That’s the way the cookie crumbles literally some days.  Life with type 1 diabetes is for tough cookies I have learned along the way full of appearances by Murphy.  Maybe life is just plain full of Murphy whether we have diabetes or not.  Diabetes though on top of Murphy turns us into Seuss like characters, while we balance absurd responsibilities, tasks and more. 

The Murphy I am referring to is that character that sneaks up on all of us all too often.  It is Murphy’s Law.  As a small aside the crumbled cookie I am referencing today is from the box of gluten free cookies that I just opened up because I am playing yet another round of beat the clock watching my blood sugars fall & the one cookie should be the counter attack move needed to balance out my after breakfast blood sugars before they crash.  It took me a while & several cardboard like tasting gluten free cookie samplings to find a tasty  g.f. chocolate chip cookie.  I have served this brand name many times to unsuspecting guests & everyone agrees that they taste like any other cookie.  That is a mini success in my mind.  The thing is that these cookies are challenging to find around my little corner of the world.  When I do find them I usually buy about 3 boxes at a time so that I have a stash of them on hand for a good long while.  I did my obsessive compulsive 2 hour after breakfast glucose test as always this morning.  From experience I have learned that if my blood sugar results are below 8 at this point that I will definitely have a low blood sugar within the next couple of hours unless I eat about 10 grams of sugar.  The chocolate chip cookies therefore do the trick perfectly since they are exactly 10grams of carbs worth of sugar in one cookie.  I ripped open the new box thinking I would simply pull out a cookie & viola; I would chomp 1 cookie down & balance out my blood sugars in time.  How about though if you open up the box of cookies to discover that contained within this last box of difficult to find morsels is a pile of large crumbs.  How many crumbs do you eat to equal 10 grams of sugar?  Being a bit of a rascal I refuse to waste this box of crumb chocolate chip cookies so I tried to put a group of crumbs together like pieces of a puzzle to resemble the size of a normal cookie in its whole form.  That is just a small almost inconsequential Murphy’s Law situation.  The thing is that if a person without type 1 diabetes had this happen it would be annoying but it is beyond that when you do have type 1 & you need a specific amount of carbs to treat an imminent low.  We will see how my puzzle cookie making has gone when I test again in a couple of hours.  A crumbled cookie can be the difference between nailing the blood sugar balance or the epic fail. 

On the Friday at noon prior to March Break my van aka the “dogmobile” decided to not start.  I was in underground parking at the time.  Several hours later CAA towed the dogmobile to our trusty mechanic aka “Tony the Tiger” in the next town over from us.  Murphy’s Law I thought to myself as I started to juggle plans with the boys around in my mind that we had already made for the following week in anticipation of not having a vehicle for several days.  On a bright note, if you know that you are going to have to wait to have your vehicle towed it is a bonus when you are close to a coffee shop that makes a killer espresso.  I enjoyed a double espresso while I waited for a ride.  Thankfully, our mechanic is a total gem & he looked at the van right away that afternoon & discovered that I just had a used up battery so he replaced it & I got my van back by that same evening.  Murphy tried to get me going yet thankfully during the whole afternoon I had an unusual supply of patience & did not get bent out of shape.  Things worked out better than I had imagined so I thought that Murphy would be taking a hike for March Break.  Whew, what a relief.

Murphy made way too many appearances during March Break a couple of weeks ago & this Murphy character in fact continues to be a most unwelcome visitor.  On the Monday on a super positive note, our sons & I had an all in optimistic day despite Murphy attempting to rain on our parade.  We got up in the morning to a dull dreary yet seasonably warm albeit muddy day out.  Our 3 sons have each gotten the flu followed by colds for the past month.  I had been patting myself on the back during that timeframe to be taking care of them yet not succumbing to the bugs myself for the first time ever.  Normally I catch everything within a miles radius during the winter months.  I thought since I had not caught any of the cold & flu bugs for a full month that I was out of the woods.  Boom, the Monday of March Break I began to feel that unmistakable yucky feeling of a bad cold coming on.  Denial is a beautiful thing sometimes when you are a stubborn rascal like me.  Of course my blood sugars going whackadoodle told me the truth as they suddenly skyrocketed out of nowhere.  We continued on to the Maple Syrup Festival & got muddy & my attitude was & is that I could care less about a little or a lot of mud.  We have a washing machine after all so the mud factor was well worth the fun that we had.  We enjoyed a wagon ride, the review of how Maple Syrup is made & once again we were reminded that we are fortunate to live in this wee corner of the world where maple sugar bushes still exist.  The line up for the pancakes & syrup was the longest we have ever experienced & many people in the line were grumpy.  Our sons & I though found that the time went by quickly by turning the line into an adventure & we played many games & I made a new friend with the lady who was in line ahead of us.  She cheered up & several people around us caught the good natured patience that was needed for a lengthy line.  Many people in the line were at the festival for the first time so we took the opportunity to tell several people how much fun they were going to have & that once they reached the inside doors of the pancake house they would find that it was all worth the wait.  We described our previous experiences & encouraged many people to take in the whole festival.  It was fun kind of like welcoming visitors to your home.  One lady in line kept insisting that she knew me & she listed off areas that we may have met.  I have had this happen countless times.  I laughed & said the same thing that I always say in these situations, “I know I have a twin & I sure hope that they are doing great things out there.”  Once the boys & I had our pancakes & syrup, we took our tray outside to a picnic table & enjoyed our treat surrounded by nature.  This year I did not partake in the pancakes but instead just had the sausages were absolutely delicious as I have celiac.  Watching our sons devour their pancakes brought a smile to my face & we just breathed in the fresh air.  We willed it to be a great day & despite Murphy trying to interfere with the day we had a fabulous day.  Tuesday morning I woke up with ugly blood sugar numbers yet still determined that somehow I could squash what looked like illness in progress.  The pace was slower that day however we enjoyed the day that we had planned out.  The day was full of blood sugar corrections & I was determined to not get sick.  By Wednesday morning I felt like something that the cat dragged in however I decided that it was just going to be a little cold & that would not stop us.  We had plans to go to Lego day.  Our youngest son is a Lego-a holic.  The boys had a great time but by the late afternoon I finally had to admit to myself & to my family that I was feeling really sick & would need a turnaround quiet day at home on Thursday.  I had convinced myself that if I just rested up for the day & did all the right things that I would recover at top speed.  Oh Murphy, you dirty dog!  Murphy had something else in store for me.  I got the worst cold followed by the flu followed by another cold with an accompanying headache that must be from the migraine family.   A proper night’s sleep eluded me night after night for over a week.  Then last night the migraine got beyond excruitiating last night to the point of nausea & indescribable front head pain.  There have been numerous rounds of Murphy’s Law over the past couple of weeks yet the rascal within me just keeps saying, “Take a hike Murphy.” 

