The sky must be falling since there has been no singing of the tea kettle & no sweet aroma of dark, rich, bold coffee brewing for this gal for 4 days now.  A day without tea I have found is like a day that the sun forgot to shine.  Tea is my favourite food/drink & every cuppa is an experience.  You don’t merely “drink” tea.  Many other folks have shared their stories of favourite tea stories. There was a short interview on television with Thich Nhat Hanh not so long ago.  What an incredibly peaceful person this gentleman is.  The interview was specifically about how he experiences tea.  It was in the way that he gazed upon his tea, breathed gently & deeply, appreciated the beauty of the nectar& took his time savoring his tea that was peace personified.  He went on to explain to the audience that he finds that it takes a full hour to experience his cup of tea.  Now you or I may be thinking a myriad of thoughts about taking an hour to enjoy 1 cup of tea.  The logical side of our brains may be saying that the liquid would be cold in that timeframe.  You know what I would say?  There would be two things that come to mind.  One is that in an hour, I would tend to drink a whole pot of tea no problem.  The other thought is that this gentleman is really using the example of tea to teach something much more profound.  All that I can say right at this moment is “I miss you tea & look forward to your speedy return” whether it is a cup or a pot.  

What is your average per day capita for tea or coffee enjoyment?  My favourite combination is about 8 cups of tea per day plus one perfect cup of coffee.  That may mean that if you or I were to skip our coffee or tea or favourite beverage for many days in a row that we would miss those steamy cups of joy to say the least.  There are many reasons why we may miss our cuppa.  Perhaps if we have type 1 diabetes or another “365” challenge we have an early morning lab appointment & we have been directed to fast for that.  Maybe instead we are running late & the thing that we don’t have time for is our cuppa that morning.  Another possibility is that we have been advised to give up our coffee or tea for a period of time by one of our medical team members.  Or, just like this week for me, the reason may simply be that we have the flu & we have zero desire to consume our cuppa. 

When are we most likely to come in contact with the flu?  Naively, my thought was that I did not need to give flu a single thought until at least November & maybe even later.  Guess what, I was wrong this year big time!  Beautiful September, my favourite time of the year & boom the flu snuck up on me & got a hold of me.  Whether we have diabetes or another “365” challenge or not, the flu is a stinker.  All our plans suddenly are out the window until we recover from the flu.  Our “go to” blankies may be both our cherished comfort & loathed entirely at frequent intervals as we go through hot & cold flashes throughout the flu.  It can be a monumental task trying to keep blood sugars in decent range at the best of times but during the flu it can be a rapid moving & ever changing target.  Thankfully, I have been fighting the good fight & having some luck with blood sugars this week even with the flu.  It is a dash of experience & a pinch of luck I believe seeing the blood sugar results this week not go completely amuck.  Thank goodness for my buddy, my insulin pump since I have been able to make some adjustments to manage sick days.  To this day, I still remember the very first time that I had the flu while I was on multi injections.  It was like a runaway freight train trying to manage that first flu I found.   It is in the little bits of good news that can make a difference when we have diabetes as well as additional illnesses to fight I think.  Decent blood sugars have kept my spirits up this week.  Had it not been for this, I would have found something else to be grateful for. 

Do you find that it can become more difficult to be in self propelled “quarantine” after a few days?  Some folks refer to this feeling as “cabin fever.”  It seems that we were made for one another & to live as a community so being on our own may at times feel unnatural.  Everyone is a beautiful original so some folks will feel differently about this.  Moving towards my own personal balance, I have found that an hour a day if possible in the “classroom of silence” is golden with the remainder of the day in the company of others.  Let’s face it though, when we have the flu, we make the wise decision to keep others at bay so that they do not catch the flu from us.  That means that we end up spending a great deal of time on our own.  Does it remind you too of not being at “the” banquet?

In 2004, I heard & embraced a definition of banquet that stays with me profoundly.  I was in my RCIA preparation classes & our teacher was someone profoundly principled, fearless about teaching right from wrong, was clear about learning expectations and was bold.  There’s still a shadow of that little girl that I have described before that lives within me especially in new situations.  My natural state of being is to try to help others to be comfortable & happy.  My name literally means, “Peacemaker.”  Our journeys in so many areas of life continue until our very last breath I believe.  This teacher taught me so much.  Have you found yourself in a situation where you are communicating with someone with a very different personality style from your own?  Of course you & I have.  What do we do with this?  My thought is that we have an opportunity to learn from the other person.  Perhaps we learn even more because we are outside our comfort zones.  Every so often, I find that I really need my thoughts challenged or broadened in order for growth to happen.  It is uncomfortable yet I have found that it is worth it.  Let me share my teacher, Father Bernard with you as I share one of many priceless values that he instilled in me.

Perhaps you share the natural way of having a sentimental heart too.  Maybe you too like others to get along & be joy-filled.  Has someone come across your path that was meant to provide more strength to you for the rest of your journey?  Maybe even at first glance, you may have wondered why this person was on your path & thought that things felt pretty uncomfortable.  One of my traits is that I don’t like to “bother” anyone.  That is really code for I don’t like to ask anyone for favours or basically to ask for help.  That is a work in continuous practice reshaping that tendency.  I love to help others yet when it comes to asking for help, I put huge effort in being completely independent to a fault.  Through difficult lessons well into adult hood, I have learned that I was misguided in that tendency.  That is another writing sharing in & of itself.  The point for our time today is that I was 3 weeks into the studies before I meekly approached Father Bernard & let him know that I did not have a sponsor (Godparent).  Father Bernard looked me squarely in the eyes & said, “Why did you not say something about this 3 weeks ago?”  He is a bold presence & I was pretty certain that my response of “I did not want to bother you” was not going to cut it.  Thankfully, only a few seconds went by & then he said in a matter of fact way that he had the perfect sponsor for me.  That intimidating conversation put me on the path with my Godparents.  For that alone, I will be forever grateful.  My Godparents are amazing & more.  During each & every class, Father Bernard made sure that each & every person in the room understood the decision that they were making.  He piled on the homework each week beyond what I had even experienced in University & the questions were brutal.  He accepted no excuses for unfinished homework or answers that were not thoughtful.  He expected us to be the “deluxe versions of ourselves” & to push beyond.  These classes have stayed with me & always will.  Father Bernard described our faith as being a banquet & never a cafeteria.  There is a huge difference between a banquet & a cafeteria he taught us & then asked us whether we wanted to experience a banquet or not.  In extrapolating from that talk which was faith based, we can look at life this way too.  In a cafeteria, we pick & choose what we like & we don’t like.  It is a ho hum experience at best.  At a banquet, it is magnificent & there will be some portions of it that some people will like better than others but the parts they like, they actually love & so we embrace the whole banquet.  That is life & that is type 1 diabetes.  It is a part of life’s banquet.  Does anyone like having diabetes or a “365” challenge?  Of course we don’t.   Have we allowed diabetes or “365” challenges to teach us anything about ourselves, and about the banquet of life?  Have we found out that we are stronger than we ever knew we were?  Have we found our voices?  My heart hopes so.

