an Amish person waking up in Vegas.  At the risk of proving this to be true, I have never been to the Distillery district of Toronto.  I mostly “goat path it” wherever I go.  I don’t like super busy highways as they send my blood sugars soaring.  You can bet that driving to Toronto is never on my list of blissful activities.  The GO Train is awesome in my mind but driving there is a pain in the blood sugars.  Due to the location of the clinic in this case I will have to drive…”oh bother.”  The up side though of going to this area is that it is described in a way that it sounds like my cup of tea cerebrally.  The area is apparently quite lovely & I will look forward to describing the area after I have visited it. 

Don’t you find that there are times that you feel that you are going to scream if you don’t find some semblance of a blessing in amongst the unexpected news received?  I made a decision in advance to appreciate the district & to treat the day as an adventure.  The bonus will be if someone is actually able to help with bidding these spots adieu.  The thing that I remind myself constantly though big time is that I will never allow my hope to be stolen permanently.  I feel a little knocked down right now but not beaten.  I am getting back up. 

My heart’s hope for you is that whether you have a visible or invisible illness that you never let anyone or anything ever steal your hope.  You are a beautiful original after all.

Smiles, Saundie :D

May you find yourself beautifully visible & appreciated by others for the person that you are whether you live with spots, diabetes or anything at all throughout life.  Next Monday's sharing is "News Feast."    :)

Does it feel like we sometimes live our lives in 3 day, 5-8 day, 6 month & 5 year increments when it comes to living with type 1 diabetes?  This is my experience.  The 3 day increment is the timeframe in between insulin pump infusion site changes.  We have to keep track of that & 3 days seems to go by in a flash so I find that I have to write the site change dates on my calendar.  5-8 days is the amount of time that my insulin lasts before it is empty in my pump cartridge.  That is pretty easy to keep track of since the pump tells us exactly how much insulin we have left at any given time.  I am very fortunate because my husband does an exceptional job at getting all the air bubbles out of my cartridge so he does up the new insulin cartridges for me.  It is endearing.  I sometimes joke that he is keeping me alive 5-8 days at a time by doing this.  Absolutely I can do my insulin cartridge & I have but my husband does a phenomenal job at prepping it & it is an act of care that reminds us that we are in this life together diabetes or no diabetes.  It is a small, big thing.  Six months represents the time in between visits to the lab to have the A1C test done & subsequent visit to the endocrinologist & nurse.  If you & I share the experience of living life with type 1 then you may be in agreement that the trip to the lab is not exactly one that is thrilling on many levels.  To get poked by yet another needle is not something that anyone looks forward to.  Even after we have finished up at the lab & are on our way home, the looming expectation of the results of the A1C test remain with us until we receive the results at our doctor’s appointment. 

After almost 7 years of living with type 1 diabetes, you would think that perhaps all of these things would be treated like water off of a duck’s back.  Honestly though, there is a rebel in me that feels like leaving instead of staying for the lab test.  I have never left but I always have that “I want to make a speedy getaway” feeling each & every time every six months.  It is that sense of not wanting to have yet another needle.  I have never gotten used to giving myself needles but what I have conquered is making the decision to give another needle in one form or another.  Instead, it is a decision that I made once because let’s face it, of course no one wants to be giving themselves injections or frequenting the blood lab but these are the things that sustain life.  When we hear, “oh I could never give myself injections”, what goes through our minds?  It likely is this, “of course you could if you had to, come on!”  When I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I had quite the fear of needles.  I have not really gotten over that persay but I have gotten through it.  I decided at time of diagnosis to make a one time decision about injections & that was that I would need to do them & stop thinking that it was a new decision each time it was time for the next injection.  Strength I believe is there for each one of us to do what we need to do. 

Have you experienced a timeframe where you worked your guts out in an attempt to receive a certain A1C percentage?  Most of us living with type 1 will agree that goals for our A1C are great yet it can be an exercise in frustration achieving the percentage that we are working towards.  There are so many variables that can mess up our blood sugar “scores.”  This past A1C timeframe, I worked even more diligently than I had before.  I felt so frustrated because for 2 solid years I had not broken the barrier of getting an A1C under 7%.  Prior to 2 years ago, I was usually under 7% so it made me feel exasperated to be stuck even though I was working so hard.  That is the beast of type 1 though.  We can work really hard & do all the right things & still get stuck with a stinker of an A1C result. 

