Did you see the news clip recently about the fruit tree that produces dozens of different varieties of fruit on one tree?  It seems like a cool idea & it got me thinking about how this might parallel potential solutions within everyday life. 

It would be indescribable to experience the miracle of cures to all 365’s as well as solutions to world problems that have been plaguing us for countless centuries like hunger, poverty, loneliness, isolation, abuse, violence, depression, hatred, selfishness, hopelessness & so many more.  If wishes grew on trees like the one that bears much fruit, I would place each one of these wishes for cures & miracles upon each branch & grow it in my backyard if I could.  We will & do see & affect change within the world around us every day by what we choose to give within our small corners of the world daily.  When we choose to give gentleness, kindness & to welcome others within our corner of the world we grow something pretty magnificent.  During those times when we literally or figuratively grab hold of someone who is struggling & let them know they matter it makes a beautiful difference.  Let’s think about those moments when we have received unexpected kindness when we so desperately needed it.  It may have been in the form of gentle words or a hug the stuffing out of you hug.  Maybe it was as simple as a smile from someone that you know or had never met before & it was a kind smile that was within the person’s eyes.  It was the type of smile that let you know with all certainty that the other person truly saw you & was just being kind with no expectation of anything in return. This is pure love known as loving for sake of other.   Perhaps you had a challenging day & sent out gruffness into the world & you received patience & understanding instead of gruffness in return.  Maybe someone took the time & interest to check in on you & could see straight through a façade that others could not & saw your feelings of hurt or frustration or isolation.  It could be that you received a piece of old fashioned mail out of the blue that brought a smile to your face.  How about if someone took the time to stir in some love to a homemade meal for you?  Maybe that touched your heart & gave you the night off from the kitchen.  Best of all you felt cared for.  I will say that when any of those things or other acts of kindness enter into my life I feel like I might burst if I did not pass on extra kindness to someone else.  It just feels like the most natural thing in the world.  There are no words big enough to say how grateful I am as well for the battle buddies that are in my life that are so encouraging especially on those not great days with type 1 diabetes.  The great thing about a circle of real deal friends is that when one of us is having a hit it out of the park day & another person is having a beaten down day, we all share in the ups & downs.  We lift one another up & we are lifted up by one another.  I know what it feels like to try to go it alone with diabetes & it makes me incredibly grateful to have Dear Heart battle buddies. 

For the tree that I imagine growing that bears much fruit in my backyard in addition to cures & miracles other branches would include inventions & maybe some whimsical ideas as well.  Let’s take diabetes for example.  If we are stuck realistically with diabetes (while we are growing older waiting for a cure) then for sure we want the gold standard in devices in the meantime.  Managing diabetes is exhausting to say in the least.  I will say with fervor that I am sick & tired of glucose meters.  I would like to have my finger tips back again so to speak without thousands of puncture marks all over them.  Where the heck is that watch that I have heard about for over 5 years that supposedly is non evasive & continuously reads blood sugar levels.  That would take away the need for many things if it were available & worked reliably.  Imagine, no more glucose testing or continuous glucose devices (if we have those) as well as blood all over clothing, counters, bedside tables, and well anything else.  The things that I usually have the largest blood spatters on at any given time are my glucose meters & especially my night time meter.  My night time meter needs windshield wipers I have decided.  The watch I think would be the bee’s knees with all the bells & whistles & as a bonus to be able to program it with our own variety of responses & messages would be cool.  For instance, instead of a piercing beep & the current message popping up when I get a 3.4 of “hypoglycemia, eat 15 grams of fast acting sugars” I might program it to say, “now is your chance to eat that packet of delicious bunny gummies” or “for the love of Pete drink only 1 juice box & don’t even dream about polishing off a bag of bbq chips!”  Also, instead of the message “hypoglycemia” a message of “don’t panic honey, you’ve got this; just eat those gummies” would be preferable.  Maybe I would program in “time to drink most of Lake Ontario” with high blood sugar readings.  For sure for those rare beauties of 5.5 (99 in U.S.) I would receive programmed compliments like “this number rocks big time” or “that is one good looking number & by the way you’ve never looked better” or “celebration time.”  There are countless messages that I would program in & they would not be as agitating as the standard messages that pop up right now.  The silly thing about my meter is that it only berates me for the highs & lows & remains silent for the in range numbers.  I think I would program in songs to play when my blood sugars are in range like “It’s a beautiful day” or something else.  If a correction worked & got me back into range, I would program in “Tubthumping” which always seems to motivate me when diabetes has me fighting the odds.  Maybe the watch could also include some sort of non violent gizmo that had the ability to prevent people within our radius from saying crazy things to us like, “you have the bad kind, you got that from eating too much sugar, haven’t you grown out of that juvenile diabetes yet or here, have a sugar free cookie or chocolate bar.  (Ew!)  It could be like the invisible fence for dogs that is out there & it would corral people & keep them a safe distance away so that we don’t have to listen to the nonsensical myths that are out there about type 1 diabetes.

There would be just plain fun stuff that would grow on the tree as well.  For sure crispy bacon with fried potatoes would be there calorie & cholestral free & full of tastiness because hey, it’s my tree & my rules ha ha.  The tree would bear fruit & fruit blossoms all year long.  Best of all, this tree in my imagination would be for sharing.  If someone needed a friend, a hug, inspiration, strength, comfort or anything at all in the world, it would all be on this tree ready for sharing.

While we don’t have this type of imaginary tree, we do have one another.  We have the ability to bring something of light to the world around us.  We can build one another up & squash out division.  We get to encourage & comfort one another.  We get to be kind first.  We get to choose not to remain silent when important words will make a difference to others.  We get to stand up for what is right.  We get to stand up for one another.  We get to be kind to one another regardless of what is going on around us & how others are choosing to behave.  You may not have realized it yet so I want to tell you that the world is better because you are here.  Yes it is.  You have your own razzle dazzle or spark that is all your own.  Shine that everywhere.

My heart’s hope for you is that you choose bravery over mediocrity or indifference by being the real deal in this world.  Sometimes the world is upside down & inside out so reach for a touchstone that is timeless, truthful & good.  You have all that inside of you already.  Yes you do.

Smiles, Saundie

May your week ahead be filled with incoming & outgoing acts of kindness.  Be brave, be yourself, be kind.  That is already within you so send it out boldly.  I know you will.  Next Monday’s story is either going to be something that is still in the creative ether or one that I have already written called, “Defying the Odds or Life Without a Container.”  xo

What a feeling it is when some parts of our lives circle back.  There are portions of our past that we may wish that we could freeze time for.  Other parts for sure we may just want to skip over.  Two things collided this week to bring me to this Monday’s writing piece.  The first was a beautiful reminder of my own childhood & the other was a message that I was ready to hear.  The walk back down memory lane to my childhood came in the form of listening to our youngest son, Alex reading the story book, “Green Eggs & Ham.”  In kindergarten, Alex was brutally stressed out about not being able to read.  He stated often that he was afraid that he would never be able to read.  He put a lot of pressure on himself.  By nature he is a mathie.  He picks up on math at an accelerated pace & I laugh because he loves to do what we call “recreational math.”  He likes to be challenged by his older brothers & asks to see what they are working on in their grade 5 & grade 9 programs respectively.  Alex struggled initially as he learned how to read & it worried him.  This year he is in grade 2 & has a fantastic teacher & he has caught up with his mates in his grade recently in the area of reading.  He was over the moon to accomplish this.  Previously he had been reluctant to read aloud & would need a lot of encouragement to do this at home.  My gut though told me that he would be just fine as long as I continued to encourage him, try to take the pressure off of him & continue to provide fun reading material for him to access at home.  I also was confident that Alex really wanted to show his teacher that he could do it.  That is the power of a positive teacher.  I know because I had a few of these similar every day heroes when I was in school too from grade school straight through to university.  A couple of nights ago I had gone up to bed early as my blood sugars were again sky high & knocking me on my butt.  I decided to read for a while & then try to get to sleep after that.  Our boys were getting ready for bed.  Alex came into our room with a book in hand & declared that he wanted to read me a bedtime story.  This was a wonderful first & he was so enthusiastic.  You know what happens with enthusiasm…it is contagious!  I smiled as I noticed that the book that he decided to read was “Green Eggs & Ham.”  This was my favourite book when I was about 5 or 6 years old.  My poor Dad must have known that book by heart because I remember asking him to read it every single night for well over a year.  My heart is beaming with the joy of knowing that Alex feels confident in his achievement with his reading skills this year.  He read that book from cover to cover flawlessly & with a variety of voices & sound inflections.  And I could see that he has learned to enjoy reading at last. 

If we think about diabetes & the “Green Eggs & Ham” story perhaps a few things come to mind.  Do we want diabetes here or there?  Do we want it with a fox or mouse?  No & no would be my answers.  Of course having diabetes anywhere is annoying many times.  How about who we are with?  Diabetes care largely I find is easier when I am at home.   And being by myself or just with my nuclear family generally makes for less complicating self care.  That makes for a conflict in my experience.  It is not realistic nor desirable I think to withdraw from going out into the world fully & be around anyone or everyone from day to day.  There is no place like home though when my blood sugars are through the roof.  I would rather be “here” than any “there.”  So many times I have dragged myself through the motions when I am “there” (out in public) during high blood sugars.  It is beyond exhausting.  Getting back home often for me becomes the ultimate goal.  The comforts of home offer a refuge during the awful “highs” of diabetes.  And being able to just let our hair down so to speak at home versus putting on an Oscar award winning performance of “a healthy person” (whatever that looks like) is in my opinion a comfort as well.  The month of January was one that I wish to be neither here nor there as far as the sustained highs of diabetes were concerned.  I always have 5 basal profiles programmed  & none of them were working so I was in that land of reinventing the wheel as far as diabetes management goes.  On no given day will I give up though.  And don’t you ever give up either.  I was determined to get my blood sugars into goal range for February.   On a practical note, I have that big brother is watching feeling once again as from February forward, all my blood sugar information went towards my  A1C visit with my endocrinologist.   Without obsessing too much about it & instead taking it one day at a time, I will admit at the same time that I was committed to my goal of achieving an A1C in the under 7% range.  (I had not seen that endangered number in over 3 years)  That was a challenge for me yet one I will never throw the towel in on.  It seems to be a well guarded secret that when you are a gal trying to keep blood sugars in range from one week to the next is a freaking moving target especially at certain ages.  Please don’t get me wrong as I am not implying that diabetes management is not an albatross for guys or gals outside those age ranges.  I am simply saying that hormones are a brute.  It really is not spoken of for some reason.  That is far from helpful.  In any event, I will jump hurdles & find a way around obstacles in my fight to manage this beast of type 1 diabetes. 