In April 2004, I was welcomed to my faith banquet.  Then in July 2004, Father Bernard baptized our second born son with a huge smile on his face & we invited him to our family banquet.  It made me smile that this person who I had been profoundly intimidated by was now a friend. 

It may surprise you to be thinking about banquets when you have the flu.  That is exactly where my thoughts are going to.  I realize that yes, we do get the flu or colds and things like this even on top of diabetes or other “365” challenges yet it is part of life’s banquet.  It is a tiny part.  After the flu goes away, you bet I will be back involved in all the great parts of the life’s banquet in full force.  I am resting up so I will be “super energizer bunny” again.

My heart’s hope for you is that you never lose sight of the beautiful parts of life’s banquet that you hold dear to your heart.

Smiles, Saundie :)

May this week be a banquet filled with gratitude in countless measures & next Monday's sharing is, "A Space Beyond, I'm Sorry"    :)

Are you familiar with the cliché, “the proof is in the pudding?”  It can be funny or even a wee bit strange when we think about how sayings come into being.  Sometimes, we don’t know where the saying came from yet somehow we still get the gist of it.  Today, the guidepost for these many thoughts flooding my mind come from the popular quote, “the proof is in the pudding.”  We each can derive a slightly different meaning from that adage.  During this chapter of my life & perhaps yours too, I find that the saying relates closely to the fact that “right” action is what really matters the most.

Do you find that you go through times in your life where you just seem to keep receiving a “message” from a variety of sources?  The message may come from people that we know well or strangers or media or another means yet my steadfast knowledge is that no matter where the messages are coming from, the grander source is always the same for me.  If you are a person of faith you will know exactly what I mean by this.  Lessons & joy both come via faith messages for me at least. 

Isn’t it incredible when we hear the same message over & over again when it pertains to something that is really going to make a difference in our lives & in the turn the lives of those around us?  Do you find too that the message may have been being communicated to us in various ways for longer than we even realized at first?  It seems sometimes that what starts out as a “tap on the shoulder” of sorts can turn into a neon sign when we don’t feel the initial tap.

Action.  Wow, now there is a verb!  It is so easy to say that we will think about something or say no to doing that exact thing that is going to make a huge positive difference to our lives.  The no can be in the form of putting the action point on our perpetual “to do” lists but never quite getting to it day after day.  Or the no could be in the form of a false yes.  What the heck does that mean, Saundie?  A false yes is when we commit to taking action on something & then not follow through.  Do people sometimes give a false yes to themselves or others with good intention & other times not the best of intentions?  We each get to answer that for ourselves.  When we answer that question, we might be lead to our own answer  by asking a few questions quietly within ourselves.  We may ask ourselves if we gave a yes because we were having a high energy day or were in a good mood & felt that we could take on the world that day yet when the day passed, so too did our desire to follow through with the yes.  Or perhaps we intended to carry through with the yes however “life got in our way.”  We may have lost sight of our goal or the reason why the yes would be the next right thing to do.  Perhaps we are looking for the “perfect” time yet when we reflect on this in silence we intellectually realize that would equate to “Waiting for Godot.”  Sometimes some of us say yes to almost everything good or bad because we have not learned to say no & then find an excuse not to honour the yes.  To be fair, there are times that the yes will happen and we are devoutly committed to the yes however something happens in our lives to delay the yes for a time.  Examples of delayed yes are our own illnesses, family illnesses & loss of loved ones.  Being gentle with ourselves during times of a delayed yes feel exactly right in my heart.

During the last few weeks, I have found that I kept receiving the same message & that is “take meaningful right action.”  It has appeared in the reading materials that I have gravitated towards, through friends, acquaintances, family, messages from shows I have watched, and homilies that have profoundly impacted me.  Yes, I see the preverbal neon sign!  The message is to commit to taking right action in a variety of places in my life including helping others more & doing more to impact my health.  I have been reminded that to get “too comfortable” is not what I am here for on earth.  You see, I find helping others to be natural but I can & will do more & I work really hard on my health yet again, I can & will do more.  I have found that I have become satisfied or comfortable with my previous efforts & was feeling okay with the status quo.  The status quo though is not my best.  Now there’s a moment of personal honesty & guess what else?  A feeling of discomfort is the answer to that one.  Awesome, that means that I still have a pulse since I know that status quo is not growth.  Now I have to do something about this.  To know & not to do anything about it for me is to live an incongruent, pain inducing existence.  I know better in other words so I need to do more.

To share with you, this summer has been a challenge health wise for my family & I.  Diabetes or “365” health challenges after all are felt not only by us but also very much affect our family & those closest to us.  It bothered me big time that a number of my health issues decided to go into “meltdown mode” during the summer months while our sons were off for the summer from school.  We had made a huge list of things that we wanted to do together during those 9 weeks & while we did many of them, we certainly did not do all of them.  And I had to employ a “stiff upper lip” most days as I was really unwell about 80% of the summer.  I don’t feel badly for myself but instead choose to find a way to just get better.  It won’t happen on its own.  When we have type 1 diabetes, it is a moving target so we can certainly do all the right things & not be rewarded with “nice” blood sugars.  I accept that.  Like you, I don’t like it one bit yet I accept it.  The other health issues though for me are another story.  I have not exhausted all my options in improving those so I still have work to do.  The work on those started at the end of last June.  Like a garden that is just planted, health improvement for me has also taken time & daily positive action.  I have chosen to do many things over the past 9 weeks that frankly I did not like doing.  That is something that I have no problem getting beyond.  Keeping an eye on the goal keeps me motivated to do the things that I don’t “want” to do.  Here’s the great news…for the past 2 weeks, I have felt amazing.  Please don’t get me wrong…the diabetes is still a menace with its fair share of literal ups & downs.  The other health issues though are so much better.  I am getting my energy back & sleeping really well & yay the double over with pain abdominal pain is gone right now.  Listening to the message, take action & don’t settle for just the status quo has made a huge positive difference.  The difference did not happen overnight & it did not happen without sacrifices & work yet it did happen. 

Remember how I mentioned that there are things on the list of activities that our sons & I have not yet enjoyed?  That list is still taped to the cupboard in our kitchen.  My “yes” is that the list is not coming down until we have participated in all the adventures that we are planning on having together.  In other words, the goal has not changed & neither has the commitment or the yes but rather simply the dates for the activities has been reset.  That’s okay.  That’s not settling.  That is the spirit of rejecting victimhood & choosing walking in the direction of victor.  Sometimes the steps are small & slow yet they are being made day in & day out.