During the week in between when I went to the lab & then to the endo’s to find out what the A1C result was the C in A1C stood for cranky!  My husband had looked at the glucose results that were inputted into the report in preparation for my endo appointment.  Approaching me gingerly, my husband broke the news to me that based on the report results that it was very unlikely that I was going to break free of the 7% yet again.  I would love to say that I accepted this news with a zen mind frame graciously.  The reality though is that I was more like a rabid animal.  I would love to say that I brushed off the news with a logical statement like, “I tried my best so I will not let this get to me.”  In the real world though, that is not the truth by a long shot.  Instead, I got really mad at the beast of type 1 diabetes.  I said things like what was the point to trying so hard if I was going to end up feeling like I was failing.  My emotions got a hold of me for a good 10 minutes where I just got really fed up with diabetes big time.  Every one is a beautiful original so each of us handle frustration with diabetes or other “365” challenges in our own way.  When I was younger, my go to position was to either implode or numb out when I encountered bad news.  That worked out to my detriment so I learned through experience that it would be healthier for me to find another way of dealing with difficulty.  I learned that getting my feelings out worked out a heck of a lot better because then I could move on instead of re living a situation over & over again.  Being diagnosed with type 1 magnified that decision.  Getting feelings out over frustrations with type 1 feels better I have found.  For those 10 minutes, I let diabetes have it & some of the words that I was using in the height of emotion may have sounded defeatist however it was just emotions that were journeying to the end point of pulling up an anchor & getting myself going again with greater strength.  My husband understands that when I am super frustrated with type 1 & I am big time cranky & letting out emotions of this that it will not last long & that what I am saying at that time really is just part of my re strengthening.  He knows that if he hears me say things about giving up or something along those lines that it is simply part of getting all the frustration out & that I will be more determined to fight this beast of diabetes after the cranky & short lived rant.  He just listens & kind of waits & that is awesome.  I always make sure that I tell him that I am infuriated with diabetes & that I just need to get really cranky in order to move beyond that.  Emotions can be a messy thing right?  To get feelings out & move on though is a gift that I appreciate even more since dealing with day in day out life with type 1.

The thing with type 1 & the cranky in A1C is that I refuse to let the crankiness take on a life of its own.  I refuse to allow diabetes to turn me into someone that I am not permanently.  I refuse to become a “woe is me” kind of gal.  I refuse to allow diabetes to reduce me in any way.  My heart’s hope is that you have this determination too.  The great thing about getting the “cranky” out with a trusted, caring & understanding Dear Heart is the moving on part with increased strength.  I find that I come out of the “cranky” state pretty fast naturally.  I don’t get super cranky about diabetes too often but when I do I notice that there is a pattern.  I have my cranky rant that lasts around 5-10 minutes.  Then the next thing is that I declare that there is no way I am going to allow diabetes to steal anymore time & I go & do a physical job that has been way down on my to do list for months & months.  Then I kind of physically wipe myself out with that task & it gets the residual what feels like adrenaline out so that I feel more peaceful again.  I love that I then have something accomplished with the excess frustration instead of going on & on in a temporal loop of crankiness.  Instead, it is a decision to let the crankiness out verbally & then physically too in a productive way.  It is kind of an in your face thing to diabetes too I think.  Because of this recent cranky outbreak I have finally gone through years of medications & tossed out expired ones & reorganized our kitchen shelves so that I can reach the things that I want to access most often.  Crankiness put those tasks at the top of the list & that is okay.  I remember after completing the jobs that I was back to being my determined self again ready to fight this beast with greater emotional & physical muscle.

Receiving A1C results really can stink.  There are times when we can feel like we have bombed an exam that we studied for.  There are other times when it is like receiving a guilty verdict when we are innocent.  What have we been doing to get a result like that we may ask ourselves or be asked.  Sometimes we feel some vindication in realizing that a lot of the reason that we received the result that we did was because we were tested during cold & flu season & had caught all of them all season long.  Stress may be another culprit for elevating the A1C.  Short of hermitizing, how does one avoid stress?  That is really a rhetorical question because I realize that we don’t avoid stress but rather find ways to manage it even though it is easier said than done.  How ironic though that at times wringing our hands about an upcoming A1C may be adding to the stress. 

Over the past A1C “exam” period of time, I have been really unwell.  Despite that I was determined to work towards breaking through the 7%.  It was a huge treat to receive the news from my endo. that my A1C this time around was 6.9%  Finally!  Take that diabetes!  I am a huge advocate of celebrating the little moments & little wins in life.  This is worth celebrating.  It has been a very long time since I was able to celebrate an achieved goal A1C wise. 

Life may also be lived in 5 year increments if we are “pumpers.”  In the next couple of weeks, I will be hugging the Fed Ex person for the second time in my life.  You see, life sometimes comes in a cardboard box.  My new insulin pump will be arriving via Fed Ex in a cardboard box very soon.  Five years went by in a blink of an eye too.  I cannot wait to rip that box open & get to know a brand new friend that will be with me everywhere I go for the next 5 years. 

Although life has been described as sometimes being lived in 3, 5 & 8 day increments as well as 6 months & 5 years, I know with all my soul that life is actually truly lived moment by moment.  Every minute is precious.  This reminder has also been magnified through the lens of living with type 1.  What will we do with this moment, this hour, this day today?  How about do something compassionate for someone else?  How about listen to someone else who needs to get his or her feelings out?  What about visiting someone who is lonely or telling someone that they are loved.  How about sharing time & really being present with others?  And what about letting others be truly themselves around us & us ourselves around others?  How about telling dear ones that we love them? If today were all that I had, I ask myself what would I do with it?  Do that.  Then do that again tomorrow & every tomorrow.