This week’s second message was timely.  That’s the wisdom of messages.  They appear when we are ready & need them most I think.  There is a website that I absolutely love.  This is the source of the second message.  The message was that sometimes struggles in life come full circle to return to us.  It is like we think that we have already dealt with something or figured something out & voila, it returns again.  How do we feel when that happens?  Do we chastise ourselves in a way that suggests that we failed at solving something from the past?  I think I have done that to myself more times than I am comfortable admitting.  If only life were that simple & solvable.  Life can be a beautiful mess instead.  It is not cut & dry or black & white.  Frankly that would make for a pretty boring existence.  Life may go along the same squiggly line or roller coaster line that our blood sugar graphs follow.  Diabetes sure teaches me day in & day out that just because something worked one day does not equal success the next day with blood sugar control.  The variables are countless in diabetes blood sugar management.  Some days I would like to fire the manager of diabetes but oh dear, that would be me so instead I try to let the day go & try again the next day.  I am sure that AA has it right with “one day at a time.”  It really is the only way to embrace life & I think most especially life with diabetes.  It is the decision to wake up each day & say, for today I will do my best & then do that again the next day & so on.  My A1C numbers include 3 months worth of data but I am living those 3 months one day at a time thank goodness.  I need to concentrate on today & hopefully all those future today’s will keep me under an A1C of 7%.  The things I can control are my actions, determination & attitude & beyond that I have to let it go.  The website that provided this week’s timely message is called “Brave Girl’s Club.”  I would encourage you to check them out.  The message this week that I really needed to hear came from “Brave Girl’s Club” & it is essentially that struggles resurface sometimes because we heal a little bit at a time & that our bodies know how much we can endure.  That brought me to a different way of thinking about the re-living of struggles.  Instead of thinking of something resurfacing as a fail on my part as far as resolution, I could look at it differently.  Life is not black & white so this makes a great deal of sense to me.  It would be neat & tidy to deal with struggles head on & be done with them forever.  My experience is that is unrealistic.  A case in point is diabetes management.  To think that I have solved the mystery of why on some days I can eat something & have super blood sugar control yet the next day try to replicate the day & have brutally high blood sugars is unrealistic for me.  My body responses are different on different days.  What works one day can go very wrong on another day.  That is the nature of the beast of type 1 at times.  I would love to solve diabetes blood sugar control & be done with it.  I would like to take the equivalent of a defibrillator for my pancreas & re-start it.  Rest in peace pancreas you lazy such & such I say instead!  The heaviest lifting I ever do is doing the work 24 hours a day for my non functioning pancreas.  You will know exactly what I mean.  A little bit at a time though I am coming to a place where diabetes is concerned where I admit that more things than I like are a mystery & short of a pancreas replacement, there will be bumps along the way.  A little bit at a time I am coming closer to a place where I just live diabetes one day at a time & let go of perfection in any way with diabetes.  When I let go of those things it gives me so much more room for things like the gratitude that I have for the Dear Hearts in my life & just plain peace whether I am here or there or by myself or in a crowd.  That is pretty darned okay with me!

My heart’s hope for you is that you find peace in the chaos that is diabetes one day at a time too.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Little by little we are each building strength.  Be gentle with yourself & others in your life.  The world needs more gentleness released in every corner of the world.  Next Monday's sharing is "The Fruitful Tree."  :)

Does denial save us from facing our fears at times?  Do we sometimes play this game with ourselves of not admitting to situations in life that scare us?  Maybe this serves us at times or works against us.  I personally don’t in the least like the “jump out at you” movies & my experiences on heart pounding rides at the amusement parks are something that I don’t participate in anymore.  Both of these cause my blood sugars to skyrocket & it takes hours it seems to correct so I would just rather not bother with those activities.  I don’t feel like I am missing out by giving up these specific activities so it works out just fine.  There are countless other adventures to have that I find more enjoyable & more pleasing as well to my ever moving target of blood sugars.  For the things that I am passionate about I find a way to do them.   It can be difficult but my stubbornness catapults me towards creative solutions when needed. 

How about denial of our feelings & how that feeds into potential fear or not?  Is fear sometimes the elephant in the room?  If we don’t think about it or talk or admit to it, will it go away?  If we try to deny it all together, does it come out in other ways?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  I know that I cannot outrun myself emotionally so I have learned to face my own fears head on in the discomfort & all.  I am indescribably grateful on purpose each day.  On no day however will I claim to be the perfect mom, wife, person with diabetes, community member & whatever other hat that we each wear each day of our lives.   On the especially getting kicked down by 365’s days, the best response that my husband can give me is, “so the day did not suck so bad.”  It is a line out of a Rush video & so it kind of just gets an automatic laugh.  I am all about positive thinking & self motivation & I envelope myself in it daily by choice however I do not choose to live in denial at the same time.  I have learned that when I try to squash my feelings down that they pop out in other ways that are not healthy for me.  Each one of us is a beautiful original so we each make daily decisions for ourselves.  Maybe I have gotten to a point in my life where I am set free from any form of pretention & it is one of the best feelings.  If a day is going badly I just admit to it yet the feisty rascal within me remains determined to turn the day around.  I know if I do nothing or deny my own feelings that I am as stuck as if I were in quick sand. 

It is my belief that it takes tremendous courage to be the real deal in today’s world.  It takes backbone to be vulnerable, gentle, compassionate, and honest & hope filled.  It takes bravery to face fear right in its tracks & look right at it & finally be okay with it after doing this.  Having type 1 diabetes has magnified the greatest fear that I have.  This fear is the one of not being able to complete what I believe my calling is on earth. Is there ever “enough” time?  It is looking directly at my own fear of my mortality.   I know I am not in charge of how long I get to be here to answer this call & this leads me really in a circle back to my magnified fear.  When I got married & later welcomed 3 noisy, funny, adventure-filled sons into the world it was almost like I had a snap shot in my mind of what my life would look like.   The picture included celebrating all the big & small moments in life with my precious family.  The picture in my mind was so full & so vast & it included my husband & I growing old together (though I will never tell anyone my real age ha ha) & cheering on our sons as they grew up & pursue their dreams.  I saw a lot of time being given to do all these things.  All we really get though is one moment at a time.  Up until about 8 years ago I was a person that lived largely for the future I realized continuously planning for what was going to be next.  One day though I literally woke up & understood that I had let myself get out of balance.  I mean I was not really fully present in the moment & I did not like hearing myself say too often, “hold on a second” or “we will do that soon.”  I started to change all that by saying instead, “I am going to do that for you right now” & “we are going to do that on (fill in the blank) specific date.”  Type 1 magnified my biggest fear of not having the time that I so much want with all my loved ones.  I did though learn to trust more.  I learned to trust in technology when I became a pumper 6 years ago.  I admit that I had some panicked moments the first couple of weeks especially at night when I first went on the insulin pump.  I worried about a technological meltdown & the night is when it bothered me the most.  During the day I check my glucose & I thankfully have a sensitivity to low blood sugars that alerts me to the lows with the shakes, sweats, slurred speech, absolute confusion, numb tongue & more.  Honestly, I am still most fearful of the mystery of what goes on physiologically with the fine balance between insulin & type 1 diabetes in the night.  I don’t think about it often yet when I do, I feel frantic.  The times that I think about it most are on the nights when I wake up in the middle of the night with a low blood sugar & the next morning after that has happened.  Last night at 2am yet again I was woken from a deep sleep by the sweats & shakes, numb tongue & confusion that even in my stupor I knew was yet another low blood sugar.  The feelings of absolute fear hit me really the most surrounding night time lows the next morning.  Insulin is a serious thing & has to be balanced so precisely & my body physiologically does some pretty bizarre things at times when it comes to how it is going to work with or against insulin at different times of the day & night.  Blood sugar control is a moving target with me at this point in my life physiologically.  It is not comfortable facing the big fears yet I have found a couple of things out while doing just that.  The first thing is that this fear makes me more present each & every day to making decisions based on what matters most.  It also gave me the gift of cutting through the nonsense that can run rampant & just be unapologetically myself with no pretense.  It gave me the gift of living each & every moment more fully so I am packing in intense love, care, honesty, vulnerability, compassion, kindness & more in whatever environment I am in.  The other thing that I have really noticed is that my big fear has led me to an even huger level of daily gratitude as well as trust/faith.  Sure some days can stink for any of us yet we don’t want to turn into the moaners & groaners out there who don’t have diabetes or other “365’s” complaining about a simple head cold who seem to have a pretty significant problem handling much at all.   We can face our fears & become stronger & be present in the world in a positive, uplifting way.  As they say, the strong people  lift others up.    Fear does at times live within me yet I cannot successfully run away from even a part of myself.  In learning to admit it is there & know that I am okay has been huge.  And who would have guessed that fear really lead me to even greater strength & faith. 