Murphy decided to make an unwelcome appearance recently when I went to pick up my test strip order.  If you have type 1 you will likely relate to this.  I get a test strip order once every 3 months.  By the 2 and a half month mark I am literally in countdown mode of test strips trying to see if my supplies will hold out or if I will have to purchase out of pocket yet another box of robbery priced test strips.  I pretty much always have to purchase 1 box of test strips every 3 months out of pocket & I always hope that it will not be more than 1 box since that represents $100.00  Please don’t get me wrong as I am grateful that I live where I do & have access to a medical system that overall is pretty good.  There are countries in the world where people do not have access to affordable insulin let alone test strips & insulin pumps & pump supplies and other diabetes related supplies.  Like other people living with type 1 it is a hassle to have to repeatedly deal with insurance companies that insist on us proving over & over again that we still have type 1 diabetes while they audit our diabetes supplies for the upteenish time.  Then the number of test strips in particular that the insurance company lands on never quite makes it even close to actual numbers needed & prescribed by the endocrinologist.  Dealing with the insurance aspect can be infuriating however I am trying to not let it get to me as much.  The last time I was audited for diabetes supplies was 18 months ago & I did not have access to covered type 1 supplies for 6 weeks so those 6 weeks were out of pocket which was yet another drag.  Most of us have been in those shoes it seems.  I would have much rather have put that 6 weeks worth of funds towards something more fun however it is as simple as this…we have to sustain life so it is what it is.  When I went to pick up my recent test strip order my pharmacist told me that unfortunately she could not release my order to me as my insurance company had decided to audit my test strips yet again.  A picture of 6 weeks again without coverage came quickly to the forefront of my mind.  It quickly subsided though since at the same time I was fighting a full onslaught of the flu so I decided that I would concentrate on fighting the flu & then resume dealing with the insurance company  & what I have come to refer to as the test strip reaper once I was well.  In the meantime, I just went ahead & ordered another box of test strips out of pocket & reminded myself that even with the hassles of the insurance companies that coverage in Canada is still pretty freaking good.  While I was getting over the flu & moving into this current horrible cold with migranes, the insurance Murphy’s Law lifted.  The audit this time only lasted 1 week & they did not even require me to prove yet again that I have not been cured of type 1.  It was a small mercy moment I felt.  Gleefully, I picked up my test strip supplies with a Christmas morning kind of feeling.  I don’t have to think about test strips now for another 3 months & so Murphy in that regard has been sent on a hike.

It has been almost 2 hours now since I ate my small pile of cookie crumb puzzle pieces.  I just did a follow up glucose test & can see that the pile of crumbs was pretty close to 10 grams of carbs by my results.  Take that Murphy.  Take a hike Murphy & while you are at it, take the migranes with you.  These will not last forever & when they do finally subside & I get a proper night’s rest, I am going to take myself on a much anticipated long hike with my furry gal.  That’s the kind of hike I really look forward to. 

My heart’s hope for you is that Murphy does not make too many appearances in your life.  When Murphy does, let’s hope that he takes a hike as quickly as possible.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Have a Murphy-free week & next Monday's story is in the ether.

The Perpetual Toddler

Let’s name one melting down toddler that can be counted on for plenty of negative outbursts, unreasonable behaviours, and that never grows up.  Although all 3 of my sons are well past toddlerhood I very much am still living with a melted down toddler day in & day out.  If you have type 1 diabetes maybe you too are living with the perpetual toddler who has tantrums in a myriad of situations.  It is the same type of tantrum that acts up at times when we are in a hurry to get out the door for an appointment.  The perpetual toddler of type 1 diabetes in my life loves to especially kick it up in meltdown land when there is an appointment to get to as well as when time driven activities have been arranged.    How about you?  Are you living with the perpetual tantrum throwing toddler of type 1?

The most natural thing in the world is growing up & growing through one stage or phase to the next developmentally.  Diabetes plays by no rules, resists stages and is a beast of different magnitudes on different days.  Will today be the day that I tame the toddler of diabetes or is there going to be a toddler with meltdown blood sugars  causing a complete turning upside down of plans & schedules?  Sometimes I feel like type 1 mocks my schedule.  There are times when plans are made & they are messed up by either a low blood sugar or excruciatingly high blood sugar at the last minute.  Those are times when we make our corrections accordingly where diabetes management is concerned & we feel like something that the cat just dragged in.  And some days we put on our brightest smiles for the outside world & attempt to suppress or ignore the melting down toddler of diabetes as far as the nausea, profound exhaustion, impatience and more that physiologically accompanies the melting down type 1 toddler.

Just like every person is different, so too is each person living with diabetes.  Each toddler is also different.  Please don’t get me wrong as I am not suggesting that every single child goes through the “terrible twos” or meltdowns during his or her toddlerhood.  Statistically though, the “terrible twos” permeate society as a cliché for a reason.  Are there days where you would like to say to type 1 to “get a hold of yourself man!”  I know that I feel this way often.  I feel this way when either I have made plans & my blood sugars melt down with either high or low blood sugars, or the tantrum robs me of yet another night’s sleep or if I am engaged in an activity & then the signs of a high or low blood sugar act up with a vengenance.  I would add that this drives me up the wall because I work my guts out at type 1 diabetes management.  Despite my best efforts the perpetual melting down toddler seems to be here all too often with no “growing up” or growing out of stages in sight.  The growing up or growing out will come only I believe in the form of the cure for type 1 diabetes.  I will add that I am pretty tired of hearing that the cure is 5 years away. 

The toddler meltdown in the middle of the night is especially draining I find.  One minute we can be sound asleep & the next we may be either sweating like we have just completed a marathon or having the numb tongue or shaking like someone coming down from rehabbing from drugs or dizzy or confused beyond description or if we wear a sensor then we are hearing the low blood sugar alarm.  I do not have a sensor but I have had most if not all of the other physiological signals of the middle of the night low blood sugar.  It is annoying beyond belief to get woken up by a low blood sugar yet I always remember that it is a blessing to have those signals so that life can be sustained.  The next morning though I always feel exhausted from fighting with my blood sugar meltdown toddler.  It is beyond irritating to have to deal with type 1 throughout the day.  Even with built in time each day somehow the perpetual toddler seems to sneak an attack out of nowhere here & there.  Yet out into the world we must go whether we are feeling well or not many days hearing from others how well we look.  Please don’t get me wrong as obviously I would not want to hear that I did not look well.  Diabetes can be an invisible disease many times.  No one can see our blood sugar roller coasters & the toll it takes on us physiologically, physically and emotionally. 

Like so many things in life there are statistics involved & this includes I find the percentages of appearances from the perpetual type 1 meltdown toddler.  I have come to realistically accept that the meltdown toddler will make appearances from time to time.  The stats come in where diabetes management is concerned.  I realize that by me working my guts out on doing the best diabetes management that I am reducing the appearances by the meltdown toddler.  Seeing less of that toddler is well worth the effort. 