The other rejection of “status quo” that I shared with you earlier is breaking free of believing that I am doing enough to help others.  Balderdash!  Yesterday, I began to take action on that breakthrough of the status quo too.  And you know what?  I felt butterflies in my tummy & uncomfortable.  Good, I am on the right track. 

Am I really serious about breaking free of the status quo?  Well, as always, “the proof is in the pudding!” 

My heart’s hope is that you are at the banquet of your own positive action breakthroughs too.  May the seeds you plant today grow into magnificent gardens of joy for you.

Smiles,  Saundie :)

Speaking of Banquets, next Monday's sharing is, "Missing Part of the Banquet (For Now)."  Have a beyond Status Quo week :)

Well it is September yet again & you know what that means! “Don’t say it” you may be thinking.  Okay, let’s get it out…return to school time.  You probably know someone who has returned recently to school.  Perhaps it is you yourself who has begun a new academic year either as a student or a teacher.

As I have shared with you before, we are raising 3 sons.  It is loud at our home & it is at times very chaotic.  The first week of school is generally amongst the most chaotic times of the year at our place.  When you layer on that 2 out of 3 of our sons had zero desire to return to school, it becomes a wee bit more chaotic as they were not motivated to assist much in getting organized for the new school year.   It must be time for a little humourous aside.  When our middle son was in junior kindergarten, he was extremely nervous about going to school for the first time.  Brian is by nature a profoundly cautious person.  The unknown elements of going to school had him turning himself inside out for the better half of August of 2008.  Finally, the first day arrived.  Off we went to meet his teacher & get him settled in for the afternoon of his first day of school.  His teacher was such an angel of compassion.  At one point in the day, she called me & let me know how Brian’s day was going.  She told me that he had some tears & that she just asked him to sit on her knee in the rocking chair & she placed her arms around him & told him that everything was going to be okay.  At dismissal time that day, little Brian raced into my arms & described his day & placed in my hands a picture that he had created with such accomplishment.  He excitedly told me that he had drawn the outline of his own hand “all by myself” & “coloured it in with no help at all!”  Of course my heart melted instantly to see his artwork & the poem below it based upon the story, “The Kissing Hand.”  I can still vividly remember the tears freely touching my face after I tucked him in that night as I hung up that picture.  The picture is to this day hanging in our kitchen & shall remain there as long as there is breath in me. 

Isn’t it a mystery in life when something does not immediately make sense? The next morning, I went into Brian’s room to awaken him for day 2 of his “kindergarten career.”  Brian stirred & simply stated that he was not getting up.  He must have gotten that stubborn streak from my husband!  I am laughing as I write that because if he inherited that trait, it is from his Mom.  The great thing is that we can choose to convert something like stubbornness into other attributes like steadfastness or devotion or dedication or commitment or determination so it can be a good thing.  Anyhow, I confirmed with Brian that he had had a fun day the day before.  “Yes I did”, he answered.  Hmmm, now I was scratching my head so to speak.  I asked him why then he would not want to return again to have some more fun.  Brian in his always logical way simply stated, “I went to kindergarten yesterday so I am all done going to school.”  He had thought that going to school was somehow a 1 day event & now he was done with that & could check that off the list & move onto something else.  He had that experience so he was done with it.  It made me laugh.  He did by the way finally get up for school & has been getting up since realizing that his school days were still very much ahead of him.

There are things in life that we don’t want to do wouldn’t you agree?  The important “things” are the ones that despite not wanting to do them, we “reason” with ourselves & do them anyways.  Our decision may be based upon the “risk /reward” system.   In other words, at times, the consequence of not doing the thing that we don’t want to do outweigh the undesired activity so we do it.  Other times, the “good” that will come out of doing the undesired activity motivates us to push past our first impulse to not do something that we need to do.  Physical exercise is a neat example of both the “risk” & the “reward” of doing something that at times we don’t “feel” like doing.  Is it easy to make an excuse & not do daily exercise?  You bet it is!  Here’s the thing though that I have experienced & that is that I have never ever regretted exercising once I am doing it.  Do I usually “feel like” exercising?  No, I honestly can tell you that my mind comes up with an endless list of excuses & reasons not to exercise almost every day.  Do I listen to those thoughts?  No way!  Instead, I choose to challenge those thoughts at the very least on the basis of logic.  And then, I make myself go out for the exercise.  And it feels great once I am doing it.   Not everyone has this challenge I realize & I admire that.  Some folks are very devoted & enthusiastic about exercise & don’t need to make themselves do the exercise.  They just go do it versus my “argument with myself” routine.  Everyone is a beautiful original so I don’t “beat myself up” over my natural state of having to make myself go for the exercise versus it being a natural state.  Instead, I feel happy that I went no matter what the process was behind me participating in it.

This morning was day 3 of the return to school for this year for our sons.  Getting up early in the morning for them is a challenge like most folks out there young or older.  Once they have been up & ready to go out the door in the mornings this week, they have automatically headed towards the car with the expectation that they would receive a drive over to school.  Not so fast guys!  It has been absolutely gorgeous out weather-wise this week & so they could not even present a case for needing a ride due to inclement weather.  Each morning, I have let the boys know that we would be walking to school.  The moans that 2 out of 3 of the boys have had each morning would cause a person to believe that they were being asked to break boulders by hand at a gravel pit!  Yikes!  To say that they have resisted the “invitation” to walk to school is an understatement.  In the spirit of not taking no for an answer, the boys have come to realize that the walking to school this week have not been optional.  The best part is that once we are no more than half way to school, the boys are very cheerful about the walk. 

An even better “consequence” of the morning walks to school is that along the way to the destination, we happened upon 2 other children that we had never met before that go to the same school.  The new friends & our two younger sons hit is off immediately & have become fast friends.  This morning, the new friends were all dressed & ready to go with backpacks on waiting on their front lawns for us to “pick them up” this morning.  I smiled at our sons & said, “hey, it’s a good job we did not drive because your friends may have been late for school!”  We all laughed.  And I too have made 2 new friends in their parents.  I am kind of a kid at heart in many ways & get that excited feeling making new friends too.  So, the boys & I have not really felt like walking yet there has been no down side.  We have after all enjoyed the great physical feeling of taking care of our bodies by giving them exercise & the added bonus of making new friends.

My heart’s hope for you is that “along the way to your destination” that you do something health building for yourself that you may not “feel like” doing & make some friends along the way!

Smiles, Saundie :)

May all the paths you walk be filled with friends along the way & next Monday's sharing is, "Although it's Not Pudding, It is Proof."    :)

Do you remember the cans that have the cow’s “voice” inside them?  Maybe you played with one when you were small or have heard of them.  When I was a wee gal, I thought that toy was kind of a marvel.  What I really wanted to do though was somehow take the lid off of the toy so that I could pull out what I had convinced myself was a real, live cow living in the can!  Let me share with you that there is something way better to “rip the lid off” of & that is our very own lives!