My hearts hope for you is that you know that our purpose here on earth is one of a kind.  The things in our lives that we think might hold us back so often seem to lead to a strength that we did not even know that we have within us.  Then we send this out into the world.  Then the world changes for the better.  Go ahead, send out some of your strength.  You will make a difference.  What you are & do makes a difference.

Smiles,  Saundie

May you find ways to lift others up in your wee corner of the world.  We need that in all the corners of the world.  Next Monday's sharing is "It's An Awful Lot Like Green Eggs & Ham."  Be gentle with yourself & others.  xo

Have you had tea parties with an angel?  I have.

My Heart’s Twin knows this story by heart.   Her story is written already within my heart.  Diabetes is only a tiny footnote within this story because you will soon know with all your soul that this story is really only about love in its purest, most beautiful, unconditional and unending form.  Through what feels like oceans of tears I transfer from my heart onto paper the story of my number 1 Battle Buddy, Cheryl, “My Heart’s Twin.”

Cheryl & I met just less than 3 years ago yet we packed in a lifetime of laughs, smiles, tea, truth, heartfelt conversations & hugs.  It was a friendship where we felt from the very start that we knew one another’s hearts already.  In my usual rascally way, I felt compelled to give Cheryl a nickname.  We had started out with that one you can do online when we were feeling especially silly by getting a nickname by saying your birthday followed by what you ate for breakfast that day.  Cheryl started out with the nickname of “April Oatmeal” & I got “July Smoothie” but neither of those nicknames stuck for more than a week or 2.  The nickname that did stick & remains always for Cheryl that I gave her was & is, “My Heart’s Twin.”  We had so much instantly in common & most of all profoundly sentimental hearts.  We had found our twin & there is not a word bigger than joy that I can think of to describe that feeling.  It was at the very least euphoria.  There is nothing like someone else who understands our sentimental hearts.  We did not have to apologize for being sentimental or mushy & stuff like that because we were twins that way.  We had that “me too” feeling & it felt like a gift.  It was & it is.  As an aside, what is the best gift for absolutely anyone & everyone that you cannot buy from a store & yet is returnable (we give back to one another)?  It is love.  Cheryl gave that gift big time.

Having a bit of a stubborn, rascally streak, it took me a good long while to finally reach out to others living with type 1 diabetes.  After going it alone for the first couple of years of living with type one I took a leap of faith & this lead me to a spectacular “Battle Buddy. “ I joined a few type 1 diabetes support groups in the hope of finding someone who understood the day in day out diabetes world.  The wish for this became more than that & I soon found myself adding this to my prayers.  Not long after this Cheryl & I met up in the support group & found out that our homes were only a 45 minute drive apart.  We were big time thrilled.  And I had to pinch myself when I found out that Cheryl was a fellow tea enjoyer too.  We then framed our planned get togethers in an umbrella phrase of “that’s what we will do or have at our next tea party!”

It feels like yesterday that my Heart’s Twin, Cheryl & her wonderful husband & I met for tea at Teavanna for the first time.  The moment Cheryl arrived, I knew it was her & we gave one another a huge hug as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  They felt like family instantly.  Your heart recognizes family every time.  Our cup of tea turned into a full afternoon of tea together & we laughed until our faces were sore.  We talked like we had known one another forever & of course our hearts had.  Sometimes it takes years to meet your twin but when you do you know it!  One of the best things that Cheryl mentioned was her absolute distain for green peas.  Right away I smiled & filed.  I smiled & told her, “me too.”  I filed because the rascal with a sense of humor within me knew that Cheryl & I would have a lot of future laughs over our shared detesting of green peas.  We sure did.  When I would arrive at Cheryl’s building & call up to her apartment & she would answer I would reply with a badly done impression of any accent that I could think of & state that I had her green pea delivery.  The last time I visited Cheryl she answered me in the lobby with an accent she had come up with. 

Cheryl & I talked on the phone & then on the internet after meeting initially in the type 1 diabetes support group.  Like I just mentioned, we met in person over tea at Teavanna & that was & is a treasured memory.  Soon after we had gotten together over that first (bottomless) cup of tea we knew that we needed to plan for our next tea get together.  We planned to meet at Cheryl’s home.  I shared with Cheryl that you can take the girl out of the small town but not the small town out of the girl & that I have some challenges when it comes to driving in city traffic. (Okay, let’s just be honest, I am a chicken when it comes to heavy traffic)  A way would be found though because you cannot keep friends of the heart apart.  I told her jokingly that I would find a “goat path” to her place.  I did find that type of path to Cheryl’s place & we fondly referenced it as “over the lift bridge.”  Prior to meeting Cheryl, I had never gone to her town before or over the lift bridge to get to her home.  The drive is quite a peaceful one & it was the drive reserved for visiting my Heart’s Twin.  During one drive to get to Cheryl’s place, the lift bridge was lifted so that a large ship could pass through to the other side of the Lake.  That was rare for the lift bridge to be up like that thankfully though because I just wanted to get to my friend’s home so that we could share our time together.  Another time I had to stop & wait for a train on the way to her place.  I told Cheryl once I arrived at her place that train had a lot of nerve holding our visit up & we laughed & hugged the stuffing out of one another.  Every single time Cheryl & I wrote to one another or spoke  we told one another that we loved each other.  Love absolutely lasts forever.  In between visits we sent messages to one another always ending with, “over the lift bridge & across the Lake, here comes some hugs so catch.”  I am still sending those hugs over the same lift bridge & across the Lake & all the way up to heaven to my Heart’s Twin & I always will.

What patience my Heart’s Twin gave to me.  She smiled through me nicknaming her cat, “Zen Kitty” as well as silly jokes & bizarre tea blends.  Cheryl was always up for some fun & so genuine, kind & inspiring.  Although diabetes had been unkind to Cheryl, she showed diabetes that it did not get the last word, middle word or first word.  She gave others an example of what compassion, kindness, encouragement, hope & faith & friendship & love look like with a neon light.  When we got together for tea, sometimes we would not even bother to drink our tea because it never really was about the tea.  My heart hopes that you too have experienced that indescribable feeling of what it feels like to be able to talk to someone heart to heart with total peace & no censorship.  We complimented one another on how we were the cool kids because we really rocked our insulin pumps.   We could & did talk easily about everything & anything from ladies issues to diabetes peeves to our kids, to the world being upside down & inside out at times to our shared disgust for green peas to our shared unshakeable faith in God.

It was so neat for both Cheryl & I to find that I loved to cook & bake & she did not enjoy this so I got to stir in the love for our tea lunches together.  I am smiling as I remember the first salad that I made for us.  It had almost everything that I could think of in it.  I would joke that I had to cover off all the food groups so that we would not get scurvy.  Cheryl laughed at all my corny jokes & kind of egged me on & we both loved that feeling.  She asked me what was in the salad & I listed them off & then when I got to the end I added with a laugh that it was also absolutely swimming in green peas & I hoped she wouldn’t mind that.  I said it with a straight face & it took a few seconds before the 2 of us burst out into laughter.  She told me that she had never had avocadoes before.  I replied, “You are going to love them because they are covered in bacon.”  Cheryl put up with all my going on & on about how delicious bacon is with the patience of Job.  She just let me be me & she got to just be her beautiful self.  We laughed & we cried & then we laughed some more & always always gave one another bear hugs & cheered one another on.  We cheered one another on the good days & the challenging days.  The thing that I first remember about Cheryl when I met her in the support group was she was a huge encourager.  She encouraged people with generous compassion whose faces she never came to know.  Cheryl gave love because that is what filled her. 

Each time we met for our tea lunches, Cheryl always insisted that I choose the tea.  The more bizarre the better was kind of our motto when it came to tea.  It was never about the tea anyway & we knew it.  She caught me the very first time I did what became my famous leave behind maneuver.  My modus operands was to leave at least one bowl behind at her place & I told her that was so that she would invite me back.  It became standard operating procedure from that visit on.  We did not say good bye after any visit but always, “to be continued.”  Our friendship is unending & the love that remains from my Heart’s Twin is being cherished in a treasured place in my heart.  There is no distance that love cannot reach I know with all certainty.  Love continues.  Love does not end.

There is a popular saying that behind every great man there is a great woman.  It turns out that behind my amazing Heart’s Twin, there are 2 great gentlemen, her husband & son.  The way that Cheryl spoke of her husband & her son is something precious & rare.  She was so grateful for the love & selfless care of her husband & hugely proud of her son & his musical gifts.  She spoke of her husband with the respect & honour & love that grew every single day.  Her son was her miracle & she bravely told him that she loved him unapologetically & all her friends sure knew the Mom’s love that she carried with her.  As a sweet aside, there were times when Cheryl & I visited & we would talk about things that we loved about being moms to sons.  Cheryl always beamed when she spoke of her son.  One day I mentioned jokingly to her that when my oldest son who is now a teenager answers my attempts at conversation with vague one word answers or noises that I reply, “Nice chat son, meaningful.”  Cheryl laughed & laughed & just simply said, “Saundie, our sons love us & they know we love them & that’s all that matters…not the words.”

Most of us have heard ourselves or someone else say, “I have this feeling or intuition.”  There have been times when I have heard stories of literal twins who have had a feeling about the other one even when they are apart.  On April 16^th, I woke up in a melancholy mood & kept asking myself what that was all about.  I looked literally at the calendar & asked myself if there was something about this day that I should know.  I just had that feeling that something did not feel right.  The day continued that way & I just had a sadness that I could not explain.  That was the morning that my Heart’s Twin left us far, far too soon.  My heart hurts to be here without my Heart’s Twin yet I know without a doubt that she is safely in heaven.  Hopefully she will put a good word in for this rascal who is blessed to call her friend.  Just as our tea visits were continuations versus separate individual visits, that is how our friendship is too.  I have not stopped saying, “see you next time.”  In the meantime, I am finding ways to honour the blessing of this friendship which is a story of love.  Love has no end. 