The place where stats go out the window for me is frankly during this phase of life for me physiologically.  I am fighting the stats right now as far as the roller coaster ride of blood sugars go.  The hormones in my body are all over the map & they will not be likely to be tamed for close to a decade.  As much as I try to follow the blood sugar trends that my charts give me information on, it is a frustrating time.  Frustrating is not really the word.  I suppose I feel like I am living with 2 melting down toddlers but one is perpetual & the other one will in time “grow up.”  There seems to be a huge black hole of a situation information wise where this time in my life is concerned regarding tips on how to proactively fight the blood sugar roller coaster.  Gals seem to be in a place of having to try to seek out information on how to manage type 1 with hormones that are on a trampoline where little to no information exists.  I find this strange.  If we know that we do not grow out of type 1 diabetes then where is the plan for the various stages of life that we go through?  Where is it?  It is a little like waiting for Godot.  Being a bit of a rascal by nature I am not willing to just sit here & hope for a rescue or something along those lines that may or may not arrive in my lifetime.  Instead, I am keeping even closer track of where my tantruming blood sugars are going & make correlation after correlation & parallel corrections.  Who wants to feel like something that the cat dragged in anytime let alone for potentially 10 years?  No one! 

Since I am feisty I refuse to give up on my A1C goal this time period or anytime even with a melting down toddler.  My endocrinologist is absolutely fantastic & she knows how hard I work at my diabetes management.  She encourages me because she knows the uphill battle that I am fighting.  I am not the only one fighting this uphill battle.  There is a fine line of where I can tighten up my insulin/blood sugar my endo & I have discerned from the colourful blood sugar trend charts.  I have come to accept that at least while my hormones are bouncing that I have to be very realistic about my A1C goal.  Would I like to set my A1C for something that would look non diabetic?  Of course I would.  Have I had any of those results?  Yes, I have but just once & it was about 4-5 years ago.  Have I come even close to that result since?  No way is the answer.  There is a fine line I have found where I can tighten my diabetes without increasing lows & risks involved with frequent lows.  That is tough to accept because I have had to readjust my A1C goal & the stubborn part of me has had to be reasoned with let’s say.  The great news is though that it will not always have to be this way.  My hormones will one day in the future level out again & then I can work safely towards an A1C that is more to my liking. 

“Settle down perpetual meltdown toddler!”  If only it were that easy.  It is not.  The word easy though kind of fades away from our everyday vocabulary when we live with type 1 diabetes.  It is a tough fight every day I find.  That is okay because through grace I am given the exact strength required for the fight each day.  And we have one another to encourage, to rant with from time to time, to hug, to cheer on & to lift up every single day.  We are each strong enough.  Maybe we are a little bit like eggs at times.  Initially it may feel like we are delicate & breakable but when the egg is hard boiled it is strong.  The challenges of diabetes are like the boiling water over the egg.  I know I have become stronger from fighting diabetes.  Just like you, I never asked for, did anything to cause it & certainly would love to be able to say that I used to have type 1 diabetes.  It is here for now though & I have the choice every day about what I am going to do about & with diabetes.  The about part is easy & tough.  The answer is easy & the action is grueling.  It is to manage the heck out of it day in & day out.  The part about what to do with diabetes is the most natural & easiest thing in the world.  My answer is to send out more compassion & kindness & love into the world especially for people living with any type of suffering.  We can choose to be the encouragers & friends in the world.  Yes, we already are.

My heart hopes that you know that you are strong beyond description & that you are fighting a brave battle every single day.  We each get tired & exasperated yet we get to choose to reach out in friendship to strengthen one another.  The cool thing about friendship that I have found is that the human spirit is so strong that when a friend calls upon us for strength it is there.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Oh my goodness gracious, the perpetual toddler was in constant meltdown mode last week with March Break mayhem and boom a brutal bug going around the area got ahold of me big time.  I tried to ignore the bug for several days & correct the heck out of the skyhigh sick management blood sugars however it was a grueling week.  This week will be better...I am stubborn that way...it will be better.  My heart's hope for you is that you always know that even on our sick days we are each beautiful originals & we are each always here for one another through the good & the bad days.  Next Monday's sharing will either be "Defying the Odds" or "It's an Awful Lot Like Green Eggs & Ham" or maybe even something else yet to be created :)

Do you check in with yourself from time to time?  Does that sound like a strange question?  As I have mentioned previously, I check in with myself on purpose at least 3-4 times each year.  It has proven to illuminate what is going on in my mind, in my habits & my heart each time.  This time of year I find that I tend to go to an even deeper level of taking an honest & serious look at how things are going in all the different areas of my life.  I look to see which legs of the chair have given way so to speak.  Without fail also each year at about this time I wonder what it is about February & March that give me the blahs.  No siree, I am just not a winter person.  That is ok however since winter is going to come each & every year to my little corner of the world it is up to me as to what I am going to do about my blah blah blah attitudes this time of the year & not let the winter get to me at the levels that matter most.  I choose not to survive through winter in a hybernate as if that would ever really be enough.  It takes considerable effort yet it is worth it to get to a place way beyond the blahs.

Have we caught ourselves sleepwalking through life at times?  What I am referring to here is that sense of waiting for something to be over.  If we are waiting for a whole season to be over then are we hibernating almost?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  We can call it sleepwalking through life or hibernating or something else.  Since I realized a couple of decades ago that every day is precious & I am the one who steers my thinking, it is up to me to navigate the blahs as well each year around the winter season.  Many people have said to me over the years that it seems that people need something sad to happen directly to them to cause them to come to stop taking each day for granted as well as to take loved ones for granted and more. I personally disagree with that.  What if we bathe ourselves in gratitude by choice each & every day though instead?  I will share emphatically that even on the most challenging days I find something to be thankful for every single day.  That does not happen on its own though.  I know that I had to decide to live this way & I am grateful that I made that decision a couple of decades ago.  The neat thing is that I only had to make the decision once for the rest of my life & then commit to it daily.  We don’t need to choose to numb out & sleepwalk through life.  What is the opposite of numbing out?  For me I would say that it is embracing life.  Some days things just do not fall into place for us.  That is a given whether we live with diabetes, another “365” or enjoy perfect health.  What an incredible gift the small circle of Dear Hearts are that are our go to battle buddies when we are having a bad day.  They are the tiny circle of trusted confidants that will not judge us or criticize us or tell us to in one form or another to just get over it.  They are the antidote for a world that at times can be quite indifferent to the suffering that is very evident.  They are the people as well that we can’t wait to share celebrations or good news with as well.  Hopefully we are this gift to others & we have others in our lives that are this gift to us.  It is really not complicated to be one of these go to people.  It can be as simple as honestly caring.  Last week a friend shared something with me that stuck with me.  He said that he had been at a community meeting & after it was over he saw 2 ladies remain behind & they were crying.  He said that it can be difficult sometimes to figure out whether one should get involved or mind our own business.  Ultimately he decided that he felt compelled to make sure that the ladies were okay.  They thanked him for asking & said that the one lady had had an especially bad day & that what really helped was having a good cry with a good friend.  That is what the human response is hopefully &  that when a friend needs us to cry for them & with them that we do not hold back.  An act of love of consolation is a gift.  The ladies were present with one another & they had that good cry together & then they said that they felt much better.  They did not feel better because the problem was solved.  The one friend felt better because her friend cared.  Indifference is sleepwalking I believe.  You & I are not sleepwalkers because we get how important it is to have encouragers in our lives & people who would take our call day or night without a second thought.  That is a rare & beautiful gift.  We don’t sleepwalk by taking those rare souls for granted. 