Are we “containing” ourselves in different ways?  We answer that question for ourselves when we take the time on our own in silence.  What would happen if we did go ahead & rip the lid off of our own lives?  My heart’s answer is that it would change the world.  If we are not fully letting our true selves out of “containers”, why is that?  Are some folks fearful of not being accepted?  Are others “programmed” to doing things the same old way?  Do we have the preverbal “stiff upper lip?”  Or is it something else? 

To say that I am an enthusiastic person would be an understatement yet even I have had times that have been “contained” times throughout life.  One of those times that I remember is that first year with type 1 diabetes.  Man, I felt like I had gone into a mini hibernation in some ways for that year.  The days were so structured around eating at the same times, taking the insulin needles at the same times, exercising at the same times & figuring out how to integrate this diagnosis into our family life.  If you have type 1 diabetes too, then you may share the struggles of trying to figure out how to work out how diabetes will become a part of your life & not your life being all about diabetes.  We are after all stronger & more than diabetes or other 365 challenges.  The initial diagnosis though had me behaving a bit like the Cat in the Hat trying to balance my parallel world of the fish in the pot, umbrella & all that Seuss-like stuff that first year.  It did not take long to see what did not work.  In life sometimes, it is finding what does work that can take time, several failures, patience, steadfastness, and determination.  It was a pretty tiring year trying to work that stuff out & my enthusiasm waned temporarily.  Thankfully, I knew with all my heart that the loss of enthusiasm was temporary & would  be back.  And do you know what; of course it came back, a million fold!  That is the power of so many blessings working together.  If this can happen for me, it can happen for you too. 

After that first year with type 1, something changed.   It did not happen without enormous effort which is often the case.  What happened is that I received my insulin pump.  Within 2 weeks, I had educated myself on how to work with that life saving device.  It was an intense 2 weeks & worth all the effort.  After that, the reward of freedom appeared.  The freedom was in the form of the pump doing the “heavy lifting” of “operating” my pancreas.  We are still very much the brains & math behind our insulin pumps yet the miracle of having a pump in my life & what it has meant to my family is indescribable.  There was no more eating, exercising, and giving insulin day in day out at the same times & then working every single minute at trying to hit a moving target like in that first year.  Even 4 years of “pumping” later, I almost pinch myself to be so blessed to live in an age where these devices are here for us.  For me, the insulin pump is a love story of sorts.  Sure it has its moments of inconvenience & the odd hiccup, yet so does life for anyone diabetes or no diabetes.  I choose gratitude to have this pump every single day.  For the past 4 years, I could not help but rip the lid back off my life again…only more than ever before.

You may have found that a struggle in your life has provided you with a fork in the road or 2 pathways to choose from.  The struggle can lead one to choose to pull back from life or put the lid on our lives.  Or the struggle can lead one to choose to rip the lid off our lives with greater enthusiasm than a lot of folks can believe.  The struggle then receives meaning from that moment on.  It can receive the meaning in that we can choose to help others who either have the same struggle or have another struggle because we have an understanding of what they are going through.  We may use our struggle in another positive way.  When we make this choice, it is absolutely incredible.  We get to live & love boldly & louder & reach out with compassion & understanding.  We get to not contain ourselves!  Sure, you & I may get the odd raised eyebrow here & there yet that does not need to bother us if we make that choice.  How great does it feel to be fully, boldly, gently, beautifully ourselves & share with others. 

Once we rip the lid off the container of our lives, I believe that we may always want to live that way.  We can have temporary setbacks yet, we have that point of reference of how it feels to embrace being fully alive.  It would be painful to me to consider putting the lid back on my life I will share.  I will not even consider doing that.  Okay Saundie, how about when others try to put the lid on your life for you?  If we are still drawing strength after a struggle, we just may need a battle buddy to help us.  If we have a strong foundation, then we will remind ourselves that we have choice over what we decide is advice that is life-giving to us & what is not. 

To share with you, when we were expecting our first born son, we had a big scare when I was 6 months expectant.  I began to go into pre-mature labour.  To this day, I remember the doctors & specialists coming into the hospital room & telling me what the odds were heavily against our child living & if he did live we were told that  he would be blind, have respiratory challenges, and many other challenges.  This may sound very strange yet once the myriad of doctors left the room & I was by myself in the quiet of the room, an indescribable peace came over me like never before.  And I knew with all my being that not only was the baby not going to have any of these things happen to him, I knew that he was not going to be born early either.  It was not denial; it was something incredibly beyond what most people would think of as faith.  It was huge & not for one minute did I even consider any other option than this peaceful knowledge that this little boy was going to be just fine.  Also, even though the name had never appeared on my husband & my list of potential baby names, the name “Matthew” kept repeating through my mind for hours & hours.  Long story cut short, Matthew was not born prematurely at all & in fact was 10 days late!  I am not for a minute trying to suggest that statistically the doctors were not correct.  They were & are extremely competent & I respect them profoundly.  For me though there was a “voice” beyond what I was hearing in the hospital room…and yes, you bet that I believe in miracles.  Each & every one of us is an original miracle & so why would we want to live with the lid on our lives? 

If we remember each & every day that just the fact that we are here & that we woke up to a new day makes us & the day a miracle, then we may consider ripping the lid off our lives with urgency & hit it out of the park enthusiasm.

My heart’s hope for you is that if you have not ripped the lid off of your life already that today is the day that you go ahead & do just that.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Go ahead & have a week of ripping the lid off of your life & keep it that way & next Monday's sharing is, "And Along the Way to Our Destination."  :)

What does a healthy person look like to you?  There may be a picture of fitness that comes to mind or we may be including a more wholistic ideal.  Consider that there are situations in life where we perceive someone or something as healthy & it turns out that the opposite is actually true.  An example that comes to mind that appears to be healthy is food that is packaged with the words “low fat” or “low sugar” on the label.  We may be lead to believe that we are putting something health building into our bodies based upon the label.  Along the way, when we have diabetes we tend to learn more about the specifics of how to read a food label.  Often a food that is labeled as “low fat” is either high in sugar or salt or hydrogenated fats.  We can take the opportunity to learn more about health-building & health diminishing fats for instance.  The important part about foods that are pre-prepared is to do our homework to see if the food is health-building or not.  Thankfully, we have the opportunity to obtain guidance when we need it from our nutritionists if we are concerned about food labels or choices.  Life is full of choices.  To carte blanche believe that a food is healthy just because it says some form of marketing to that effect is definitely something that I want to avoid. 

Most people have differing pictures of how a healthy person looks.  There are intersections though.  When we tend to ask our family & friends questions about how a healthy person looks, we usually get the answer, “slender.”  Where did many folks come up with that answer from?  Many of us will answer, “marketing.”  There is after all a significant difference, I feel, between being slender & being fit.