My heart’s hope for you is that you live every single day in the magnification of the gift that it is.

Smiles, Saundie :D

Life is messy.  We each release our feelings in our own way.  May you find your healthy way to move through the challenges along the way.  My heart's hope is that you have at least 1 person who will listen without judgement & bring along extra empathy & compassion.  Next Monday's sharing is "No Longer Freakishly Invisible."     :)

Have you rocked out a striped gown in the hospital?  If you have had the miracle of bringing a life into the world you may be pretty familiar with the hospital fashion wear.  You just kind of hope that at least 2 out of 3 of the strings holding the gown together (almost) are still present on the garment you receive.  If we or a loved one finds ourselves in a hospital gown there is a very good likelihood that we are concentrating on what is going to happen during the time we are there vs how we are looking. 

In the last couple of months I have sported striped hospital gowns numerous times.  It is a very fortunate thing that I realized many years ago that most folks are not really noticing our appearance whether it is in stripes or something equally unattractive.  A mentor many years ago shared a gem with me.  He told me that other people are generally involved in their own situations.  If we step out with one black & one blue sock on then it is unlikely that we have the flashing neon sign on us that we think is there at times.  If we are in a hospital setting this may be magnified again.  As I have looked around during hospital visits recently, what I have not only seen with my eyes & noticed as a feeling is that many people are pretty freaked out with worry & this is understandable.  The fact that the striped gowns have not been longer than the knees & are short sleeved has bothered me more than it seems to have troubled others thankfully for the most part.  It has bothered me that while I have these huge red spots that look like something really weird I have had to many times let the cat out of the bag so to speak while being at the hospital in these gowns.  The rest of the time I cover the spots up big time & don’t have to explain that I am not contagious & that they look more menacing that they are.  Sometimes we can get tired of explaining stuff like this.  The thing with type 1 diabetes & many other “365” challenges is that they are invisible.  People cannot simply look at us & be able to tell that we have type 1 that’s for sure.  Frankly I like that because there are times when I love just not talking about type 1 or being the girl in the crowd that is the “type 1 diabetic.”  Sometimes I simply want to let type 1 fall far into the background & just be me with no labels attached.  Maybe you feel this way at times too.

Remember those ghost writing pens that we may have enjoyed using as kids?  They were very cool because you could clandestinely write a note to your buddy & it would be invisible until they used the other pen over top of the note to read it.  I would love to take an invisible device & erase the red dots especially when I have to go for appointments requiring a gown so that I can stop reassuring everyone that I come in contact with that I do not have the plague or something scary.  Who knew that a severe case of strep throat could continue to be presenting in other ways over 7 weeks later in the form of red spots long after strep throat was treated & healed.  Oh yes, the ghost writer super spot remover just may need to be invented soon.  The funny thing is that the tests that I am there to complete are being completely overshadowed by these spots.  And type 1 is merely a footnote since most of the folks coming in contact with me are so fixated on the spots.  Maybe I should wear spot coloured clothing so that I can camouflage all of this on a humourous note.  If the movie based on the character in the Dr. Seuss book “Put me in the Zoo” comes to film, I think I have a great chance at the lead roll I share with you with a laugh.  That’s the choice & that is to either laugh & reassure people that they are not going to catch something horrible or get cranky & impatient.  I choose the former.  We each are beautiful originals so we each make our own choices.

As we enter into soccer season for this year, we see more stripes.  We see them in the form of the uniform of the referee at the games.  You or a family member may be playing soccer this year.  Our youngest son is part of the “hive” playing soccer this year & I get such a charge out of the little guys & their looks of determination.  At this age it is more of a social outing it seems & half time snack time tends to be the highlight of the game.  It is just serious fun & that is exactly right.  If we have type 1 then we kind of have an internal referee of sorts following us around.  It is like the ref is giving us a shout if our blood sugars are too high or too low.  If I had to hear the sound of a referee for my blood sugar control in my head, I would like it to be the voice of Morgan Freeman.  His voice is so soothing & so encouraging & just seems to have a spectacular way of promoting the calm.  I feel more like I hear a drill sergeant though most of the time in my head as the voice of the blood sugar referee.  That is a work in progress to replace the referees in my head. 

Type 1 has no spots or other outward appearance for me.  You & I may hear more times than we can count that we must be better now since we don’t look like we have type 1 & we look well.  The thing is that unlike the spots which are under clothing of strep, there is a  layer beneath that again is inside our bodies & that is truly invisible to the eye.  It is within that invisible layer that physiologically none of us really know what is going on inside our bodies living with type 1.  Can you get beaten up & have no marks on you?  Yes, we can because we can get beaten up physiologically from fighting type 1 & other “365” health challenges.  What is invisible is still very much there.  We can look like we are healthy to others & be big time sick & know it or even not know it.  We do our very best with management of type 1 or other health challenges & we fight what appears to others as a phantom.  It is the invisible beast & it is there vividly to us. 