As a literal example of sleepwalking, here is a sweet wee aside to share with you.  Our youngest son, Alex (affectionately known as “the alligator”) sleepwalks in the middle of the night every once in a while.  99% of the time his sleepwalking takes him to his brother, Brian’s room.  Alex sleepwalks to Brian’s room, gets in with Brian & snuggles in under the covers with him & goes back to sleep.  Alex is always surprised when he wakes up in the morning in Brian’s room.  Alex has always been quite a snuggler so it does not surprise me that his end journey even when sleepwalking would involve snuggling.   When I think of that form of sleepwalking that is the endearing form of it.  This form of sleepwalking unlike the numbing out variety involves snuggling in.  All I know is that when I see those little faces the next morning sound asleep all snuggled in it is endearing. 

There may be many reasons that we can come up with for numbing out/sleepwalking through life.  We may not want to go through the discomfort of working through grief or another challenge.  I know that the big breakthrough for embracing each day once again with diabetes came after I worked through grief feelings about my health.  Grief in many forms enters life often I have found so we can either try to numb out & put our lives on hold in one area or another or we can take the brave journey through it & come out stronger.  All I know is that the passage of time alone is not the answer to dealing with anything of significance.  If I want the all in joy then I have found that I have had to do the all in grieving as well.  What I can say though is that I am more filled with life & joy, hope because of the choice to be all in during the painful & celebratory times that life provides.  The neat thing about having the all in approach to life is the permission that we get to give ourselves to be exactly ourselves.  If I am having a bad day, I just admit it, work through it, keep my gratitude & keep going all in.  Recently I had a silly day full of annoyances as we all do.  Even after 5 attempts at trying to make a medical appointment I was unsuccessful.  It is such a simple thing making an appointment or at least it should be.  If you like Monty Python sketches too, let’s insert the “Cheese Shop” sketch in our imaginations right now.  It is the one where John Cleese walks into the cheese shop & asks for various types of cheese & the shopkeeper declares that they are sold out of them.  Finally in an exasperated fashion, John Cleese asks if there is any cheese for sale there at all & the shopkeeper says no.  It is good big time to carry these sketches of humour because in life sometimes the shops have “no cheese” for some absurd reason.  We can get fed up or we can laugh.  We can shake our heads & let it all go or hold onto it & let it ruin our day.  The choice is up to me I have learned.  Another aggravation that happened that day was that while one of our sons & I were waiting for his exceptionally late school bus in the morning my insulin pump alerted me that I had an occlusion.  Getting an alarm for an occlusion away from home & away from insulin pump supplies is never a good thing.  Thankfully, I rarely get that alarm.  Still though, it is an exercise in will power not to panic big time over that alarm since we know that we have an insulin delivery problem & that can turn into an emergency in short order.  On the same day, I also tried to order my infusion sets for my insulin pump.  This ought to be a non event.  Instead I noticed that the sets were not listed on the vendor’s website so I placed an enquiry about them to see when they would be back in.  I currently have 2 weeks worth of infusion sets so I wasn’t overly concerned at that point.  The level of concern heightened however when the vendor told me that the infusion sets would be unavailable for the foreseeable future & then they went on to state that they are the only seller of the infusions in Canada.  What, what, what I thought to myself.  If you also are an insulin pumper you and I will be shaking our heads together on this one.  Nonchalantly the salesperson had essentially said that maybe my infusions would come in at some point but who knows when or maybe they are discontinued & that she did not know.  The add on piece is the sleepwalking piece of indifference.  In the spirit of excuse me Miss but in order for me to sustain life I need the infusions I followed up with her once again.  Again, I got an “oh, that’s too bad” but no resolution.  The next thing that I did seemed to make a positive difference towards resolution.  I calmly yet panicked on the inside contacted the insulin pump representative & explained the situation.  Magically the next day the infusions were sent to the vendor & now I have an order placed.  Two days later the box with infusions arrived however they were not mine.  The orders had been mixed up at the packaging place.  A week later I finally have my infusion sets thankfully.  These are the types of annoyances that can affect our day if we continue to carry the exasperation with us for the entire day.  It takes a lot of effort on my part & it is a work in progress but I try to express my feelings & then let it go when it comes to annoyances along the way like these examples. 

Embracing life is the choice I make on the good days with diabetes & the days that are brutal.  The days will look different for sure on the really good days.  I am not beating myself up anymore over diabetes & the way it rears its ugly head on the brutal days.  It is what it is.  I am not numbing out or hiding out or living in denial over it.  I am not pretending.  I am me.  I am not diabetes.  Diabetes is not me.  It gets to us all some days.  None of us quit though.  Why?  We are not sleepwalkers or indifferent.  We live in a community of battle buddies who cheer one another on, encourage, listen, cry with & for one another & laugh, really laugh from the belly in a bellowing, genuine way.  We might hear others around us complain about it being too cold or too snowy out with a ho hum, woe is me attitude & be able to shrug that off because of the little wins that we are celebrating big time like seeing a gorgeous, breathtaking 5.5 (Canadian measures) on our glucose meter (99 for my U.S. Battle Buddies).  Yes, it is cold out...so what.  Today, we woke up & get to embrace life & what really matters.  No sleepwalking & no ho hums needed.  I know I am always grateful that there is a community of battle buddies who is embracing life right along with me.  There really is no time for the ho hums & the hot enough cold enough for you approach to life when we literally have to cooperate in sustaining our own lives.  I say cooperate because it would be easy to say that I am the one keeping myself alive each day but that would not be how I truly personally feel.  It is through grace, a lot of help from my Guardian Angel, technology, a medical support team, and my loved ones that I do what I need to do each day.  This rascal just cooperates with all of this.

This week our sons & I did up a list of activities that we hope to enjoy together during March Break this year.  Last year during March Break I got hit with strep throat & psoriasis so this year it is the type of embrace that hugs the stuffing out of life that will be happening.  We cannot make up for lost time but we can live right now & be 100% present.  We can hug the stuffing out of life.  I am an optimistic realist so I already know that there are going to be gliches, hiccups, exasperations, inconveniences, problems to solve & more during March Break already.  Type 1 diabetes has a way of complicating everyday simple plans let alone more elaborate plans.  Type 1 though I have found has been another reason to embrace life.  I hate diabetes.  I hate everything about it.  I love the heart to heart all in embracing friendships within the diabetes community that I have.  I do not need to keep asking myself why me or why has this happened to the countless other battle buddies.  That serves no purpose.  Diabetes is what it is.  Instead I look way beyond the beast of diabetes & instead embrace the champions that I am blessed to call my friends fighting diabetes and other 365’s day in and day out in an all in fashion. 

Here’s a wee smile to share with you in closing.  One day last summer our golden retriever & I were walking along the shoreline.  There were lots of other people walking & riding their bikes & jogging as well in the area.  Some people would smile or nod & others had kind of a commuter face on like they were walking in a bubble or a fog & did not see anyone else.  One young lady was jogging & all of a sudden she stopped in her tracks & smiled a brilliant, present smile at my dog & I & asked if she could say hi to my dog.  Without hesitation I told her that Beddy would be delighted about that & smiled big time right back at her.  The young lady sat right down on the ground in front of our goldie & snuggled Beddy’s head in her hands & was so joyful with Beddy for those few minutes.  “I love golden retrievers” she exclaimed & added, “I cannot contain myself when I see one.”  I replied, “I totally get that & you made our day & please don’t ever look for a container because what you have there is unmistakable overflowing joy.”  She did make our day that day.  You could tell that she just embraces life & joy.  I love that.