 Here’s a wee story to share about perception of what a healthy person looks like.  In the weeks leading up to my diagnosis of type 1 diabetes, I had extremely blurry vision, absolutely no energy, was super thirsty and had foggy thinking. These are all understatements.  For the first time in my life, all I could think about when I heard the alarm clock in the morning was when I could return to sleep again.  That unbelievable exhausted feeling lasted all day, every day.  My family & I found ourselves turning down all invitations to social activities.  That was not like “energizer bunny” me.  The thought every day was how tired I was & when in the world would my usual energy return.  At first I thought that I had caught some form of illness that perhaps was going around. The trouble was that I was not getting better & that seemed strange.  A whole month went by & then almost another.  Finally, it dawned on me that I might have diabetes.  I had heard about the signs of diabetes yet it took almost 2 months to accept that this may be a possibility.  I had never felt so unwell in my life.  Here comes the perception part.  During those nearly 2 months I had compliment after compliment from people on my weight loss & how great I looked.  Many people asked me what my secret was.  When I would share how unwell I felt many folks maintained, “Well you just look so well.”  It felt like a strange time in my life to be honest.  It was very disconnecting having the perception of folks around me that I was looking healthy & yet feeling awful.  One of my first positions when I graduated was in counseling people that had sustained physical injuries.  It was a rewarding job & the other counselors that I worked with are friends that I do & always will admire.  Often, folks with physical injuries would voice frustration about “hidden injuries.”  They would describe how injuries that are not obvious to others tend to be perceived as not present.  My heart goes out to people with health challenges.  And my heart goes out to how folks feel when there is a perceptual gap.

In the past 5 years & a bit, there has only been one occasion thankfully that someone referred to my type 1 diabetes as a disability.  It personally shocked me to hear this reference.  I am being polite frankly in using these words.  Once I chose to propel myself past the disappointment with the individual for the label, I decided that I would share how I saw the type 1 diabetes that I live with daily.  The encounter was turned into an opportunity for sharing my perspective rather than simply accepting the label that the person had decided to give me.

Another perception that has been a reoccurring one is that a number of folks believe that insulin is a cure.  It is not.  It is a treatment & I am profoundly grateful for this literally life saving treatment.  And no, our insulin pumps don’t have “brains” & “fix” our diabetes.  And the get well soon wishes are a little strange when a person has a chronic illness.  Perhaps a better choice of words may be either “how are you feeling today?” or something encouraging like “what can I do to help?”   The best one yet is, “my heart goes out to you.”  If none of these can be said with genuine care & concern & compassion then my preference is that nothing is said. If you have type 1 diabetes too or have a family member with a “365” health challenge, you will probably share this next view.  It is absolutely awful when some folks feel the need to say something that they feel will either act as a form of being relatable or to simply fill the awkward feeling of finding something to say when they learn of someone’s health challenge. It is not helpful in the least to hear someone state that they knew someone that suffered blindness, amputation, kidney or any other complications.  As folks with type 1 diabetes, we are acutely aware of potential complications.  That is a huge reason why we do the 24-7 hard work managing diabetes in efforts to do what we can to avoid complications.  You may share this next pet peeve as well if you have type 1 diabetes.  There are times when even though we are “doing everything right”, our blood sugars go really high or really low.  It drives me up the wall & back again when folks say to me in reference to the roller coaster blood sugars, “you should take better care of yourself.”  Guess what, we already are!  Sometimes, we can do everything right with our attempts at blood sugar control & yet we get weird results.  That is the nature of type 1 diabetes.  It is a moving target with so many variants that can cause blood sugars to go berserk. Sometimes there simply is no correlation between effort & result some of the time I have found.  When I hear the myriad of misconceptions or even judgments regarding type 1 diabetes, I realize that as a community, we are not done yet with advocating & breaking free of these false labels.  There is still so much sharing of information to do to ensure that misconceptions are corrected. 

Incorrect perceptions may prove to be a problem when it comes to diabetes or 365 health challenges.  In a society that often uses the barometer of thinness as the indicator of health, we may need to challenge that guidepost.  When I think about my own physical health, I value the guidance of my health care team versus society.  If I am losing or gaining weight quickly, I know that there have to be logical reasons for this.  Are either of these extremes healthy for me?  No, I don’t think so.  You & your health team will know what is best for you health wise.  I know that I don’t want to leave my health in the hands of the societal definition of what a healthy person looks like. 

Have you heard that adage, “what you don’t know about cannot hurt you?”  It has always seemed like a bizarre statement in my mind.  Take type 1 for instance.   It is  essential that type 1 diabetes gets diagnosed when it is present.  No, like you, I did not want to receive bad news.  I needed however to know what I was dealing with so that I could do everything within my power to be as healthy as possible.  It was not about the perception of health.  It was about truth.  Looking well & feeling unwell for a prolonged & severe period of time do not make sense at least to me.  Although the perception was that I was looking healthy, I knew with all my might that was not the case.

When it comes to perception & perspective, I choose perspective every single time.  To me perspective leads me to the truth yet perception is “iffy” at best.

My heart’s hope for you is that your wise perspective guides you in living the life that is yours alone.

Smiles, Saundie  :)

May this week be filled with "the" truth & not "marketing" or "false perception" & next week's sharing is, "Rip the Lid Off!"  :)

Living in a home with 4 “boys” you would think that I may have gleamed a few ideas about the inner working of sports.  To a certain degree, this is true.  When it comes to football, I admit as much as the guys have tried to explain the game, I am “like a deer in the headlights” in terms of making sense of it.  I suppose I do “get” that the quarterback is the guy in charge on the fields.  Forgive me if I am oversimplifying the game & the analogy.

In considering my current diabetes teammates, I feel profoundly thankful.  My team of coaches include:  my endocrinologist, nurse, dietician, pharmacist, family doctor, type 1 friends, and my small library of reference books.  What would you call someone who is the technical advisor?  Since I am not sure, I will call him the general manager, one of several in my case is my mathlete husband.  Who are the players?  For me, the answer to that question is a resounding, “my battle buddies.”  The “players” are on the team because they are people who are encouraging, inspiring, humourous, caring, kind, genuine, truthful, principled, realistic and accepting.  The “players” are dear heart friends & family & community members within the diabetes community as well as other awesome communities.  Add to that list, my “personal trainer”, our furry goldie who rain or shine is “pro” walk!

Could I manage diabetes on my own?  Hmm, that’s a good question.  Better question for me though is…”why would I want to when I know that I am going to have more success with a team?”  I choose to be on a team & I choose to be the quarterback!

How many “games” do you think a team would win say if even one of the team mates would neither talk to nor listen to the quarterback?  What if  the "head coach" “fumbled” & did not consider vital information that would help to “make the play?”  What if the quarterback has questions & that a coach ignores the questions because they believe the quarterback is not smart enough to be able to follow “the play?”