Cheryl always expressed her appreciation & was generous with her kindness & sent me messages of gratitude.  She so often told me that I had done something or said something to fill her with happiness.  Each time I always reminded my Heart’s Twin that what she saw was really herself & that I was really always only holding the mirror so that she could see her beautiful self.  And I usually added that she was the angel & I was the rascal.  Angels do have tea with rascals I always knew.  This friendship is a blessing & continues just as love continues.  I miss my friend with such a heavy heart & somehow she has found a way all the way from heaven to give her family & friends comfort.  If that is not the definition of an angel then I really don’t know what is.  In a few minutes I will close with the comforting & loving words that Cheryl shared.  Her gift of love goes on.  Cheryl & I met because of diabetes yet diabetes soon became a mere footnote.  We really met I have come to see because we were & are Heart’s twins. 

The last time that Cheryl & I had one of our tea lunches, my Heart’s Twin said, “next time let’s go out somewhere really fun & do something new.”  I told her that I would put my thinking cap on & I did.  For our next get together for late April or early May, I was going to make a traditional high tea for us & arrive in a fancy tea hat & bring one for her too.  I was planning for the visit after to surprise her by arranging to take her out to a really neat teahouse restaurant & wear our hats & be silly.  I know she would have loved that. 

My Heart’s Twin & I both loved inspirational quotes.  We loved to share words from our hearts & share quotes from others that we felt would touch other people’s hearts.  That really is what love is anyway, right, closing the gap between hearts so that more love can pour in I think.  That was one of Cheryl’s super powers.  Cheryl had a generous heart & she loved to share words of inspiration & hope with family & friends all the time.  This past winter, Cheryl shared this message with friends & family (Entitled “Letter from Heaven”…author unknown):

“When tomorrow starts without me

And I’m not here to see

If the sun should rise and find your

Eyes filled with tears for me.

I wish so much you wouldn’t cry

The way you did today

While thinking of the many things

We didn’t get to say

I know how much you love me

As much as I love you

And each time you think of me

I know you will miss me too.

When tomorrow starts without me

Don’t think we’re far apart

For every time you think of me

I am right there in your heart.”

This week I will be driving over the lift bridge to honour my Heart’s Twin & celebrate her life & the love that lives within the hearts of each & every one of her family & friends.  My friend’s life & love is the candle & she let each one of us hold the mirror. 

In honour & love for Cheryl.  I love you xo.   Over the lift bridge & across the Lake & up to heaven, catch, Cheryl xoxo

My heart hopes that you have a beautiful friendship like this too.  It is the greatest gift.  Please be brave & tell your Dear Hearts in your life that you love them & hug them big time every time you see one another.  See one another often.  Friendship is precious. Here's the thing about me & that is that once you are my friend it is forever & always to be continued.   My next story will be shared in 2 weeks on Monday May 25th. 

In Love & Friendship,

Saundie xo

(As a prelude to this writing, I will share with you that my heart has been big time heavy due to the loss of a very Dear Friend ( and huge encourager within many diabetes communities) & my heart was really instead dedicated to writing  of her beautiful story which I  have completed & will share with you next Monday.) 

Do you sometimes over ride your gut feelings/intuition/hunches?  How does that usually work out?  With an exclamation mark I answer those questions for myself with, “yes” & “badly!”  Although it is still very much a work in progress, this rascal is trying more diligently to not over ride my gut feelings but instead to act on them as well.  With practice, I have found that I have gotten much better at this.  Things can really boil down to the simplicity of “if it feels wrong it likely is.”  We all have an inner voice yet how much do we trust it? 

Have you experienced some form of false negative?  Maybe it turned into good news or maybe not such welcome news.  I will share with you that I have had both.   Let’s start with the false negative that turned out to be one of the most beautiful treasures of my life.  Like many gals, each time I was expecting one of our sons, I had that “feeling” already yet wanted that verification in the form of a test.  I remember taking an at home pregnancy test with our oldest son as well as our second born son & the tests coming back quickly with positives.  Often you will hear the saying, “the third time is the charm” yet maybe it was not to be as far as trusty results with the at home pregnancy test the third time.  ( over 8 years ago)  I remember having that feeling that a new life was growing  but  seeing the results come back immediately with a negative.  It felt like it just was not right.  I don’t mean that in the sense of denial.  It was my intuition or gut feel that was super strong & kept telling me that the test somehow had to be wrong.  Our oldest son & youngest son were both miracle surprises & our middle son is our planned miracle.  My heart has lived even more on the outside with the welcoming of each of these beautiful blessings.  If you are a parent you will know exactly how this feels too.  A couple of days after the false test result, my husband & our 2 sons & I went away on a planned celebration for a weekend for Matt for his 7^th birthday to Niagara Falls.  Our sons, Matt & Brian had a blast taking in the sights there.  The highlight for Brian was going to the Hershey’s factory since he is our “sugar bear” with the sweet tooth.  We had to intervene when he was about to try to take a bite out of the giant Hershey kiss mascot since he was convinced that it was a real chocolate.  Matt “marveled” at the huge Spiderman & Green Goblin on the side of one of the buildings.  Best of all, Matt loved seeing his name posted on the VIP list for the morning of his birthday at the inn we were staying at for all the guests to see with a “happy birthday Matt R.”  He smiled the hugest smile & it warmed our hearts.  All 4 of us let the child within us come alive when we enjoyed dinner at the Rainforest Café with the entertainment of all the jungle animals.  My husband asked me if I would like a glass of wine with dinner & I said that I could not.  I could not because my heart of hearts told me that even though I had received a negative test that I was certain without a doubt that a new little love was going to be joining our family against the odds.  Not long after that birthday weekend celebration I made an appointment with my family doctor to have that test repeated.  Sure enough, the test came back positive.  I was grateful that I had trusted my gut feeling.  8 months later we welcomed our third son (Alex-gator is his nickname) to our family & the noisy love story continues. 

The false negative that has proven to be an example of the second type (negative false negative…well for mathies I guess that means 2 negatives make a positive) is very recent.  For the past 6 weeks I have caught one virus or something like that after the other.  It has been so frustrating.  This is the second I will pause to yell at my less than stellar autoimmune system to “cut it out already!”  Wake up autoimmune system & do something.  I am not asking my pancreas to do anything… however I am wondering where the rest of the defenses against the viruses that go around from winter to early spring are within my immune system.  I had made it all the way to March Break without even a cold & then rats, my luck has gone downhill from there & all the bugs that were going around seem to have come at me one after the other.  This is not going to be a woe is me story though.  I feel  run down however as feisty & rascally as ever.   My blood sugars have been even more all over the map over the last 6 weeks & although that comes as less than a surprise, it is frustrating because these are the numbers that carry the most weight on my current A1C which has now been sent to my Endo. appointment in time for our next appointment which is today.  If you have type 1 diabetes you will know what I mean when I am saying that I am conflicted about going to this appointment to find out my A1C results.  There is that part of me that is ever hopeful that somehow my results will be within my goal range.  The realist within me though knows that the numbers are just that, cold, hard numbers.  The numbers don’t care if you have been working your butt off to keep blood sugars in check even though you are battling anything extra on top of it.  Although there is a reason for what I think will be disappointing A1C result numbers, it really sounds like an excuse albeit it a truthful one for yet another crappy result.  Against all odds, I am hoping for below 7% however that is a long shot.  It is what it is.  Back to the latest of the bugs going around that my autoimmune system has said yes to taking on.  During the week of April 13^th on top of the excruciating abdominal pains I came down with a brutally sore throat.  Immediately my gut feeling was that it was the strep throat.  I did reason with myself though for 4 days telling myself that every sore throat is not the strep so I sucked it up.  Finally after 4 days I went to the walk in clinic which I talked about last week in my story about medical tests.  As I had mentioned, the rapid strep throat swab came back negative.  I was very relieved.  My skin however disagreed with a vengeance.  A year ago I got strep throat for the first time in my life & it resulted in me receiving an unwelcome permanent souvenir in the form of another chronic illness which is psoriasis on top of the other chronic illnesses that I also have.   Psoriasis is the only 365 (chronic illness) that I have that is visible.  It is one that also has the capacity to go into remission so I have been working my butt off for a full year trying to do just that & I will not give up on that happening ever.  It is just a matter of when not if.  The psoriasis that I experience goes through a multitude of stages at times almost clearing & at other times flaring & resulting in very bad days in terms of pain as well as ugliness.  Even after receiving the news from the walk in clinic that I did not have strep throat the psoriasis disagreed & flared & continues to flare painfully.  I decided a few days after receiving the false for  the strep test at the walk in to listen to my gut hunch as well as my skin & go to my family doctor.  The swab that they do for the strep is more accurate although the test results are not available for just over 2 days.  By this point I was really thinking that I did have the strep throat all along because my skin was flaring like mad & my taste buds were all but gone which I experienced last time I had strep & of course my throat was not getting better, etc.  Sure enough my doctor’s office called me on April 23^rd & told me that I do actually have strep throat.  I started immediately on an antibiotic.  I don’t do well at the best of times on antibiotics as I am allergic to penicillin so anytime I need to have an antibiotic prescribed it is something different.  Without fail each time I have some sort of funky reaction to the medication.  My track record in this regard remains intact.  This time around the reaction is one of extreme nausea which reminds me of around the clock morning sickness.  Gravol is currently my best friend.  You know already that the doctor always emphasizes that with antibiotics you have to take every last pill that has been prescribed.  That makes 10 -24 hour days then for the morning sickness like nausea so I am looking so forward to seeing that come to an end.  Even with this going on though I find countless things to be grateful for each & every day. 