My heart’s hope for you is that you get that embracing spirit within you always too.  If it starts to fade away, we can get it back.  May you cross paths with countless other Dear Hearts who are also embracing life too.  And may you be the one that gives the gift of exactly this to countless others too.  The world needs this & the world needs this from you.

Smiles,

Saundie :)

Next Monday's sharing is "The Perpetual Toddler."  Have an all in week...no sleepwalking through life...no indifference to life and the people around us...all in...

Sometimes life sends coincidences our way & other times messages.  We may notice them or completely miss them.  When we are ready for a message I believe that there is no mistaking it when it comes.  During those times when we get this  tap on the shoulder, what do we do with that?  It is all a choice.  The same can be said of the causes that we choose to fight for with passion & energy & action.  If something major has touched your life or the life of someone that you love dearly then chances are that your passionate cause is in that area.  If we have a child with an illness or challenge (physical or otherwise) it is pretty natural to find yourself as a parent with an endless amount of energy & passion to effect positive change for your child & others with that challenge for instance.  The cause hits our radar like never before.

During the week of February 22^nd to Feb. 28^th, a collision of causes that I have been very much behind (and at times in front of when necessary) “messenged” me in both unlikely as well as expected ways.  Neither one of the passionate areas of advocation have to do with any of the chronic illnesses that I live with for a change.  Our world can be as big or small as we choose to make it.  I pray daily literally for the strength to never start to cave in on myself meaning either let myself become a victim of my illnesses but instead work every day towards more selflessness.  It is the easiest thing in the world to complain about anything whether it is big or small.  Someone right now is fighting for their life or their child’s life & would love to have the troubles that I have frankly.  I get that & I get that big time.  I don’t see the value in comparison in any significant portion of life.  I can be sick & have complete compassion for others.  At the same time there is no need to pretend to not be sick myself or be a faker in any way.  It is really the exact opposite.  The number of times that others have said to me that they feel they can talk to me because they know I get it & care is humbling.  To be able to be our real deal with others is a gift we give ourselves & one another.  There is a quote that I have always loved that says, “be yourself; an original is always worth more than a copy.”  Are there times in life when we long to fit in and other times not so much?  Each one of us answers that question for ourselves.  As far as psoriasis goes I would shout it from the rooftops that yes, I would love to have the illusion of the skin I had just over 12 months ago again.  When it comes to diabetes I can honestly say that I do not concern myself anymore with the things that set me apart from people without diabetes.  If people choose to treat me like I am less than due to type 1 then that is “not my monkey & not my circus.”  Type 1 has made me a tougher cookie that way but I am still a gentle soul.  I believe in real & fierce yet gentle love.  I believe in laughter & tears & everything in between.  I believe in telling people that I love & admire them without my ego yelling at me,”what will the person think of me or do they think I am a wuss for wearing my heart on my sleeve?”  I promise you that people in our lives want to know that they matter to us so please do not leave important words unsaid.  Last month I remember reading a post on several of my friends’ Facebook walls that said, “don’t stand up at my funeral & share your feelings about me, tell me now while I am alive.”  Every single time I saw those posts on friends’ walls I pushed the like button with enthusiasm.  The most courageous people I know are the ones that go ahead & say the important words day in & day out.  I admire that big time. 

Here’s a wee light aside.  It is an interesting time helping to raise a teenager.  What a conflicted time that can be as the “kid” is not a kid anymore yet not yet an adult either.  Our oldest son hit teenage hood with a vengeance in grade 7.  That was a couple of years ago.  He grew almost a foot that year.  He & I share a love of writing.  Matt has the gift for writing fiction as well as illustration.  He amazes me with his abilities & I do not doubt for one second that we will see his books one day on bookshelves.  It was a very good thing that during that grade 7 year that we chose to walk to school each day.  For 20 minutes we would have a heated debate let’s say & be pretty exasperated with one another Monday to Friday for at least 6 months of that school year.  To onlookers (including my husband at times) we looked a lot like the characters from one of the Bugs Bunny episodes.  It is the one where the sheepdog (Ralph?) and the coyote walk “to work” with their lunch kits in hand, put their time cards in the punch card machine & begin their battles & then at the end of the day they put their time cards in the machine & say politely, “see you tomorrow Ralph” in a friendly way.  That was kind of similar to Matt & I because by the time we reached the pathway to the school somehow we had no hard feelings & we both automatically gave one another a hug, said I love you & wished one another genuinely a good day.  Eventually we worked through that stage I say thankfully.  The point is that we did not leave the important things unsaid each day even during our sheepdog & coyote days.  This year in grade 9, Matt brought home a paper that he had written & he told me excitedly, “Mom, look at the grade on this paper & it is about you” as he gave me one of his giant 6’4” hugs.  There are no words to describe that moment.  What I will say is that I am glad that he & I continued to hug one another through those coyote & sheepdog days.

Let’s get back to the 2 messages of the week of Feb. 22^nd.  The first one was from a very unlikely source.  Our oldest son asked me if I would be interested in watching the academy awards on tv with him on Feb. 22^nd in the evening.  I will say that although I think that the pretend world of the celebrities is pretty flakey.  The time with my son though is important though so I said, “sure” & put on a large pot of tea for the marathon of tv that evening.  The one moment of profound “realness” came when the gentleman who won for screenplay writing gave his speech.  In front of millions of people he shared that he had almost committed suicide a number of years ago because he felt so not normal & did not fit in.  He gave the message of hope to strangers whose faces he will never know that if they feel wierd or don’t fit in to keep being wierd & then when they succeed in life to pass on the message of hope to others.  You know already that I am a passionate advocate not only for diabetes but also for the cause of anti-bullying & suicide prevention.  The second tap on the shoulder came from a more likely source.  On February 25^th I woke up & just happened to put on a pink t-shirt which is unusual during the winter months.  That evening while I was watching the news I realized that it was pink shirt day, the day advocates for antibullying wear pink shirts in support of this.

Just like telling people around us how they matter to us every chance we make (not get, but rather make), the same is true for me of anti bullying advocation.  Bullying is a day in day out problem that still very much needs meaningful solutions.  We live in a different kind of world then the one I grew up in or my parents or grandparents grew up in many ways.  With the presence of the internet there is a whole new level of bullying taking place in the world around us.  If we have teenagers and they carry a cell phone that same cell phone that we may have given to them for emergencies so that we can keep them safe is also a potential weapon of bullying.  I know that cell phones in our home do not go into our bedrooms at night for starters.  There is more media attention regarding cyber bullying & that is a start.  How about what we do with the situation when our kids come home & tell us about bullying happening during school hours?  Our oldest son was bullied unmercifully for 8 years during elementary school.  I will not repeat the whole experience again as last spring I wrote an entire blog on that already in my role of antibullying advocation.  The great news as I shared then is that this same young man is now thriving this year & is himself now an advocate for those that are vulnerable around him.  Now that is what I call doing something meaningful with his suffering. He knows how proud I am of him & how much I love him & he also knows that his “little mom” stands in front of nonsense even though we did not get the results that we had hoped for.  Whether I see bullying occurring with regard to my sons or someone else’s kids or with adults, I will not tolerate it.  Please never think for a minute that any of your advocation efforts are in vain.  Sometimes it takes years or even a lifetime to affect positive change. 