There is something very comforting about running into someone else who is fighting the invisible beast too.  Very few words are needed beyond, “me too” or “I get it.”  Even a squeeze of the other person’s hand speaks volumes.  A few weeks ago I was volunteering & a lady that I had never met before came into the kitchen that I was preparing refreshments in with a panicked look on her face.  She was a wee bit confused & simply asked for a cookie.  I looked her in the eye & asked her if she has diabetes.  She was so surprised & relieved.  How do you know she asked me.  I wanted to tell her that it is the ghost writer ink but instead I simply told her that I know because I have it too.  She told me that she had left her home very quickly that morning & had forgotten to pack a fast & slow acting sugar.  She began to verbally beat herself up over that.  I stopped her.  Then I looked her in the eye & handed her a spray form of fast acting sugar that I had in my purse that was brand new & all ready.  I told her to please keep it in her purse from now on since there is only one of her.  The cool thing was that over the last couple of months I have had a lot of medical tests that I have had to fast for but the spray sugar was a good way of keeping my stomach empty for many of the tests if I went into a low.  I had purchased the spray sugar for that purpose but had not had to open it yet still had it in my purse.  I was so happy to help out another person with diabetes so seamlessly.  It is a tiny world because when I went for my follow-up appointment with my endo. a week ago, as I was leaving this same lady was coming into the office.  We just passed one another & smiled.  I could tell that she could not quite place where she had met me & that is exactly right. 

While I was waiting in the endo’s office for my turn to see the doctor, there was a gentleman sitting next to me.  He was a very friendly fellow & started out a conversation with a question of who was I there to pick up.  I replied, “no one.”  He responded with “well you cannot be here for an appointment for yourself because you don’t look like you have diabetes.”  What does a person with diabetes look like I wondered.  I smiled & said, “thank-you.”  I thought to myself, how cool is it that I look healthy even with this invisible type 1 beast accompanying me everywhere as well as the spots.  Neither the type 1 beast nor the spots define me though.  It was time to check my after breakfast glucose numbers so I went ahead & did that.  This same gentleman challenged me to a blood sugar dual.  He told me what his wife’s glucose number had been & said, “beat that.”  Always being up for a challenge, I agreed to the dual.  He told me to beat 11.3 & yay, in spades, my meter proclaimed a lovely 7.8!  “Good for you young lady” the gentleman responded.  Then we just had that “I get it” look with one another & that is comforting indeed.

While I am patiently waiting for the red spots to go away so that I don’t have to keep explaining them when I have to wear stripes, there is something precious that has returned this week that I am delighted about.  My taste buds after 7 long weeks have fully returned to normal.  I had no idea that there are so many taste buds located in our throats.  Prior to this week tea & coffee tasted funky & I was beginning to wonder if my taste buds would ever return back to their status quo from pre-strep throat days.  Now with the return of the taste buds, I am appreciating tea & coffee more than ever.  It is the little enjoyments in life that I am so grateful for.  The little things…like a hand squeeze,  a “me too”, a smile, having tea or coffee & tasting it fully with a dear heart, candle light, the sound of our children’s laughter, homemade cheesecake that turned out for this novice on the first try by luck, soft music, a walk in the woods with my furry personal trainer, the feel of the Spring air on my face, and the feeling of helping another battle warrior with the invisible beast of type 1.

My heart’s hope for you is that the one thing always that remains fully visible to you is the compassion & encouragement & love of battle buddies in your life.

Smiles, Saundie  :)

May the week ahead be full of visible acts of kindness for you.  Next Monday's sharing is "A1C (Attitude is of 1 of Cranky or Conqueror)"  :D

Have you ever tried to send a curve ball to your brain?  Sometimes we may enter into this on purpose & other times it may be something that just happens.  Do we feel comfortable when we are giving our brain a workout that it either seldom or never gets?  It is the easiest thing in the world to fall into doing things the same old way & miss out on mini adventures in the process.  Here’s an example of the wires in our brains making different connections than usual that most of us will be able to relate to.  It is when we use our non-dominant hand for the day either purposefully or as a result of an injury.  During the course of my career in counseling I have had some cool experiences that I am sure that I would not have otherwise had.  One experience that comes to mind is the day that I got to tour & participate in the non-dominant hand clinic retraining.  Some people must make a permanent decision to retrain his or her hands or in other words to take on every task with the non-dominant hand.  It is more difficult than it would at first appear to be.  I decided the day after I had been to the training centre that in order to have more of an understanding of what my client was going through that I would purposefully only use my non-dominant hand for 24 hours.  I had the dexterity at times of a small child just learning small hand movements for the first time.  There were extra messes to clean up & lots of awkward physical motions.  Additionally, I was reminded that a great deal of the world seems to be made for right handed people.  Our oldest son is a “lefty” & I have noticed that it is indeed still a right handed world.