Without hesitation I will say that no sickness whatsoever gets the last word in my life or in the lives of those that I love.  Sometimes life gives us false negatives.  Does our intuition guide us to double check the false negatives?  I think so.

My heart’s hope for you is that whether you find yourself facing false negatives or any other situation in life that you listen closely to the voice within you that we often call our intuition.  Maybe it is an angel whispering in our ear.  Listen to that voice.

Saundie

May you have a gentle week.  Next Monday's sharing is a dear love story.  Diabetes does not get the first, middle or last word for any of us...love always gets the last word. The story straight from my heart is  "Over the Lift Bridge."  xoxo Catch Battle Buddy

Tests can be testing don’t you find?  Presented in a variety of ways each one of us faces tests in one form or another.  We may find that our reaction to some of these is different at various times.  Do we sometimes get “testy” (grouchy) during tests & other times find that we can take a “water off a duck’s back” approach?  There are so many variables each time don’t you agree? 

For today, let’s share some time thinking about the physical tests that come our way & the parallel reactions.  Living with one or many 365’s provides oodles of experiences with medical tests for instance.  Oh the deli line type take a number feeling that is so often involved in attending medical appointments or tests can be trying.   Time is not going to go by any faster whether I decide to get “testy” or choose to take the appointment in stride.  The bigger challenge I find though is  when I walk into an environment with other people while squeezed in like sardines & the tension in the room is screaming.  The choice still remains within me of not falling prey to buying into the tension in the room.  Recently I watched a brief interview on tv of Dr. Von Hildebrand describing the social tendency for negativity to act in no time to infect groups of people in any given environment.  She shared that unfortunately the same is not true of positivity with the same level of ease.  Each one of us has likely only too often witnessed situations where we have gone into an environment where there are moaners & groaners or worse people tearing other people down verbally with evident elevated levels of enjoyment.  At times we have to work pretty hard at positivity becoming contagious.  The alternative I have found is to detach myself from any given outcome when I enter a room where you can feel the negativity in the air like a virus.  Basically all this means is that I just decide not to let myself catch the negativity & just be myself & if another person comes away feeling more optimistic than that is a bonus.  This has been a work in progress for me over the years because my natural tendency has been to try to cheer others up.  Some people I have learned don’t necessarily want to be cheered up & I have learned to read those cues & not beat my head against the wall but rather just live by example versus talking someone into what may be a happier existence for them.  Each person gets to decide whether he or she wants to remain in an existence of misery or hope.  Our individual situations can really stink at times because life sometimes throws some pretty punishing blows.  It is inspirational beyond description to me when I have come across people who have lived through huge battles & challenges & yet choose to live with hope, compassion, care of others, and love.  I have & have had many beautiful people like this in my life.  This past Monday morning I lost another Dear Heart to the cruelty of cancer.  My friend was 3 years older than me & she was so sick while she battled cancer especially during the past 6 months.  Most people were unaware of her health battle because she always had the hugest smile on her face, was soft spoken & always asked everyone around her how they were doing & then really listened for the response.  She was a listener & a peace maker & a shining example of love in action.  She helped others in ways that most people will never hear about because she loved because that was what her whole life was about.  She did it all quietly.  Her faith remained stronger than words could say.  Others often watch us as we go through life’s battles.  I have had people say to me that they wonder why my faith grows stronger with growing 365’s.  People have asked me some big faith questions & they were easy to answer I found.  My friend’s love lives on in each person’s life that she touched.  In the past 2 years I have had to say goodbye to many friends who have lost the cruel battle of cancer.  The love of each friend remains as strong & present as ever.  The only final thing to say about cancer is please let there be a cure.

An example that quickly comes to mind when I think about negatively contagious environments is the blood lab in my area.  There are 2 that I go to.  One is especially a downer environment.  This is the lab that I found myself at out of necessity this past week.  Could it be my imagination or is the room smaller each time I go there?  It does not seem to matter what time of the day you go there, the room is completely full & the line up is well out the door & out into the hallway.  People are squeezed in like sardines & it feels like some sort of humid, scorching temperature gone bad.  On this visit, there was a person that seemed to be almost hacking up a lung almost continuously which felt disconcerting.  It is possible that the individual needed a lab test done immediately so had to come there hacking cold & all.  It just kind of left you with the impression that you could come away even sicker than when you arrived at the lab due to the what seemed like total lack of fresh air intake.  The more time that went by, the grumpier the environment became & the sound of exasperation was available in surround sound.  The lab waiting room felt like one of the circle’s of Dante’s Inferno.  We will circle back to yesterday’s lab appointment in a couple of minutes while I fill in the why of what got me there.

For 2 solid weeks I have been having brutal abdominal pains.  I am no stranger to abdominal pains as I have experienced these from time to time over the past 5 years.  Your gut though can have a gut feeling that something is different & this was the case.  It was a different kind of pain in a different area of the general tummy area.  What the heck now I thought to myself as I kept a stiff upper lip for a couple of weeks along with a heating pad hoping that the pains would take a hike.  Last week I came down with a big time sore throat on top of that & my blood sugars went berserk.  Sky high blood sugars can be a sign of sickness that is happening somewhere in my body.  Since the high blood sugars were consistent & without reason for day after day I wondered if I had come down with strep throat again.  It was a dozy of a sore throat & the thing I learned about step throat from last year is that it was not just going to go away on its own plus in my case it also leads to other 365 challenges.  Reluctantly I decided after 4 days of having pain with each swallow that I would drive over to a walk in clinic & get the rapid strep swab.  Thankfully the test came back negative.  The doctor though said to me that although it tends to be a childhood illness that I had many symptoms of mono.  I never would have imagined that however as I have shared so many times I have heard the words, “that is usually a childhood illness” so many times & been in the outlier group in terms of those diagnoses countless times.  The doctor at the walk in did say that there was no reason to find out if I have mono or not since from a medical perspective nothing is usually done for the patient other than telling the patient to get rest & refrain from contact sports & heavy lifting.  He jokingly said, “So no rugby for you.”  I did appreciate that wee laugh.  The abdominal pains just kept getting worse & it took a lot of discipline on my part not to “google” what this may or may not be.  Instead I decided that it was time for me to make an appointment with my family doctor & spill the beans on what was going on to see what is going on with this body of mine.  Right away I was given 2 medical requisition forms…one for an ultrasound & the other for blood work.  I am still very much a wuss when it comes to having to get blood work done & remembered that I was scheduled for blood work for A1C next week so I asked the doctor’s office if I could wait until next week to get both sets of blood work done at the same time.  I received a quick “no” understandably.  My creative brain went to work during the drive home from the doctor’s office.  It occurred to me in light speed that I could move my A1C test up by a week & that way I could have the blood work done in one visit versus 2.  The medical building that I had the ultrasound appointment scheduled for the next day conveniently has a blood lab right across the hall there.  It is the blood lab though that I tend to try to avoid because it is always jam packed & it is usually an especially grumpy environment as I described earlier.  I decided that the potential grumpiness & being a sardine for most of the morning would be worth it to have that “one stop shop” medical testing & get it over with feeling.  I thought I was pretty clever to arrive 90 minutes ahead of my ultrasound appointment so that I could easily get the blood work done first.  The best laid plans though sometimes just don’t go as smoothly as hoped for.  I got my deli line number for blood work & amalgamated myself into the clan of fellow sardines with my book & the attitude of remaining in the mood that I had arrived with of cheerfulness.  I think I landed on a neutral zone of attitude by the time the morning was over.  85 minutes went by.  Each of us had been told in the line up that the wait would be 45 minutes.  I had to get back into the long line to get my health card back so that I could race across the hall to the ultrasound clinic for my scheduled appointment still awaiting the blood test.  The lab tech told me that was a pity because I would be called in the next 10 minutes.  So much for clever & so much for smooth however I refused to get grumpy about it.  This was not convenient but certainly not one of life’s mountains.  It will not surprise you to hear that once I went across the hall for my other test that I ended up waiting in the waiting room there for about 15-20 minutes.  Bummer I thought to myself because if I could have registered at the ultrasound lab & then returned to the blood lab then the waiting could have at least been productive.  Both offices needed my health card at the same time so alas I needed to remain in the new waiting room.  On a very positive note it was a spacious area with non humid scorching temperatures.  I had a great book with me so that makes a nice difference too so I just hunkered down & enjoyed reading in comfort.  After that test I went back across the hall & within minutes was back in the lineup for the blood work.  When my turn arrived I noticed that the 2 requisition forms had diminished into 1.  I have learned to advocate for myself & let the super nice lab tech know that I had handed in 2 forms.  They had been separated by accident so it was a very good thing that I told her otherwise my clever plan of getting all the blood work done in 1 appointment would have been foiled.  I will admit without hesitation that would have put me in a bad mood even with my determination to stay cheerful.  Almost 3 hours after first arriving at the blood lab, the tests were finally done & I could leave to have breakfast since I had to fast for all the tests.  It was after lunch time by this time & my blood sugars had gone even more berserk.  Thank goodness for Angus so that I could begin the insulin corrections which ended up taking about 6 hours to get back into any semblance of range. 