Why am I asking all these questions?  These are all things that happened to me when I was diagnosed with diabetes in 2007.  One “coach” would not speak directly to me but rather spoke to my husband instead which hit me as bizarre indeed.  The coach also did not consider that I was nursing a baby when advising one significant part of my care program.  Another coach thankfully “pinch hit” & saved “the game”.  (I know, baseball analogy, not football).  The “fumbling” coach did not choose to answer questions that were distressing to me that would have provided peace of mind.  It felt like I was a body without anything else in this regard.  It was disheartening & scary.  I was a gal raised in a small town originally of 1500 people suddenly thrust into a huge Toronto hospital with a deli-like system of care.  I was a square peg being compressed into a round hole.  First of all, I was an adult being diagnosed with type 1 which is unusual.  Second, I was being asked things like did I notice a significant weight loss & tiredness. My answer was yes I noticed those 2 things yet not for the reasons that the box on the form in front of me was being checked off.  I wondered at the time if I could add words to the form.  The reason that I had lost weight was that I had just had a baby some months before & I was exercising to lose the “baby weight” so I sure did not see that weight loss as a sign of anything other than my efforts.  Tiredness…well, ask any new parent if they are tired!  Again, square peg, round hole plus compression.  Having those encounters during the first 6 months was an exercise in keeping myself calm during already hyperglycemic states.    That collection of experiences that first day & in the following months brought me to the realization that I was in the wrong place with the wrong team. 

Okay, happy ending time…well happy present & happy ending time.  For the first 6  months, I was not the quarterback of my diabetes team & it did not feel “right.”  There was the “just right team” out there though.  It was up to me as the quarterback to put the winning team together.  For just over 5 years now, I have had the “exact right” diabetes team & for this I am extremely grateful.  Diabetes has its fair share of challenges so creating “the exact right” team makes a huge difference I have found.  I remember vividly wondering during those exasperating first 6 months after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes if I was going to continue to feel like I was on the wrong team.  In remembering those brief first 6 months, I am mindful of how things have changed.  More than this, I am continuously grateful to a team of people that are truly amazing including an extraordinary endocrinologist, nurse, pharmacist & other Dear Hearts.

Call it quarterback, manager or any other name, being in charge of our diabetes can be an empowering feeling. How do professional sports teams go about comprising their teams?  I don’t know but I would think through careful researching, “scouting”, considering the team dynamics as a whole & other important factors.  Like so many profoundly important things in life, “the exact right” team does not happen on its own.  Once all the team members are “drafted”, there you have it…a home run!  I know, I know, again, this is not a football analogy.  Did I mention that I am after all the “quarterback” who knows nothing about football?

My heart’s hope for you is that you are the quarterback of your “365” team & have the peace of mind that everyone is working together to give you peace of mind.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Have a hit it out of the park week & next Monday's sharing is, "Perspective on Perception"  :)

It has been 5 years & 9 months since I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.  November 29, 2007 is a date that my memory has kept in its storage banks.  If you have diabetes or another 365 health challenge, you too may find that you continue to remember the exact date that you were diagnosed.  Over the years, I have found that I look at November 29^th through a strength-filled mindset.  While I personally do not believe that time in & of itself heals all wounds, I sure do believe that time coupled with positive action does lead to a form of healing.  It is not a reference to physical healing but rather emotional and or spiritual healing.

The choices that I make surrounding my diabetes I believe can result in an accumulation of victimhood or victory.  Do you know anyone who claims to have either perfect days or perfect choices every single minute of the day?   We simply do our very best & when we stumble, we dust ourselves off & get back up with determination.  A “bad day” here & there decision wise does not need to define us.  Take baseball for instance.  When you see the batting averages, what do you realize?  We realize that there were plenty of “strike outs” yet the determination, practice, and winning spirit define the baseball player as a victor.

When we think about what choices are all about, we soon realize that choices are about intention.  If we are living our lives by making intentional positive choices & actions, then that sounds like a life defined as courageous.  It is easy to fall prey to victimhood.  Consider if we have a problem yet choose to do nothing about it but rather just take a “wait & see what happens” approach.  The situation may turn out okay yet chances are that if we take this approach to life continuously that our “batting average” with this strategy working out will diminish.  If we agree that Albert Einstein was a highly intelligent thinker, then his quote stating that “you cannot solve the problems of today with the same level of thinking that they were caused by” is a priceless guidepost.

You may share the view that life feels like it is going by at lightning speed.  The past 5 years have gone by in the blink of an eye since that initial diagnosis.  Vividly, I remember feelings of loss when I learned that type 1 was now part of my life & the lives of my family.  The whole rainbow of emotions was experienced especially in the first year.  Frustration & exasperation were especially in abundance during 2008.  The learning curve was steep & I felt as though I was not learning fast enough & not doing well enough.  I was at that point giving myself a failing grade on my blood sugar results, how I was feeling, energy levels, how I was measuring up to what I was like prior to diabetes & an array of other measurements.  While the learning that first year was steep, I was determined to be an A+ type 1 diabetic.  My method was that I would be a super achiever.  My spirit for myself is to avoid becoming a victim.  That first year though, I went too far on the other side of the spectrum in an effort to avoid victimhood in any form.  Man, was I angry with diabetes big time that first year.  Throwing something harder at a moving target does not lead to greater accuracy I soon learned.  I had to learn to be patient with my efforts with diabetes care & the results that often were not indicative of my profound efforts.  I had to ease up on the over achieving & get “real” with myself.  I had a stern talking with myself so to speak & then a gentler one.  The stern one went kind of like this, “this is not working so cut it out!”  The gentler one following that one went along the lines of “find some peace with the new normal.”

There is a saying in project planning of, “you have to slow down to speed up.”  At the end of 2008, I began to experiment with that concept regarding the diabetes.  Although I had learned so much in the first year, the learning was slowing down going into the second year.  That is textbook learning curve.  Somehow though, I had thought that I would will myself into having an A1C of a non-diabetic.  I did achieve that once however I had to live like a robot to achieve that.  It is a little like a fad diet…it will not be sustainable.  That is where I began the long process of telling myself that I was going to need to “slow down” in order to speed up in understanding what was happening.  Some of my hypers were hypos “gone bad” overnight.  I had to take a breath & assess the glucose data so that I could correct those situations.  If you are a gal who is on insulin, you soon find out that blood sugars ride the hormone waves.  You talk about a moving target!  2008 turned into 2009, 2010 & then I finally intentionally began to commit myself to learning & practicing more patience with diabetes & life in general. 

Aha moments in life are precious.  One that “hit” me in 2012 was that I don’t have to understand everything about living with diabetes to go ahead & accept that I have type 1.  Oh boy, I finally let go of the rope…the rope of tug of war.  That was a peace filled aha moment.  It has stayed with me since.  I had been resisting each day that it was going to be another day with type 1 in it on some level.  There lies the liberating choice & that was to accept that this is the new normal until there is a cure.  It did not lead to victimhood, this choice.  The choice instead led to greater hope and more excitement about everything.  One of my favourite sayings that I love to say when I am super excited while talking with my husband is this, “do you know what I am excited about…everything.”  Then I will go on to say what it is that I am specifically excited about.  Letting go of the tug of war rope with diabetes has provided more energy to devote to people & things that truly matter. 