In as much as we can each likely list a number of physical activities that we can do differently to give our minds & bodies a workout, the place that my thoughts are going to today is to more of a psychological brain shift.  Each one of us are beautiful originals.  We have our very own way of embracing the world around us.  Some of us are naturally outgoing (people oriented) or on the other hand task oriented.  We may be more prone to be a “Mary” or a “Martha”.  Of course we can try to be either one yet there is likely to be a natural tendency towards one or the other.  I am most definitely a “Mary” & tasks are easily dropped off from my list if others need me.  My husband is literally a “son of Martha” (engineer) & it drives him up the wall if he cannot progress through his to do task list.  Okay, back to the point…

Although I like some routine & respect that some semblance of order is required to achieve anything in a given day, I really detest getting into a funk.  With Spring here, it just came naturally to me that when I am writing, I always write in our family room.  It is a cozy room full of love & homemade art by our sons.  I always write with a beeswax candle glowing & some soft music & the telephone turned down as low as possible.  On the chilly days, I turn on the fire & make a huge pot of tea & write & smile & smile & write.  I love writing.  It is a passion.  When I love someone or something I really love it big time.  That’s how God made me.  I like to believe that I live my life in bold colour & with love.  I try to do this each day in some small way.  Today I thought to myself that it would be quite a brain shift thing to do to write somewhere else.  I needed to go to yet another medical appointment in the morning downtown anyhow.  Why not bring my laptop & find a cozy café downtown & write there & see how that goes I thought.  That’s exactly where I am right now.  It took me a lot longer to settle my mind down to write this morning.  I realized that I felt a lot like the day that I decided to use only my left hand for the day.  I feel a little spun around but in a good way.  It is fun to do things differently I think.  As Emeril Legasse says, it was time to “kick it up a notch baby!”

The cool thing about the café that I am sitting here writing in this morning is that the last time that I was here was almost 8 years ago.  My husband & I had purchased our home but had at that point another 2 months to wait until we could move in.  Being in our home was a long shot yet I am no stranger to unlikely odds throughout life.  When our home that we live in now was placed for sale by the previous owners the asking price was way outside our “snack bracket.”  I saw it in a picture & I felt a pull to go out & see it anyways.  I just knew that somehow it was going to be our home.  I sent out the photo listing to some family members  & was met with a lot of questioning looks & basically remarks of me being off my rocker for looking at a home outside our snack bracket.  When my husband & I went out to see our now home we could see vividly that the home had good bones but needed a lot of tlc.  That is kind of just right because stirring new love & life into our home was going to be a labour of love & this would make it very much even more a feeling of “we are home.”  Sure enough the price came down into our bracket & we placed a bid & eventually it became our home.  Once the purchase of our home was official I invited my parents down so that they could take a look through it with us (prior to us taking ownership).  After the visit to our soon to be home, my mom & dad & I went out for a celebratory coffee at this same café.  I remember looking out over the downtown & feeling like I was exactly where I was meant to be.  I hope that you have this same gratitude & peace of heart about your community too.  At the time I was not too familiar with the community so it all looked so big & new & exciting.  I still look at our town through those same eyes.  Here we are against the odds almost 8 years later & I am just big time joy-filled about this.

Long shots or against the odds is no oddity to me.  Meeting & eventually marrying my husband is an example of this.  We just happened to be with our families who had rented cottages at Sauble Beach one week one summer many many summers ago & we met & fell in love.  After that week we both returned to our homes with our parents…my husband to Mississauga & me to Georgian Bay.  We wrote one another & called one another all the time & our love grew stronger even though those around us kept saying that it would never last with all the distance between us & our young ages.  Against the odds can be either a positive or a not so positive thing though in life.  We are not meant to be robots so life gives us each a full experience of things that we love & things that are struggles as well.  On moving in day I could not have possibly have known that 14 months later I would be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as an adult.  Our youngest son was 10 months old at the time.  Back to the love part of against the odds though.  While we have 3 sons, 2 of our sons were & are beautiful surprises.  Our oldest son was a beautiful surprise & thank goodness we did not have to wait for ourselves (my husband & I) to find the perfect time to have our first child.  It seemed that previous to the birth of our first son that we had been talking for 3-4 years about the following year being the right year to begin a family.  Our second born son was a beautiful & planful addition to our family.  Then our third son was born a year earlier than we had thought that we would be welcoming him…another beautiful surprise.

I cannot help but believe that life has a way of giving us unexpected gifts just like the ones that I mentioned.  Our job then becomes one to cherish these treasures.  Of course type 1 diabetes was against the odds especially as an adult yet even the type 1 beast has provided unexpected gifts too.  These treasures are the friends that I know that I would have otherwise not made.  And like I have shared before, it is in deciding what to do with type 1 that has proven to be the gift.  It was & is a choice to live in even more gratitude & bold colour,with enthusiasm & give as much compassion & love to others as humanly possible. 

Recently I again read a quote that always brings a smile to my face.  I do not remember who the quote was written by.  It is, “at the end of my life, what will my life be about & be able to answer, I did love.” 