Adding in a light aside, whenever I have to go for a bunch of medical appointments or a Dear Heart has the bunch of medical appointments I will usually say, “don’t forget the Air Miles card” because I think we should get Air Miles reward points for attending medical appointments.  That would be a bonus, right?  Since we don’t get the reward miles, I decided to stop at a Canadian mainstay as a rare treat, Tim Horton’s aka “Timmy’s.”  The reward would be a dark coffee.  The bonus came in the form of chatting it up with a lady that I did not know over hockey.  We had a really great chat about a zillion things but how cool is it that it all just started over hockey, eh, in Tim Horton’s of all places.  She is also a Montreal fan so that was a neat bonus.   While waiting for test results, I don’t need to become “testy” or crusty or grumpy but instead I get to look forward to lots more great hockey eh.

My heart’s hope for you is that when you find yourself being tested by the medical tests & appointments that you have something to look forward to afterwards.  Maybe for you it is hockey too!

Smiles, Saundie

It absolutely crushes my heart to find out after writing this story that My Heart’s Twin, My Number 1 Type 1 Battle Buddy (Cheryl) has been taken far too soon.  Thankfully, every single time we spoke in any way we always told one another that we loved each other.  In the next 2-3 weeks I will be sharing a profoundly special story of my friend, Cheryl with you. We met because we both had type 1 diabetes yet diabetes never gets the last word ever...the last word goes to love every single time.   Although I have begun writing Cheryl's beautiful story, it is the most difficult writing I have ever experienced...it is gut wrenching because I have lost one of my Dearest friends.    Next Monday’s story sharing is “False Negative” which is about the results of the medical tests I had recently.  May everyone be as gentle, encouraging, caring, loving & brave as Cheryl & tell all your loved ones that you love them every time you see them or talk to them.  None of us know if it is the last time we will get that chance before heaven comes.  I love you Cheryl & miss you  beyond words. xo

Are you familiar with the game “duck, duck goose?”  Most of us played that one at some point or another during our childhood.  Our youngest son, Alex really doesn’t like it if I come into the room where he & his brothers are playing & lightly pat each son on the head saying, “duck, duck goose” just for fun.  Somehow it just seems to happen in chronological order so Alex tends to get the “goose” as his head is lightly touched.  I have stopped doing that when I come into a room with our 3 sons because Alex’s level of irritation with that is significant & no one likes to be “bugged” especially at home…our oasis from the world.

Do you find that you look forward to the oasis of your home on those especially trying days in the world?  Maybe they are the days where you are paddling like mad as a duck does however only you know the efforts that you are putting into just maintaining survival mode.  The feet of the duck under the water are not being seen by the world because type 1 diabetes can be largely an invisible “365.”  How often do you hear people say that you must be all better because you look great?  All better?  What other serious chronic illness that you have to fight to literally live each day would be met with others stating that you are all better?  Please don’t get me wrong because I really don’t want anyone to tell me that I look sick as a dog either.  What I would really love is if many people would stop being overly familiar and frankly many times disrespectful when it comes to peanut gallery style unsolicited comments where my health is concerned.  It is almost like we are living in an upside down world I believe the way that many times people will comment on things that would be better left unsaid & then on the other hand they remain silent when compassionate words would make a human connection that  most of us tend to thrive on.  A quick & easy example of things left unspoken more often than not is when others have experienced a loss & are grieving.  So often there is an almost egg timer of support offered if at all to the person grieving.  People have really bought into the “time heals all wounds” propaganda that prevails in society.  That is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me however because time actually can leave us stuck if genuine support, compassion and love in action are missing.  Compassion is not pity or sympathy or kind of an arms length of feeling sorry for someone while one is in the presence of the person suffering.  Compassion is the real deal.  Compassion is the bravery to feel the depths that the suffering person is experiencing & to not shrink over time or distance.  True compassion I believe is a rare & beautiful thing.  If you have someone in your life that is genuinely compassionate then please hold on tight to them & keep them in your life.  Most of us will be very familiar with the phrase, “if you don’t have anything nice to say then say nothing at all.”  I know this is a frequent piece of guidance that I give our middle son as he has impulse control challenges as he has ADHD.  He blurts out words that can be hurtful & later feels great remorse.  He feels genuinely sorry for the hurtful words yet is still working on trying to hit the imaginary pause button on his voice to give his conscience or self governor a chance to catch up with his words.  There are countless adults that seem to have misplaced the pause button on themselves too because what would appear to be impulsive, hurtful words are evident throughout some days.  What do we do with that & about that?  It is one & the same for me.  It is to learn from this.  It is the learning of what not to do or be like.  It is the decision to purposefully put uplifting & encouraging, genuine words of support out into the world.  You may say that you are only one person.  Please loose the word “only.”  The world has & is changed by magnificent people by one person at a time.   Let’s be the group that simply tries day by day to just do the next right thing regardless of what anyone or everyone around us is doing.  Paddle those feet under the water like a duck in the direction of sending out kindness into the world in your own way.  There is only one you & the world needs you to be you.

Health wise I have continued to paddle like a duck with the invisible challenges that just keep pumicing me one after the other.  For a continuous month now I have had one illness on top of the  usual 365’s hit one after the other.  It could get to me if I were not such a feisty rascal.  The depths of hope that I have are a gift.  Having hope means that each day that I wake up I say, “this is the day that I am going to feel so much better.”  One of these mornings this is going to be true.  And one of these mornings I would also love to wake up to see “normal” skin aka psoriasis in remission however I am not putting my life on hold in the meanwhile. Speaking of ducks, have you heard the saying, “what a strange duck” at times?  It does not tend to be a complimentary reference.  Since the psoriasis over a year later is still not showing signs of going into remission as we approach bathing suit season, I have come up with a plan to wear leggings over my bathing suit as I am not willing to have people stare at me & or make statements about the freakishness of my legs like last summer.  I may look like a “strange duck” wearing leggings over my bathing suit but it is going to be worth it.  I had some extremely hurtful comments hurled at me last year on the few occasions that I had the guts to wear shorts during the summer.  One girl even yelled out at me,”Ew, your legs are gross.”  Can you imagine?  It only takes a few profoundly unkind words to potentially upset the day.  The realization that some people just have not had health challenges reminds me that perhaps that may be part of the reason that they are devoid of any compassion.  The reality though is that I cannot imagine that people don’t know better than to be hurtful.  It is a choice though & I know that I cannot control how others behave.  What I learn from the small group of especially hurtful people is even greater depths of compassion.  Thankfully most people are either kind or show courtesy or are neutral in their words I have found.  The people that I am indescribably grateful for & to are the small group of genuine, compassionate encouragers.  I try to spend as much time as possible with these Dear Hearts.  Time with these extraordinary encouragers is medicinal & is the antidote to the unkindness that is sometimes hurled out in the world.  And thankfully, my noisy, home is my oasis & refuge.  My heart’s hope is that you have an oasis & refuge that is peaceful too whether it too is noisy or something else.

This past week, I had 2 what might appear to be “odd duck, duck, duck goose” moments.  The first was that I saw a Canada goose that was cuddled in looking relaxed in the middle of a moderately busy parking lot.  It appeared to be enjoying a sunny day without a worry in the world.  There are oodles of wooded spaces in our surrounding area so it seemed “odd duck” to choose what seemed like a less than peaceful location to soak up some rays.  That goose though was just happy where he or she was.  It reminded me that it is important to take our oasis with us attitudinally.  It means to me that no matter what is going on in the world around me that I can choose to be peaceful or calm even within the chaos of it all.  That is a work in progress since I am at heart a sentimental & emotional being who is still learning to press the pause button on how I choose to receive nonsense around me.   The other “odd duck” thing that I saw this week was during a commute to the next city over from us a week ago Sunday.   We passed by one of the huge hospitals in that city that specializes in cancer care.  The hospital is surrounded by constant heavy traffic whizzing by.  Right outside the hospital there is a small rolling hill.  On the hill there was a gentleman who had removed his shirt & was laying down soaking in the sunshine with a look on his face of complete peacefulness as if he were in the middle of a majestic place.  We will never know his story yet I would say that he had the taking inner calm or taking peace with him down really pat.  I was meant to see this example.  There are examples of this & many other beautiful qualities around us if we open our eyes a lot wider.  Some people driving past may have quickly labeled this gentleman as an “odd duck” but I saw something very different.  That is the power of the magnification of everything that I live daily with.  And I am grateful for what I think of as a gift even though feeling at heightened depths can be exhausting at times.    The good just always outweighs the bad I find. 

Do we feel like the odd ducks at times if we are living with type 1 diabetes?  I can answer that question for myself with a huge “yes!”  During the summer when I have my pump clipped to my bathing suit it must especially standout because I get weird stares more often than not.  When I am feeling especially rascally, I will answer the stare or the nervy comments that people make with “I have been chosen to be in a human trial to become bionic.”  I have other witty comebacks & if you have an insulin pump I bet you do too.    What I don’t do though is get embarrassed by my pump.  My pump is my buddy.  He even has a name, Angus.  I don’t let Angus get disrespected on a light note.  I am not an odd duck.  Some of the “coolest kids” (ageless kids from a few weeks old to 120 years old) wear something resembling my Angus.  We are not odd ducks.  People who make derogatory remarks or rude stares are the odd behaving ducks.  Sometimes the world is upside down that way.  Before I got attached to my 2 pumps, I had to inject 4 times a day to sustain life.  I hated every single second of that year.  Every one is a beautiful original so some people living with type 1 diabetes do not like the insulin pump & find MDI to be for them.  For me MDI was a prison term.  Again, what works for me is not the answer for someone else & vice versa because we are all exactly ourselves unapologetically.  When I was having to inject for a year if I was in public & I had to take an injection it got on my nerves having a feeling of needing to go to the restroom to inject as if I were doing something bad.  I felt like I was being banished to detention or something & I did not do anything wrong so feisty, rascally me soon found going to the restroom to inject intolerable.  The other side of it frankly was that often the public restrooms were less than sanitary.  I usually would just quick like a bunny inject through my clothes when I was in public.  It took practice to become very comfortable doing glucose tests in public for me.  How about you?  It is nothing to be embarrassed about yet some of the reactions that I have had from people in public is ridiculous.  It is pretty silly because let’s say we have asthma & we need to take our puffer out, would we hesitate to do that?  I sure hope not & I also hope that we would not be embarrassed about that.  Well the thing is that glucose testing is similar to taking the puffer out.  We might be in a low blood sugar.  To not treat that carries serious consequences.  The same is true for extremely high blood sugars.  We are not strange ducks to need to do glucose tests.  We are just plain being responsible.  The world again can be upside down if someone around us decides to stare at us or make a rude comment because we are checking our blood sugars.  The strange ducks are the people who make unfortunate choices to behave in a completely unkind way.  I know that I am not a strange duck for taking the best possible care of diabetes & other 365’s without embarrassment.  I am not a strange duck & rascally me is no one’s victim.  I guess I am the goose that way who tries to carry the voice of reason when sometimes the world is a little or a lot upside down. 