This young man at the Oscars had the courage to speak of something deeply personal in terms of his despair when he was younger.  He said the words suicide right out loud.  How many people are suffering in silence?  Decades ago the world seemed to have a message to people to suffer in silence about depression.  Have things changed?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  Is the world tolerant of some things and not others?  Behaviours around us in the world would indicate that there is much conflict about what is to be tolerated & what is not to be.  As a society we give lip service to the mental health awareness week each year & the anti bullying week as well.  How about the rest of the time?  Do these issues not exist the rest of the time?  Is it our problem anyhow? The quote by Edmund Burke tells us that doing nothing is not okay.  Burke’s quote is, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.”   If we realize that what we are here to do is to “do love” then the answers are pretty obvious.  It is not ok to think less than of people battling depression.  It could happen to any of us.  I know I am grateful that I have the support system around me especially as I have been told countless times from my doctors that the combination of having diabetes & psoriasis makes me more susceptible to depression statistically.  I am not a stat though & have always been a statistical outlier in most areas of my life so you bet I have a plan in place to remain an outlier here too.  My heart goes out to the countless people living in silent suffering with despair.  These people need a voice, dignity & for people to care enough to keep advocating.    Yes my life has been touched by several loved ones who have found themselves in depression.  When I was very young someone dear to me attempted suicide.  Those were different times I believe where people had kind of an unspoken code of silence where depression was concerned.  Has the veil of silence been lifted yet?  This loved one did have family that loved them very much yet there was an unmistakable sadness about this person.  The very good news is that this loved one went on to live a long life & passed away from old age peacefully with me sitting right beside them.  I know that not only do I not think less of someone who goes through despair but I admire them when they reach out in truth for help.  I did not set out to become an advocate for diabetes, depression awareness or anti bullying especially considering my voice was such a whisper for so long since I was incredibly shy as a young girl.  We find ourselves though where the work needs to be done.  We find ourselves standing up in the right places where we are needed.  Each one of us needs to find our voice.  Just doing nothing is not the answer.  When I stand before God at the end of my days on earth, I want to be able to exclaim, “I did love!”  And I know I am not the only one.

My heart’s hope for you is that you find that perfect collision of courage for the causes that you feel passionate about & roll up your sleeves, find your voice & do love.  If you are painfully shy that is great because if this rascal within me can do this, so can you.  If you don’t think you have the time or energy then just look to who & what matters most to you & I promise you that will change.

Smiles,

Saundie

  The suicide prevention hotline is 1-800-273-8255 in Canada. Be a champion & stand up for those around us that desperately need our encouragement and love.  Love is a verb.  Send love into the world.  Next Monday’s sharing is “The Snuggly Sleepwalker.”

Have you made the time yet in your life to stand before one of the countless waterfalls in nature’s backyard?  What do you see & hear while you experience this marvel?  Are you standing there with someone you love?  I hope so.  Have you gone as far into a quiet area as you can to see a waterfall with someone dear to your heart?  It is a gift.  I know because long after this experience I have the same smile of joy as if in some way we take a piece of nature with us each time we really breath in with our eyes & soul the time there.

Water carries so many life giving properties.  It quenches the physical thirst obviously and provides for our spirits & souls too.  We are drawn to a fountain often in life with the big questions.  The water quenches restlessness within me always in one form or another.  As an aside, it takes a pretty brilliant source of water to make the perfect cup of tea.  We may think that water tastes the same everywhere but I will say that I don’t agree with that at all.  To me there is nothing like sipping the perfect cup of tea.  It all starts with an incredible water source.  I would add that the company adds to the deliciousness of a cuppa.  We can be our own special company as well don’t forget.  Although I am not a diva, I always drink my tea at home from my loveliest of teacups & saucers.  To leave these gems behind the glass of my china cabinet is to me a lot like choosing to shut ourselves off from the beauty of the world.  It is kind of like knowing that there are paths outside to walk with glorious fir trees or areas with waterfalls or walks along the shoreline to take & choosing instead to shut ourselves off in our own little world of something so much smaller.  Why choose to be a prisoner?  Let’s set our water beside us for a time while I share with you 2 other clear liquids.

If you also have type 1 you will be nodding your head very shortly.  What comes in a 10ml glass container that your life depends on literally & you have a stash of in the butter compartment of your refrigerator right now?  It sometimes seems inconceivable to me that a container that small saves my life from one minute to the next & that 10ml keeps me alive for 30 days.  A few days ago it was time to fill up a new insulin pump cartridge.  I looked at the tiny vial of insulin & as 1/3 of the vial was manually transferred to my insulin cartridge my husband said, “ah, I see that you are about to have a full tankard of insulin.”  I laughed because 3.3ml in many ways does represent a tankard to me.  It represents around7-10 days of whatever life is going to bring my way including meals, stress, sick day management corrections, corrections for no logical reason due to kooky high blood sugars, and countless other day in & day out activities.  3.3 ml gives me those freedoms to live my life as close to “normal” as possible.  It is a given that means that I am still doing math every waking hour of the day for diabetes management & sometimes in the middle of the night too but without these 3.3 ml of insulin I would not be here.  Less than 100 years ago type 1 diabetes was a death sentence.  It is still a beast of a disease however you & I are here & you & I are not giving up on any day of the week period.  Insulin receives not only my gratitude but also my respect.  Too much insulin is dangerous for example with devastating consequences.  You get good at math because literally your life depends on it with insulin.  I loathe math.  I am laughing because I am married to an engineer & our youngest son has also declared his love of math & that he is going to be a mechanical engineer one day.  I hear the merits of math often from the mathletes in our home.  And I hear the words that my husband said to me when we were dating in grade 12 when I declared that I detested math & would never really need it.  He simply replied, “You need math in many areas of life Saundie.”  3.3ml of insulin for around a week & a serious amount of math is what & I need to keep myself alive.  Our individual amounts of insulin will be different for each person living with diabetes so my “tankard” will look different from yours.  We share the reliance on insulin though & the responsibility that this entails.  The second clear liquid that has an impact each day comes in a slightly larger container.  60grams is still a tiny container with what I hope will be promising results.  This container does not help me to sustain life however it does give me hope & a bit of a game plan on one of my other chronic illnesses.  I will pause here to yell, “stop attacking yourself flawed immune system!” at my body.  I was warned that one autoimmune disease can lead to more autoimmune diseases.  Maybe it is a crap shoot but either way I am fighting whatever comes my way in my feisty fight never giving up.  A couple of weeks ago I was referred to a new specialist for the psoriasis that I now have had for a full year all due to last March’s bout with strep throat.  My new specialist is fantastic.  She gave me quality answers & information in a no b.s. type of way.  Who really wants a side order of b.s. anyway?  She gave me the good, bad & ugly lowdown on what I am trying to send into remission because there is no cure for this.  Too many of us living with illnesses hear the words, “there is no cure.”  I am not just referring to the 4 chronic illnesses that I live with.  I have said it before & will say it again, and that is that the cures to the devastating chronic illnesses will come from someone who is deeply touched by the disease because those are the people that “get it” that it is time to stop with the smoke & mirrors & get down to providing opportunities for the brainiacs to come up with the cures.  There is no shortage of brain power.  My specialist gave me a game plan.  I love that.  It does not mean that the first game plan will work but it does mean that we keep going until this autoimmune disease is sent into remission.  Unlike type 1 (another autoimmune disease) at least psoriasis has the potential to be sent into remission.  I accept nothing less than my best effort so I accept the challenge of sending this sucker into remission & I will let you know when not if this is a reality.  The specialist gave me the truth in a no smoke & mirrors way & did not speak to me like I am a dooh head.  I am thankful for that.  If bad news is coming, it is good at least to have it delivered in a respectful way.  She did tell me that with my combination of 365’s that I am at least 2x more likely to sustain a heart attack & that I am very susceptible to psoriatic arthritis which can becoming debilitating to the point of being in a wheelchair.  She looked me in the eye & told me that although I was predisposed to getting psoriasis as she said it is hereditary that I am in the driver's seat as far as reduction of risk factors for complications from this.  Then she gave me information on how to best live day in day out to reduce my risks of these things.  The great news is that I do not smoke & I realized that I am not much of a drinker since I have had only 3 glasses of wine in the past year.  The exercise component is something good for everyone & I love brisk walking with my personal trainer aka our big, goofy, sweet golden retriever.  My eating habits are very good.  My doctor told me that I am on the right track & then added, “How is your stress management?”  Truthfully it needs improvement.  I am a profoundly sensitive person so I feel everything at a level of depth that is indescribable which at times means that my stress level is quite elevated.  I did not go into detail as I answered the doctor however I was honest & told her that I have work to do.  It gives me a great deal of peace of mind to say that I have an excellent team of doctors & that the relationships are based upon mutual respect & honesty & solid game plans.  I hope that you have this too.