My heart’s hope for you is that whether you choose to change up how you are doing something to give your brain a different kind of work out too that the thing that we always bring in abundant measure to anyone & anything is big time love.

Smiles,                                                                                                                     

Saundie :)

May your week be full of planned & unplanned incredible surprises & kindnesses & friendships.  Next Monday's sharing is "The Stripes & the Spots."

:)

If you & I have type 1 then we are all too familiar with the trip to the lab to begin the process of finding out what our A1C is.  The time flies between lab appointments right? 

This morning I woke myself up extra early because I planned to turn my basal rate down on my insulin pump for the early morning hours.  Also, I had woken myself up in the night to check my blood sugars too.  The neat thing is that for a year now the lab that I go to lets you schedule your lab appointment for many blood tests including the A1C.  I love that!  It means that although we may at times be directed to fast before the test by our endocrinologists, at least if we can schedule our lab then we don’t have to wait an undetermined amount of time all the while either worrying about sugars either about to crash or burn.  This was a 12 hour fast which is no big deal to me other than my blood sugars are wacky sometimes & will crash low out of no where sometimes in the night & other times will rise like a high roller coaster & I am just not always going to know which way the tide is going.  On blood lab morning with an appointment scheduled the last thing that I want to see is a low blood sugar when I am having a fasting test done.  If I go into a low blood sugar it means that I have to cancel my lab for that day & keep trying each day until my sugars are not low.  I did reduce my basal insulin in the hopes that there would be no low blood sugars this morning & I just plain had a good feeling that all would go seamlessly.  In the night my blood sugars were sitting at 7 which is a little higher than I would normally want them to ride yet still in respectable range.  I turned my pump down by 50% for an hour when I got up this morning.  An hour later I was sitting at 10.3 so I did a wee correction since my lab was scheduled an hour after that.  By the time my lab was done I was getting on track again with my sugars coming down nicely at 8.5% an hour later & then following breakfast & all active insulin used up I was sitting at a gorgeous 4.7 

In looking outside it was what some people would describe as a dreary day out with the sky full of clouds & it was teaming rain.  A number of people have told me that they find that the weather affects their moods.  I don’t find this myself yet we are each beautiful originals so this is understandable.  I find that I am every bit as cheerful on a sunny or rainy day…perhaps even a little more humourous or giddy on a rainy or stormy day for some reason to be honest.  A sunny day is great too & there are other things to look forward to on each type of day.  It is not weather that affects my moods yet there is something that big time affects my moods every single second of the day every day.  At least this has been true for the past 6 years & 5 months.

If you & I share the experience of having the type 1 beast in our lives then you just may be nodding your head right now to the effect that this beast has on our moods.  Thankfully though awareness brings with it options in dealing with the big bad beast of type 1 & how it affects our moods.  On profoundly “bad” type 1 days where it just seems that I cannot seem to get my blood sugars down from the top of the sugar roller coaster I have learned some things to do & not to do.  Every one of us is an original so different strategies will work for each one of us.  The first thing I do is try to take as much pressure off my day as I can & have as few interchanges with challenging people as possible on those days.  To the circle of Battle Buddies that I trust I go ahead & share how the day is going & seek support.  Also I recognize that really high blood sugars cause me to be someone that is not naturally me.  Really high blood sugars cause me to become impatient & somewhat pessimistic.  Additionally, if the day is especially challenging from a high blood sugar perspective I will “go underground” so to speak.  In other words, I limit exposing my not me type mood that is resulting from the type 1 beast to others.  It is not that I am denying the sugars & the accompanying moods but I really find it exhausting to be upbeat when I am being beaten up physiologically on the especially brutal high blood sugar days.  The best part though is that I don’t get the profoundly high blood sugars too often thankfully.  I am not saying that I am not out of range but it is just that there is out of range & then there is big time out of range & to me it makes a difference in me being me or me turning from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. 

The first time that I participated in a JDRF event, there was a booth set up just outside the conference centre with a group of type 1 kids & their parents getting ready to do karate.  They were preparing for a specific goal through their karate that evening.  Each person living with type 1 was handed a piece of wood & were instructed to write our names on the wood with a marker as well as the one thing about type 1 that we hated the most.  Instantly, I wrote down that I hate the mood swings that come from high blood sugars.  There was a young gentleman behind me who looked at what I had written & he made a wee joke about mood swings.  He said to me, “you don’t want to give mood swings up because it is the perfect excuse to give someone a piece of your mind.”  We both knew this was just humour to take away the fact that mood swings from type 1 really stink.  We all handed in our wood boards to the karate group.  Half way through the conference, the karate group came out & brought all our wood boards out & broke them in half.  It felt powerful to let diabetes have it & the stinky mood swings!  At the end of the evening we picked up the boards in the pieces.  I still have my pieces (karate chopped in half) in my kitchen on the shelf & I see it every day.  When I look at it now I realize how far I have come in really combating the mood swings.  It is rare for me now to even have the severe mood swings that I had during the first 2 years living with type 1 diabetes.  It is amazing how we build strength & find ways to cope with whatever comes our way as we fight type 1.  We are warriors in every sense of the word.  Warriors need weapons against the war that we fight.  Weapons against the type 1 beast that I keep close at hand are:  constant reminders of what matters, flexibility, humour, inspirational books, movies, paintings, Battle Buddies, friends, family & faith.  I try to not let type 1 get bigger than that which matters most.  Even though there are times that type 1 messes with my body & mind, I am so much more than just these things& I know the strength to fight will always remain no matter what.  My heart’s hope is that you find this to be true for you as well.  Some days I let myself know that it is just okay to not feel okay for the day.  It is okay to get angry at type 1 & its nonsense & to cry & to let it be what it is.  Then we continue the fight with even greater strength reserves whether we know it all the time or not.  There is no giving up & just like battle warriors on the battle field, no one gets left behind.  That is why we each need one another.  We lean on one another when needed & we hold one another up in support.  That is the beauty of the human spirit.