When we realize that we are doing our very best & really giving something our all & that our efforts are not only acceptable but that they are pretty awesome, that is a “top drawer” feeling.

My heart’s hope is that your choices, attitudes & feelings about your life, diabetes or no diabetes, lead you to proclaiming that you are excited about everything!

Smiles, Saundie :)

May this week ahead be one that you are "excited about everything" every day & next Monday's sharing is, "The Quarterback Who Knows Nothing About Football!"      :)

How many times in life have you found yourself uttering the words, “how did I end up here” or a slight variation?  We may wonder at times why we are in or at a certain place in our lives.  When we think about it, whether we are asking these questions, we may be asking them out of exasperation, being perplexed, or gratitude.

When we look at where we are right now & realize that, although each one of us tends to have detours in life, we have some experiences we can feel so thankful for and these are times of profound joy.  At times when we look at our current destination & feel perplexed or frustrated with this point, we always have the choice to courageously change our next point in our journey.  Even if we think that we cannot leave a physical place or leave certain realities, we can change the way that we think of our situation.  Viktor Frankl taught us through his absolutely amazing book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” that we have choice in every situation, even within the indescribable environment detailed within his book.  We have the gift of choice over our attitudes & the grace to live our lives still with something bigger than anything we experience within our day to day lives Viktor Frankl tells us.  I will share with you that the first time that I read this amazing book, I was in second year university.  My mind was set on pursuing a career path in criminology.  I found it fascinating.  During one course, I really hit the guardrail so to speak on trying to get my mind around why some horrible things happen to some people out there within the framework of homicide.  Most of us have someone in our lives that either can point us in the right direction towards finding the “answer” to our questions or they know someone who can help out.  Often in life, I find that this person for me is my husband.  He is a thinker & steady as a rock & he is a pretty cool person to have around for others in either emergency situations or times of chaos.  He has that ability to gently lead & point in the direction of what makes sense without being obvious about it.  Suffice to say that when I was feeling this overwhelming sense of being disturbed about the horror that these people had gone through that we were learning about in the criminology course, I went to my “go to guy”, my then boyfriend, now husband.  Sure enough, my husband knew the exact person to talk to.  In turn this Dear Heart, Keith told my husband to encourage me to read, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  I read it at top speed & then went back & read it again at a gentler speed.  After reading that book, I had an “aha moment”, yet I hesitate to call it a mere moment because it has impacted my whole life.  It became a way of thinking, feeling & knowing that has provided peace during difficult passages in my life.

When we think about those times when we have each gone on some type of road trip, we can likely bring to mind detours of travels.  Sometimes, we get lost for a time on the road to the physical destination & other times we have the route all mapped out & there is construction & we need to take a detour.  Sometimes, our GPS systems take us on bizarre little roundabout ways of getting to our destination.  There are times when we are grateful for the detour because we may see something breathtaking like a lake or a forest or a creature that we otherwise would have missed.  Or we may stop somewhere on the detour & meet someone incredible that we would have never met otherwise.  Other times, our detours may simply make us late & take us through undesirable parts of a geographic area.  Still, we can make the choice as to whether we will treat that as a situation of exasperation or something else.  Even an undesirable area can encourage us to remember to become grateful.  How?  We can choose to really appreciate beautiful surroundings even more.

Our lives tend to be made up of parts that we think of as wonderful times & other times that are challenging times.  When we have diabetes or another 365 challenge, we may find peace indeed within the gems of writing contained in “Man’s Search for Meaning.”  It may be the doorway to realizing that everything in life can be seen in a different way.  It does not mean that we won’t still go through the challenges in life, yet packing peace for the journey may just give us everything that would make a difference.

My heart’s hope is that whether you travel along nature’s trails or the deserts in life that you hold on to the knowledge that we each have will over our thoughts & attitudes.  We are more than our physical challenge or any other trial.  Our spirits are huge& filled with light & the challenges are shadows.  The shadows never overtake the sun.

Smiles, Saundie :)

May your week be filled with an "aha" moment that lasts a lifetime & next Monday's sharing is, "No, it's Not a Tug of War."  :)

Have you ever had the delight of either seeing an English garden either in person or in photographs?  The ones that I have seen in both forms have been breath taking.  The images of the beautiful gardens remain in your memory & that’s a great thing!  One of the gardens that my husband & I had the enjoyment of seeing was on the West Coast of Canada.  We were honeymooning in British Columbia & it was absolutely incredible to experience the gardens & of course the high teas.  Sometimes, both could be combined at once & this was utopia to this tea addict!

The garden that left a special place in my heart was one that I can picture to this day although we did not take an actual photo of it.  Some beautiful times travel with us through our whole lives.  As we walked hand in hand through that garden, we took it all in.  It was a circular garden & that warmed my heart.  The circle is such a symbol of love & being on our honeymoon just made it that much more impactful. 

All these years later, I still think of that garden.  Perhaps there are places that you find remain with you as you too enjoy that many chapters of your life.  Some experiences remain with us in a beautiful way.  That feels exactly right.  Gardens can remind us of friendships in many ways, don’t you think?  With both friendship & gardens, we need to plant a seed of kindness to grow them.  Friendships blossom in different ways just like our gardens yet each needs nurturing, appreciation & time shared together.  Most of us would agree that we would all love an instant beautiful garden upon waking up like from a dream.  In real life though, it is not likely to manifest itself that way.  In order to enjoy a beautiful garden, we have to give something to the garden long before we see the magnificence within it.  Some gardens can take years to realize our efforts yet in time, it becomes an amazing place of enjoyment to us.

Oft, we have heard it said that in order to have a friend, we must first be a friend.  Yikes, that is true yet that may remind us of the garden.  And we may ask ourselves what it means to be a friend to someone else.  We may extend ourselves in friendship & find that friendship takes time.  In growing up years, it seems like it can be pretty natural making friends.  Somewhere along the way to adulthood, things seem to have gotten kind of complicated (if we let it).  Perhaps we don’t want to be the one introducing ourselves first because it can feel uncomfortable.  The thing is though that others may be feeling the exact same way.  If we don’t reach out first & be a friend first then it could be a little like hoping to have a beautiful garden yet failing to go & get & plant any seeds. 

If we have diabetes or another 365 challenge, we may find comfort & understanding& belonging in making friendships with others who share this challenge too.  We always appreciate & cherish & keep our current friendships yet we add friends as well over time.  It is not always easy finding friends within a circle of folks that have the same challenge as we do. 