Let’s get to the solids now.  Solids can be foundational or nonsensical I have found in life.  We can choose to live a life of fluff or substance for instance.  When you live with chronic illness perhaps there is a perspective builder at work.  It is like an instant ability to sift through what matters in what life & what is nonsense that comes with living with a “365.”  It is not so much that I don’t have time for nonsense because we all make time for that which is important or what we think is important.  Here is an example of a solid that you really don’t want to be holding onto but in a metaphorical way if you too are living with type 1 or another “365” we get left holding this bag at times.  We purchased an older home close to 9 years ago.  One of our neighbors told us about a neighbour a few houses away from us that had a no nonsense way of dealing with people.  Apparently the owners of the home that we live in (this is about 20 years ago) at the time had a dog that they allowed to wonder around the general neighborhood quite often.  For some reason this dog turned Mr. M’s front yard into his permanent bathroom daily.   Mr. M finally got to the point where he had quite enough of cleaning up after the dog.  One day Mr. M picked up the dog dew dew & put it in a paper bag, rang the doorbell of the owners then of our home & handed the bag to them & gave them a stern talking to.  Sometimes in life unfortunately we are each handed a bag of dog dew dew so to speak in a different form.  Type 1 is a great example of being handed a bag of dew dew & it is totally unfair.  It is unfair because type 1 is not something that we have because we have caused it. The same thing can be said of countless other illnesses.   Let’s not spend any time though going on about how unfair it is as you & I are not victims.  We are warriors.  What can we do with a steamy bag of dew dew?  I would answer, “a lot!”  We can take our struggle & reach out to someone else in significant & loving ways because we know exactly how it feels to have to fight for our lives.  We get it.  We don’t do smoke & mirrors.  We do real.  We do real & we do it big time.  We are all in.  This leads beautifully to the real solid to share with you.  Last weekend a friend shared a simple thought that stuck with me.  He was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer recently.  He said, “We don’t have all the time in the world to behave in a flakey way.”  He went on to say that “the time to get real is always now.”  This fellow spoke this way long before he was diagnosed as well so this was his way of tapping others on the shoulder in a way that given his diagnosis may just shock some folks into reality.  That is a choice though as well as to what level of embracing of any truth we will accept.  I will share that because I am excruciatingly sensitive that I don’t have the capacity for smoke & mirrors & I put my heart out there in a way that sometimes means that I get hurt in this world.  Not everyone obviously thinks or behaves as we do.  There is nothing wrong with that as we are all meant to be beautiful originals.  Even though our hearts can get hurt at times I refuse to ever let that result in me putting up a roadblock with others or between my heart & others.  We each choose our behaviours & I choose to concentrate on the examples of goodness instead of choosing to become bitter & a prisoner to myself or cave in on myself.  The best remedy I have ever found for my wounded heart is to immediately find a way to reach out to someone that needs an act of kindness.  Some of the best acts of kindnesses come out of the blue & completely anonymously.  There is nothing flakey about that.  When you find yourself needing a little push in this path of thinking & behaving a quote by the Blessed Mother Teresa has never failed to propel me in this direction.  I will not quote the whole passage here but simply say that it is the one that contains within it “people will sometimes be unkind & unreasonable; be kind anyways...”  In no way am I saying that we simply accept the smelly paper bag when it comes our way & do nothing about it.  Yes, doing something with that bag makes all the difference between the smoke & mirrors that can be prevalent in the world (or as my friend referred to it as flakey behaviour).  If we help someone who is suffering in any way then we have built a foundation of substance.  My husband is a no nonsense person with a soft heart for those suffering.  Many people see him as a wolf but he is really a sheep in wolf’s clothing.  Because he does not enter into fluffy banter nor comes off as warm & fuzzy many people find him intimidating.  That is too bad but it does not bother my husband.  He does not enter into small talk, gossip and he keeps his ego very disciplined.    When things get tense he remains calm & he easily forgives others.  He does not shine a light on the kindnesses that he does but prefers to do them in an understated fashion.  He is able to do the right thing because it is right no matter what the personal consequence is to him.  I admire these gifts of character within him.  He provides a foundation that is solid for his family.  Yes, I am the emotional one & feel things so deeply & this can get exhausting at times especially while fighting diabetes & the other stuff at the same time.  My husband though takes something emotional & turns it into something foundational by his example so many times.  He listens & then will say things like, “right is right whether it is popular or not.”  He also is forever saying, “Remember the serenity prayer.”  He is a quiet person who does not say much but when he does speak it is not to share anything flakey at all.  He does not do flakey period.  We balance one another out & together we can do so much more with the bags of dew dew that diabetes and other stuff sends our way. 