My heart’s hope for you is that you know that you are a beautiful original & not a “strange duck.”  Sometimes you have to turn the world right side up again.  Let’s do that together.

Smiles, Saundie :)                                               

This rascal has yet another throat infection or something like that so although my voice is never fully silenced; it is a bit of a feisty whisper right now.  It magnifies my gratefulness for the days when I feel so much better.  That day will come again soon yay.  Next Monday’s story will be, “Test Miles.”  And now I am off to yet another test.  Have a super week.  How great was the Montreal hockey game last night!  If you are feeling under the weather along with me there is nothing like hockey playoffs to add some cheer.  And go Calgary too.  Whoever you cheer for, cheer with unapologetic enthusiasm :D

Hockey is instilled in us within our home & within my wee corner of the world eh.  How about you?  What’s your favourite sport to either play or watch?  Is it something else that speaks to your heart other than sports or is it a both and?  I am a “both and” kind of gal.  There are a myriad of favourites for me & the list grows each year. 

I love being a mom to our 3 sons.  Our home does not parallel an episode of “Leave it to Beaver”… we do real here.  We do big love, big noise, big cheers for one another & others in the world, big tears, big laughter…big time.  How cool is it as well to have not only permission but a sense of family duty to watch a good sized chunk of hockey.  Our 2 younger sons especially are big time into watching NHL hockey.  Night after night, Brian & Alex search out the hockey game on tv & we watch at least a period of each one together.  It is tough for them when it is bedtime & they have that cliff hanger sense as they do not know until the morning what the score was.  “Mom, come watch hockey with us” the boys say each & every evening.  Sentimental me realizes that one day I will miss these moments, these wee voices, and the noise & the big everything within the little moments that our sons bring to our lives & our home.  It takes no time at all to twist my arm so to speak to drop whatever it is that I am doing & instead sit down with Alex & Brian for the watching of hockey.  We are all pretty excitable during the games & we don’t subdue our cheers when a great save is made by the goalie or a score has been made by the team that we are cheering for.  Once the boys & I are all snuggled in for part of the game we have our routine of announcing firmly which team we are routing for.  9 times out of 10 Alex & I choose the same team to cheer on & Brian has a perfect record of cheering for the opposing team.  That rascal Brian though has a way of at least 90% of the time picking the team that ends up winning.  He did the same thing during Super Bowl as well while the rest of our family cheered for the opposing team.  Maybe my new strategy should be to wait to see which team Brian is cheering for & then join him.  The thing is though that goes totally against my nature in more ways than I can count.  I know that my definition of winning really has nothing at all to do with the score or who “wins” the game.  There is more to it for me.  It is about the passion & drive & heart that speaks to my heart about winning. 

On April 7^th, the Islanders faced the Flyers.  We began watching this game a little bit into the second period & the Flyers were up 2 points.  I don’t look at the score before choosing which team I am cheering for each time.  Brian & Alex do look at the score though & I am not sure if this helps them to decide who they are cheering for or not.  Last night I was cheering for the Islanders & Brian & Alex were cheering on the Flyers.  Alex did admit that the score tipped him towards cheering on the Flyers this time around.  I think he may have even decided to cheer for the same team as Brian as Brian has an uncanny way of choosing the score winners so often.  The excitement in my opinion really happened in the last 5 minutes of the third period so it was too bad that Alex & Brian missed out seeing that.  It was thrilling to see the Islanders catch up & tie the game within the last 5 minutes of the game.  It was a nail biter to see the Islanders pull their goalie.  Was this an Underdog move?  I think so & I loved it.  I loved that they were playing all out in the hopes of tying up the game & going into overtime.  How cool that moment was when the Islanders did tie the game.  Then what a bummer it was when in less than a minute until the game’s end the Flyers zoomed in & scored the determining goal to end the possibility of the Islanders pulling a proverbial rabbit out of the hat.  The thing is though that it was a pretty terrific third period & I thought either team could have won score wise.  I loved that the possibility was there in that last 5 minutes.

Let’s leave the world of hockey & sports in general & share a different type of underdog experience.  In some way or another for as long as I can remember I have tended towards cheering for the underdog.  Here is a literal dog that may have at first appeared to be an underdog.  I love golden retrievers.  The first thought that I had once my husband & I moved into our first home was that we could have a golden retriever join our family.  I could not wait.  Both of my experiences with having golden retrievers join our family have been ones where the dogs have in one way or another chosen us.  My husband is very logical & rational so the choosing of a puppy was a methodical one to him.  He knew that I would be running on the usual abundant supply of emotions & that I would love every puppy that we went to see.  He tried to be the voice of reason.  I think he was also making sure that we only came home with 1 puppy too as a light aside.  Thankfully my husband is also a dog person so it took no convincing at all when I talked to him about my big time wish of being owned by a golden retriever.  We went out to the middle of the countryside to meet a litter of goldie puppies.  Not surprising I could not choose because I just thought they were all incredible.  My husband suggested that we go home & sleep on our decision about which puppy to bring home.  We did this & the next morning the decision was made however when we called about the puppy all the puppies had been spoken for by then.  My heart sank until the lady on the telephone told us about another lady named Eileen who had golden retriever puppies & provided her name & telephone number kindly to us. This call also lead to the gift of friendship with Eileen who is one of the very kindest gals I know.  This was meant to be.  It was absolutely clear to me exactly which puppy was to become part of our family.  It was the puppy that was huddled in a corner of the welting box all by herself not really liking being with the other puppies & being profoundly shy.  Hey, little puppy, there is something amazing inside you that I see I thought to myself.  I know how it feels to be big time shy & I know what it is like to open up the flood gates & find something within yourself to overshadow that.  Long story short & that is that this puppy who was named of course after tea, “Twinings” became our first furry sweetheart.  We will always be grateful for the 10 amazing years of smiles that Twinings added to each & every day.  She continued to be very shy around other dogs.  People though I am convinced were her clan.  Some days it seemed like she was a person in some ways more so than a dog.  She is the only golden retriever that I know of that could not swim.  It was kind of funny to watch her bound into the water & then attempt to walk on it & not be able to figure out the whole swimming thing.  The thing that set Twinings apart though was her braininess.  She was an obedience dog through & through.  My husband & I had no idea what we were doing when it came to obedience training but Twinings had a love of obedience competitions & so we naively just kept going to the next level with her.  She even did shows at the Sportsman Show & Exhibition Place in Toronto & she loved the pats on her fur afterwards…you would have thought that she might wag her tail right off.  She did scent article demonstrations beautifully & so much more & it was her braininess as I mentioned because my husband & I were learning as we went.  Twinings went on to get in the dog world what we think of in people world as the doggy PHD in obedience by the time she was two years old.  She was a snuggler & so smart & so affectionate & we have a place in our hearts with so many treasured memories with her.  Those we love always leave us too soon & that is how we feel about our first furry girl.  Many may have looked at Twinings as a puppy & merely seen the underdog…an overly shy puppy & moved on to look at the others.  My husband & I had first choice in choosing 1 of 8 puppies that day & my heart told me immediately the furry girl for us.  She really was no underdog at all but instead a magnificent gal.

Okay, so what do hockey & dogs have to do with diabetes?  That is an easy question for me to answer.  Each one of us are a beautiful original so please know that I am only referencing my own attitudes & feelings as I share this next part with you.  There will be people with diabetes or other 365’s that don’t see it the same way & there is nothing wrong with this.  Again, this is just my perspective.  There are many times when I feel like the underdog health wise.  Maybe it due to the combination of chronic illnesses that I have or maybe it is all due to type 1 diabetes.  Type 1 tends to have the loudest voice so to speak out of the illnesses that I live with.  I think that is because type 1 demands from me attention every minute of the day & night to sustain life.  Some days I think of myself as an underdog because I sometimes am late for activities because of an unexpected low blood sugar.  Sometimes I think of myself as an underdog because with the diabetes/celiac combination, social gatherings are complicated.  I do my best to uncomplicate the parts that I can for instance by taking a food dish or more to social gatherings so that I am not that pain in the butt person who makes a fuss out of what poor me cannot have.  I really have no patience for that kind of attitude.  I am more of what I can have versus what I cannot have person.  I like to fly under the radar as far as being a pain in the butt complicated person to hang out with goes.  To do that though it means that I have to be more planful so I kind of feel like I start out as the underdog because people without diabetes & or celiac can just naturally up & spontaneously enjoy gatherings without having to figure everything through in advance.  That was me once upon a time.  The thing though that I realize is that although I may feel like an underdog in some areas of my life like health that in other areas of my life I feel I have an edge in other ways.  I feel like I get it in other areas of my life.  My senses in other areas are sharper & I notice things that some people don’t see or get.  My other senses are magnified it seems.  This leads me to such an endless well of real & perpetual gratitude.  On a lighter note & speaking of cheering for the underdog, it makes me smile ear to ear every single time our 3 sons cheer & whoop it up when I announce a rare & delightful sighting of a gorgeous 5.5 on my glucose meter (that’s about 99 for my American Dear Hearts).  Did I mention the big noise in our home?  Sure I did & it seems to be particularly loud when our sons cheer to hear of the 5.5 & how cool is that!  It kind of makes me even more motivated to see more 5.5’s!  Maybe just maybe I am amongst the most joy filled, most grateful underdogs in my little corner of the world. 