In sharing with you, I remember vividly our family moving to the area that we are blessed to reside in now.  That move was almost 7 years ago.  Once we finished unpacking the boxes & getting settled in, my very next thought was that I could not wait for our little boys & my husband & I to make some friends in the area.  I am a bit of a joiner so I joined several groups right away & hoped to make some friends right away within those groups.  When friendships did not seem to click within those initial groups, I felt sad & wondered what was taking so long.  Frankly, I had joined groups that I did not feel comfortable being myself within.  That was a telltale sign that I was off course.  Our Dear Heart Godparents often would encourage me to just be myself & that over time genuine friendships would bloom.  Just like in our gardens, making friends takes time & patience too.  Over time, I took my focus off of finding friends & just living life to the fullest every day, doing the next right thing & seeing what the day would bring.  And I found ways naturally to give back to our community in various ways with no expectation…just giving for the sake of giving.  Ah, I did not realize at the time that that was a metaphorical planting of the seeds.  Somehow along the way, friendships have bloomed & there are no words to express how much of a blessing old & new friends are each & every day.  Along the way, friendships have grown in our diabetes communities too.  I don’t succeed in being the one to reach out my hand first everywhere I go yet most of the time, it works out that way.  Especially, when I see someone that is new to a community group that I belong to, I make a point of getting to know that person right away.  My heart’s hope is that that person has at least one instant friend because I know how it feels to feel on the outside looking in when moving to a new area.  This may sound a wee bit strange yet I think it made me a better friend having had that initial struggle to make new friends when we first moved here.  The reason I say that is that that experience gave me an even deeper compassion & awareness for other folks who may be feeling a wee bit left out.  It is a guidepost to remember always to notice others that are standing or sitting by themselves & go over & let them know that they are not only not invisible but better than that, they are welcomed.  We can take these experiences in life & turn them into something to give as a gift to someone else.  That seems like the definition of being a friend first versus wanting to have a friend.  We get to grow these friendships & that is one of the most cherished gifts in this world.  And it is just right that we receive friendship best by giving first. 

In bringing the beautiful picture of that circular English garden back into focus, friendship is a breath taking circle too.  Circles have no end & are capable of expanding to infinity.  When a new friend joins the circle, the circle grows as we walk side by side through all of life’s journeys. 

My heart’s hope is that you are the one that reaches out your hand in friendship often or find the hand of a Dear Heart extending their hand in friendship to you.  May the circle of your friendships be ever increasing.

Smiles, Saundie  :)

May your pathways all lead to wonderful & genuine friendships all week long every week.  Next Monday's sharing is "Detours to Now."  :)                                                                                                                       

Do you remember the last time that you felt like “steam was coming from your ears?”  For most of us, there are highs & lows in life.  That means that we each experience the full spectrum of emotions at one time or another.

Literally, highs & lows are both physiological & emotional for folks with diabetes.  The highs are the high blood sugars (hyperglycemia).  The lows are low blood sugars (hypoglycemia).  Many times in life, I have heard the age old adage of “just keep it in balance” or “too much of a good thing is not good.”  Yikes though, I find that with blood sugars, I often envision myself on the trapeze overlooking a swamp of hungry crocodiles.  It is quite the balancing act.  On the one hand, there are the activities that may cause high blood sugars of:  inaccurate math on my part in calculating food to insulin ratio, inaccurate packaging information on a food label, stress, excitement (fun),  colds & flu, chaos, sudden deadlines, scary movies or distressing news or driving on anything other than what we jokingly call “a goat path.”  Those are just a few blood sugar elevating factors.  Then there is the other side of the coin of  the low blood sugars & the potential causes for those.  I have found that many things lead to hypoglycemia for me including:  calculation error on my part regarding insulin to carb ratio, inaccurate labeling on food packages, exercise, excitement (fun), hormones (yay), fast food.  Highs & lows physiologically are different for each person as we would expect since everyone is “exactly himself or herself.”

Here’s something that I have found over the years to be helpful.  If we are living with type 1 diabetes most of us accept  realistically that high & low blood sugars are inevitable from time to time.  When sugars go too far in either direction, we tend to  feel not well at all.  Each one of us may  have come to discover that with the inevitability of the roller coasters of blood sugars that we may as well have an “emergency plan” in place.  I like to call my plan for reducing hyperglycemia (high blood sugars), the “taking from boil to simmer emergency plan” & the alleviation of hypoglycemia (low blood sugars), “stop, drop & roll.”

My dear heart second born son, Brian was having some good boyish fun a couple of nights ago.  He decided that it would be a hoot to hide in one room & turn out the lights & then pop out at me when I came down the stairs.  He scared me alright.  I know his heart was in the right place yet unfortunately, this good sized scare of the “pop out in the dark unexpectedly” maneuver sent my blood sugars rocketing into space.  I had to invoke my “take it from boil to simmer plan.”  I explained to the boys & my husband that I needed to take some time on my own for a while.  I gave myself an insulin correction & did a little inspirational reading & then listened to some soft music.  It was not long before I felt like myself.  Had I not taken that time though, it would be a mammoth exercise in trying to be calm.  Hyperglycemia (high blood sugars) seem to physiologically make my blood boil so to speak.  It is not a great feeling so it is a relief to get the blood sugars back down into range so that I can be myself again.  The "boil to simmer" plan has been implemented countless times & you may find this to be the case too.  Do certain movies send your blood sugars soaring?  Just last night, my husband & I made the opportunity to finally watch "Zero Dark 30" & about thirty minutes into the film I found myself with that unmistakable high blood sugar headache.  Ah, my previous beautiful blood sugars had taken a huge leap.  Off I went to do a glucose test to see that my results were twice what they had been an hour prior to the movie.  I decided to do an insulin correct & abandon the rest of the movie since it was getting close to bedtime & as many of us know, blood sugars on a roller coaster prior to sleep time is especially brutal.  Thankfully, two hours after the insulin correction, my blood sugars were in good shape again for an awesome night's sleep.  Life is all about choices.  Sure, another choice could have been to continue to watch the movie yet the cost was too high for me.  Life has a way of reminding us that choices have consequences. 

The “stop, drop & roll” is the hypoglycemia plan.  It is the plan in place for the inevitable low blood sugars.  The stop part is pretty self explanatory.  I stop whatever I am doing & “drop” a straw into a juice box & “roll” into a comfy chair for 10 minutes until I generally feel like myself again.

If I know that it is inevitable that my car is going to run out of gas & that I will have to fill it up again before that, then why would my health plan be any different?  There is no comparison to me between my car & my health.  My car is disposable & just a thing yet my health is mine & I want  be the best possible steward of this in this life.  If I know to have a plan in place to look after my car & its needs, then you know that I am going to have a plan in place for diabetes too.

Maybe your “emergency” or contingency plans for your health have their own titles.  My heart's  hope though is that we all have plans ready to best meet our health needs before the need arises.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Wishing you a week of steady as she goes with no "boiling" or "stop, drop & roll" needed.  Next Monday's sharing is "Pathways to Kindness."    :)