This morning as I looked outside & noticed the pouring rain & the rising number on my glucose meter while leaving to go to the lab, my mind went naturally to something that our youngest son Alex shared with me a few mornings ago.  He woke up with an incredibly high amount of energy & pretty much what looked like pure & utter bliss.  I asked him where all the extra energy & extra joy was coming from.  He said, “I had the best dream last night.”  Alex continued, “I dreamt that there were pirates riding on surfboards on the ocean & they rode the surfboards all the way up to a cliff & jumped off into the ocean again right onto another surf board.”  Alex said that just made him so excited to have that dream that felt so real & fun.  I thought it was pretty cool that a fun dream could place him in an even more cheerful mood than usual.  And I thought that the next time that high blood sugars are attempting to beat my mind & body up that I will just remember the look on his face as he described the pirates on surfboards & the pirates jumping off the cliffs.  I would add that also it would be nice if a shark would eat type 1 diabetes & then we could just ride on those surfboards & have fun with no potential mood swings at least from type 1 diabetes anymore.

As a very positive aside, I feel hopeful about my A1C results.  I hope that my A1C is under my goal of less than 7% this time.  It has been over a year since I have broken through that barrier but I have worked really hard & hopefully the numbers will reflect this.  The lab tech this morning was so kind about the red spots all over my arms.  I told her what they are just to put her mind at ease so that she knew that I do not have anything contagious.  It looks worse than it is frankly in my mind.  And the bonus was that it was a relatively painless blood lab.  I thanked her for that & she was surprised & delighted to receive gratitude for what she merely said was just her job.  It made a difference though.  I feel thankful for small mercies like needles that don’t hurt & things like that.  And I feel thankful for others that treat us with kindness & care. 

Each one of us living with type 1 are more than this beast of a disease & I continue to have the absolute honour of knowing the strongest, most determined caring group of warriors fighting this beast alongside me.  May we each ride, walk, dream, cry, laugh, scream & support one another always.

Smiles, Saundie :)

My heart's hope is that this week if any of the ugly blood sugar villains try to beat up on you that you have something like the picture in your mind like those pirates on surfboards (good pirates) too.  And thanks everyone as last month we had over 1500 readers.  That is very cool to share this time together :D  Next Monday's sharing is "Brain Curve Balls" because sometimes we all live a little in the right handed world as "lefties" at one time or another :)

Do you remember the first time you heard the song that sings about bones and their connection to one another?  I confess that the first time I heard that particular song, it was being sung by sock puppets.  It had been created with children in mind in an effort to teach about how the human body is linked together by our skeletal system I am surmising.  It was a cute idea.  As a kid watching the sketch with the sock puppets performing the song, I just thought it was pretty funny.  Most of the lyrics did not stick with me at that time & my talents have never resided in the sciences field (other than the social sciences) throughout life.  I do remember myself as a little girl having a tendency towards humour.  When I would repeat that song I would go out of my way to sing it as absurdly as possible with the head basically in the song being connected to the big toe & things like that.  It was a laugh for my friends & I at the time.

While it is likely that this sharing will be posted in a couple of weeks, it is April 15^th today.  I love to write & when ideas come into my mind I try to write about them right away & then save the stories for a Monday in the future to share.  Ideas come from so many sources but almost always through social interactions with others or things I notice in the world sometimes for the first time or often with “fresh eyes.”  It is a little like if we are parents & we experience all of our children’s firsts even though we have had these similar experiences as children too.  I find it even more exciting to watch our sons experience all of life’s firsts than I did my own since I appreciate everything so much more as an adult & definitely due in large part to the diagnosis of the beast of type 1.  It sure would appear that April Fool’s Day has visited us in Southern Ontario 15 days late this year!  Across most of the province, we have woken up to snow this morning.  It is especially bizarre after being out in our t-shirts yesterday with a temperature of 21 degrees C.  Like most Canadians, in the last few days I finally blissfully packed away our family’s winter outerwear.  And like most Ontarians this morning, I was routing hurriedly through the neatly packed away winter outerwear to get it all back out for today.  Surprisingly though I did not feel agitated about this surprise snow day or the hassle of getting our sons & I back into all the heavy clothes in what is supposed to be Spring.  Instead, I found myself gazing outside the window with a natural smile.  The snow looks like it has been placed on the trees & it looks enchanting. 