My heart’s hope for you is that if you ever feel like the underdog that you realize too that feeling like an underdog in any one given area of life does not equal the whole you.  Look for the edginess within you that is magnified in a beautiful way.  It is there.  Ask the person who loves you most in the world if you cannot see it for yourself.  And for goodness sake, join me in living life right out loud returning often to the well of joy & gratitude.

Smiles, Saundie :)

One final word about hockey for this week.  The roof may have lifted a wee bit from the noise in our home last Saturday night when our favourite team, Montreal was playing & the game not only went into overtime but also a shoot out & then Montreal went away with the win.  This is the one team in our home that we all agree on so there will be big noise every time the team plays during the playoffs this year.  Yay Ottawa too.  And I will say that I am cheering for 5 teams so lots of things will go to the backburner during playoffs around our place & there is no guilt in that.  Next Monday's story has not yet been discovered.  Have a big dog kind of week :)

Who or what is the most endangered species in your experience?  If you or someone you love has insulin dependent diabetes then perhaps you & I will have a bit of an usual answer to that question.  Let’s answer the endangered species in a few minutes & for now focus on the Murphy part of being in the rear view mirror.

Remember, last week I shared my thoughts about Murphy’s Law.  This week I will say without hesitation that putting Murphy into my rear view mirror is taking more perseverance, patience, fighting the good fight, feisty attitude & more.  Murphy keeps popping up in my life more often than usual lately.  There is likely a reason for this although at this point it remains a mystery to me.  Whether we have diabetes or another “365” challenge or enjoy perfect health (what does that look like again) Murphy is someone best viewed I think in the rear view mirror.  You know how it feels to do something simple…something that you have literally done hundreds or more times seamlessly.  It is like a non event until Murphy steps in.  Murphy decided last week that it was time for me to have that rare yet irritating experience of putting in a brand new infusion site & have immediate  pain.  That is the telltale sign for me that I have most likely hit a blood vessel.  I toyed with the idea of just taking a stiff upper lip response to the pain & seeing if it would go away because no one likes to figuratively flush $15 down the water closet (cost of each infusion site).  Still though, my gut feeling which is usually bang on was screaming at me that this infusion site had to come out.  The risk of leaving it in aside from the pain is that insulin delivery would be severely compromised & I would land up in quick order with skyrocketing hyperglycemia.  I listened to my gut within 5 minutes of insertion of the infusion set & removed it.  Sure enough it was one heck of a bleeder & I had by Murphy’s Law hit a blood vessel.  Out with the old & in with the new though & the day went on with the second infusion site without further pain or anything else.  Thankfully, I can count on 2 hands the number of times in 7 years that I have had the misfortune to hit a blood vessel with either an infusion set for my insulin pump or a needle when I was doing multi-injections. 

Do you have that infinite list of tiny things to do that are non urgent that don’t quite make it to the top of the list due to other pressing things in your life?  I am sure that you do.  I have one too.  One of the silly little non urgent things that I had on my secondary to do list was to glue a Mickey Mouse Christmas globe decoration back together.  The decoration had sat on our kitchen corner countertop since last November waiting to be glued back together.  Last week I saw it for the umpteenth time & decided that this would take me only a minute or two to repair so I would finally do it.  Out came the hot glue gun & on went the glue to the globe & then I began to attach the pieces together.  This should be a non event.  Instead the glass ornament shattered in a zillion pieces…some into my hand & others onto the floor & all over the countertop in the kitchen.  No one I am sure likes the sight of blood.  Although I do 10-12 glucose tests a day without a second thought, the sight of blood in greater quantity immediately sends me into a mini panic.  My husband was on dinner break at work so he came home thankfully & mercifully cleaned up the glass & assured me that my cuts were not as bad as they looked.  As a light aside, if you have type 1 diabetes you will nod your head as I share that I thought about doing a glucose test & you will get why.  Thank goodness for “captain cool” aka my husband.  He is the calmest person that I know & I am grateful for his quiet, strong presence.  I made captain cool a quick, early hot dinner with extra love stirred in & off he went back to work looking as calm as ever.  I admire that calmness.

The next appearance by Murphy is really something that can & does happen to lots of other people & is completely unrelated to diabetes.  While my husband was on his way back to work I finished making dinner for the rest of our family.  I had to in my mind go faster because I felt the need to make up the time I lost with the non repair of the ornament.  In my rush clumsy Murphy lead to me dumping bacon grease down my white kitchen cupboards in one corner of my kitchen.  Bacon is a guilty pleasure that our sons & I enjoy about every other month in the form of a breakfast for dinner.  I never have to call any of our sons twice on the breakfast for dinner times.  The breakfast for dinner idea that night was more out of necessity I will admit than anything else because I had been so sick for 2 weeks & had not made it to the grocery store for over a week.  The way these 3 sons can eat, I find that I usually have to go grocery shopping at least once a week especially for perishables.  Our sons are cute eating machines.  I cleaned up the mess I had created & remembered something that my husband says from time to time.  He says, “You have to slow down to speed up sometimes.”  My husband is very plan full & he is the type of person that thoroughly reads instruction manuals cover to cover & then does the work with mindful pace with attention to excellence.  He has patience to spare.  I married my opposite personality in many ways & this is something that I appreciate.  I am a kinesthetic type who really does not have the patience for instruction manuals.  Instead, I just look at whatever job needs to be done & I just dig in right away.  This has lead to many things that I have attempted to put together being completed yet many extra parts being leftover & frankly my husband quietly taking some of my work apart & doing it “to code.”  My approach to life left to my own devices is hurry up & get started & do several things at the same time when it comes to tasks.  Some things in life work out okay with this approach & other things really make more sense being handled in a more by the book fashion.  The point is in this instance had I just not been hurrying in an effort to make up for lost time which is absurd in the first place dinner would have been a non event & likely I would not have had a messy spill that time.  The spill though in the end is & was just a minor inconvenience so I will stop making a mountain out of mole hill.  Often I am reminded that I gravitate towards people versus tasks or things.  People make me smile.  The winning combination of people & tasks happens in those instances where I get to cook and or bake for Dear Hearts.  That is how the love is stirred in.

On the Thursday right before Easter I finally began to feel well again.  The migraines & nausea & flu like or bad cold like stuff began to lift & I got an energy burst.  I got caught up on restocking the refrigerator & planning out last Sunday night’s Easter feast.  I cleaned our house up & did some activities with energy with our sons.  It felt great to feel better again finally.  Murphy made an appearance that very night at 2am.  This brings us to the endangered species that I mentioned earlier on.  This species is sleep.  At 2am I got hit with a wakeup call in the form of marathon running sweatiness, dizziness, a numb tongue & more.  As I reached for my glucose tester I knew 100% that I was having a low blood sugar.  Sure enough my tester acted as Captain Obvious & more irritating still was the beep & message that appeared on my meter telling me to take 12 grams of fast acting sugars.  I kind of felt like throwing the tester out the window.  I already knew that I had to have the fast acting sugars & it bugged me that my meter was telling me what to do.  I am a stubborn rascal that way.  If you have type 1 you may have that tendency towards being irritated in general when you are experiencing a low blood sugar.  We are all beautiful originals so each one of us will experience high & low blood sugars differently.  I gobbled down the necessary sugar & my blood sugars came back into range however I never did get back to sleep.  The next morning I felt like something that the cat had dragged in however I had a morning commitment with our sons so I took the stiff upper lip approach & carried on.  I find that I can kind of go on adrenaline for a day & so a sleepless night does not fully hit me until the next day.  Saturday was a sleepy day yet I had convinced myself that I would put Murphy in my rearview mirror & that the endangered species of sleep would be back & that I would appreciate it all the more.  The endangered species made 2 glorious appearances so that I could get 2 uninterrupted nights sleeps which had been rare over the past few weeks.  The species was short lived however since on Monday night I could not sleep all night between painful abdominal pains that I get in differing levels of intensity every 2 or 3 months for the past 5 years.  Also our youngest son had a bad dream & ended up in our room flopping around like a trout in our bed for the night.  He is one of those sleepers who moves all over the place.  Still it was a blessing that he got back to sleep.  There is something very dear about watching your children sleep.  My hope is that I see more of the endangered species soon.  I refuse to give up on trying to see more of the endangered species & less of Murphy.  And more than this, even on days when I feel exhausted physically, I feel grateful for the countless blessings in my life.  I appreciate them more & more every day.

My heart’s hope for you is that you have continuous sightings of the endangered species & as few as possible of Murphy.

Smiles, Saundie

May your week ahead be filled with countless spottings of the endangered species.  Next Monday’s story is percolating already although not yet written however does have a title of “Cheering for the Underdog.”   :)

This week's story sharing will be posted this Wednesday April 8th.  Smiles & Happy Birthday wishes to my Dear Heart Dad today xo.  Happy Anniversary to my Mom & Dad tomorrow xo