As I drove our boys to school this morning, our son Brian spoke up from the back seat.  He said, “You know Mom, these snowy trees look like a picture I remember seeing in one of the Thomas Kinkade books you have.”  He went on to say that it looks really pretty out today.  Before I knew it, I replied, “you are right Bri & we can pretend that we are in that picture today!”  Our youngest son, Alex exclaimed that this is definitely packing snow & that he was excited about recess time with his friends since they were sure to build a fort together today.  Since our family does not come near to approximating the family portrayed on “Leave it to Beaver” I will add that our oldest son was complaining greatly about the day out.  Matt has been a gem all winter helping shovel our driveway & he does not want to imagine it needing to be done again.  It would have been worth it to him had it been a storm day from school but there is not nearly enough snow for that today so he is not amused this morning.  On the way into the school I noticed that Brian did not have his mittens on…the same mittens that we had hunted down & had ready on the dining room table.  Apparently that was where they had been accidentally left behind.  A reprieve I thought as I noticed out of my peripheral vision that a pair of gloves were still in our car from sometime this past winter.  I caught up with Brian & gave them to him.  It must have looked like a game of hot potato to anyone looking on in the distance.  Brian told me that he cannot stand those gloves & therefore would not wear them & I kept insisting that they were better than nothing.  The “hot potato” finally went in with Brian begrudgingly to the school.  As I was about to get back into the car to leave a mom in the car next to me that I have never met before commented about what a day out it is.  I found myself naturally laughing in commodore & saying that it is kind of a late April Fool’s Day joke & that it is just kind of funny.  I added as well that it looks spectacular out with the snow on the limbs of the trees.  She looked at me & said “you sure are a glass half full kind of gal!”   That hit me as a neat thing today.  The reason I say this is that I had not been feeling like I had been as optimistic over the winter while I experienced the barrage of illnesses all in a row & some concurrently.  Through it all though it hit me this morning  that my optimism has remained unscathed & waiting in the wings top pop out as naturally as the first sign of Spring.  Just like as I look outside today into our backyard & see the tops of the first Spring flowers covered in snow, the flowers are still there & my optimism has always been there too.  That is a cool feeling to realize on this surprise snow day in the Spring.

Okay, back to the ankle bone being connected to the collar bone.  In the last couple of weeks, I have shared with you that at the end of March, I broke out in what appeared to be hives.  Although I had not been feeling stressed I concluded that my body must have been stressing & the hives I thought were evidence of this.  Sometimes the ankle bone though is connected to the collar bone instead.  Yesterday I returned to my doctor’s office for a follow-up visit since the hives were not going away.  My family doctor has been away on vacation for a couple of weeks so the diagnosis that I had previously received was by another very nice doctor.  Yesterday my family doctor returned & he saw these dots on me for the first time.  Immediately he said to me that he would consult with a dermatologist & that we would find out exactly what is going on with the dots that had been thought to perhaps be hives.  Within a few hours we had a diagnosis to my relief.  One of the things that I shared during my appointment yesterday with my family doctor was that prior to getting what looked like hives, I had a really severe case of strep throat.  As I told my doctor this, I did say that I felt almost silly for adding that detail in as what in the world would strep throat have to do with hives or skin rashes & dots.  As it turns out though, I was super glad that I included that information in speaking with my doctor.  The ankle bone is connected to the collar bone sometimes & this was one of those times.  It turns out that I do not have hives after all.  Instead, I have gutate psoriasis.  The humour was not lost on me when I found out that this is usually something that happens in childhood.  Where have I heard that before?  That was something that I heard of course when I was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as an adult.  Again, I must just plain be a kid at heart.  As an aside, the doctor at the walk in clinic also said to me that strep throat is more usual in children as well.  Again, I say , ankle bones are connected to collar bones in my life experience over & over again. 

Here’s the thing though & that is that it is amazing that when we listen to our gut just how often the results are better.  My gut told me that even though I felt silly for mentioning the strep throat when I was there about dots that I should.  We never know what information will lead to the answer that we need when it comes to illnesses…especially mysterious ones.

The part that I will need patience for is that I will likely be stuck with these dots for another 3 weeks.  The great news though is that I now know what is going on & it makes sense.  The other great news is that the dots at least are not on my face & since we have to bundle up the dots all over my arms & legs do not need to needlessly grab anyone’s attention while I am out & about. 

My heart’s hope for you is that whether your hope sometimes feels buried under the snow or boldly present, that you always know hope.  On the days where hope feels like it is under a surface of snow, may those be the days that battle buddies near & far share their hope with you.

Smiles,

Saundie :)

Have a fun-filled week & next week's sharing is "Pirates on Surfboards" which is about how although sun or rain may not affect our moods...something else does :D