There are just a few thoughts that I will close off with this week.  The first one is to share with you the words that I say to our 2 youngest sons each morning before they head off to school.  I say to them, “be kind because the world needs your kindness.”  Next, here is my own personal mantra that I don’t say out loud but rather choose to live it by action & that is, “make a difference in this world but take no shit!”  Please pardon my indelicate way of putting this.  What I am saying here is “Stand up for what is right no matter what & send out love no matter what.”  Here is the thing & that is that being real is a decision.  Being real does not mean being popular or a yes man or yes woman.  If we each look deep within ourselves courageously then we know what getting real is for us as individuals.  In that spirit, let’s end with a powerful quote by Theodore Roosevelt that the feisty me loves:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” (Theodore Roosevelt)

My heart’s hope for you is that you fill yourself with both life giving liquids & a solid foundation no matter what life throws your way.  You are a warrior.  Keep fighting.  You are loved.

Smiles,  Saundie

Yes, it seems like a long winter this year & we may be feeling a bit worn out but keep going; keep fighting the good fight.  Take the best possible care of your health & of you & those around you.  Fall down we will & get back up we will!!  Next Monday's writing sharing is, "The Collision of Courage."

Do you remember going to the movies during the days of the film projector times?  Maybe you also recall the rare occasions during elementary school days that the short projector film would be shown.  Unfortunately from the perspective of the kids the films were purely on educational topics or in other words we did not get to watch a movie for pure entertainment glee.  The films were brutally boring frankly yet there was one thing that our class would always beg the teachers to do if a film projector was in the room.  After the film was over, we would exclaim, “Backwards, backwards, please!”  For some reason we all just got a hoot out of watching any film backwards & would laugh like hyenas each & every time. 

Just like the film from the film projector movie days, I believe I am beginning to see my life more from this viewpoint.  Life can only be lived frame by frame yet we can look back & see what a masterpiece it is in some ways & then there are other spots where we may prefer to splice the film & do something different in its place.  We do not know what our story really looks like in “real time” I think.  We can go backwards & perhaps even begin to understand why one event lead to another or shake our head at the parts that still don’t make sense.  And we can smile ear to ear at the frames of our lives in our personal masterpiece that are spectacular & magnificent.  I will share that many days stand out for me as being moments of beauty that are forever captured in my heart & memory.  The birth of each of our sons sure stands out as do many childhood memories & of course my wedding day.  Those are the big picture things.  The little picture things feel like a mosaic of feelings & treasures too countless to list & they are very much appreciated in the real moment as I live frame by frame.

It can be interesting when we stop to look at some of the things that are holding us back.  One of the things that continues to hold me back is my reluctance to let go of the reins in some situations.  I want to totally control my health & I do mean totally for instance.  I am bossy towards my health like a drill sergeant.  As an aside about 10 years or so  I use to enjoy watching a Canadian comedy troop by the name of “Kids in the Hall.”  One of the sketches that I watched that makes me laugh at myself sometimes is one where there is this very type A person who has a long list of things to get done & commitments to keep & nothing will stand in the way.  At one point in the sketch he experiences heart palpations so he reaches into the centre of his chest & takes his heart out & pours a pot of coffee on it & commands it to beat.  It was not a graphic sketch & believe me I am not at all joking about heart health being a laughing matter.  I am laughing at the absurdity of the message in the joke of this sense of being so focused on bossing ourselves around at times that nothing will get in the way.  That is definitely a loss of the big picture, right?  Now of course that is dramatic so I don’t obviously take things that far with self bossing myself however I do at times command myself to not stress under any circumstances & to get better diabetes results even if there are other factors at work that are substantial.  Health management I believe is an excellent & necessary thing in my life however there are some aspects of what I am doing that are working against me.  It is meaningful to set up a plan in any aspect of life I feel however there are going to be detours so doing the coffee pouring & demanding certain things to straighten themselves out can be an exercise in aggravating ourselves & maybe those that live with us too at times.

This past week is a transition week of sorts I am finding.  Last Wednesday I turned a number of my habits upside down or in other words gave up some habits & replaced them with other habits cold turkey.  If it is true that all of us keep at least a wee piece of that little kid in us then the little kid in me was not amused by the habit swap.  That is ok though to feel uncomfortable in life.  If we stay with the feelings of uneasiness & go through them fully present then we can come out the other side & get to see a better view often.  When I was a kid one of my friends, “Bones Jones” & I played together like the Velcro twins.  There was lots of exploring to do via our bikes.  One of the things that we sometimes would like doing was to climb through the large concrete town conduit “tunnels.”  The thing with being a kid though is that some things are pretty simple like either you are all in or you are all out.  That meant on those particular days either you got into the concrete tunnels & shimmied on your belly through to the light on the other side  or you stood meekly at the sidelines.  “Bones” & I always got in & came out the other side.  That is what I think of sometimes when I am leaning towards sitting on the sidelines of any part of my own life.  I will say to myself, “yes this is uncomfortable yet I have a choice to be all in or not & come out the other side to a bright & beautiful view.”  Yes, I choose to be all in. 

It is my experience that when you put a plan in place for positive growth that darkness will throw things at shiny things.  There will be roadblocks, obstacles, aggravations & detours to keep us stuck exactly where we are at these times especially I have found.  What do we do about & with this?  We are each beautiful originals so we each answer that question for ourselves.  We each give either an answer verbally or by our actions as to whether we are all in or not.  I made 2 significant goals for the next 6 weeks & obstacles are popping up all over the place in an effort to derail me.  Thankfully I have the gift of feisty determination so I am still very much all in albeit requiring stilts & a pogo stick to get over & around the obstacles & barriers that keep presenting themselves.  To share one of the goals with you, I decided that this is the perfect time to really replace some of my habits with other habits in an effort to get a lower A1C.  The next trip to the  “diabetes principal’s office” is in early May so the time is now to make an impact on my day in & day out glucose numbers.  I have a different basal profile for each week of each month & then a 5^th profile for weekends because hey who does not love getting up an hour or so later on weekends!  In the past I have tended to respond or react to what was going on glucose results wise each day & change my basal profiles accordingly.  I will not bore you with the details of what each week’s basal profile relates to.  If you have an insulin pump you will have your own individualized set of profiles that are beautifully yours so what works for me basal wise & what works for you are sure going to be different.  The point is that I decided to try a new manoeuvre & that was to anticipate what diabetes was about to do & get the new profile going accordingly instead of waiting & watching.  I thought of it as an offensive move vs my usual defensive move diabetes management wise.  I implemented that plan last Wednesday night.  Thursday morning is where the reference to carnage comes in.  By my calculations offensively I should have been bang on ready for my highest insulin dosage basal profile as of Wednesday.  Proactively I had changed my basal profile on my insulin pump in an all in maneuver.  We have all had things back fire in life based upon very educated & thought out plans whether we have diabetes or not.  Some consequences are more significant than others.  It was bone chillingly cold in my little corner of the world on Thursday morning so I decided to get all my outside in the world “stuff” done first thing in the morning & then reward myself once I returned home with breakfast & a warm fire & a cuppa afterwards.  That is not my regular routine & I realize that there is a certain portion of my routine that I will not in future “mess” with because the consequences carry too heavy a price for me.  By the time I finished my list of outside in the world “stuff” I was 2 hours later than usual for breakfast.  I had been on my feet going at my usual sprint of a pace so my insulin would have been super productive but I was a gal on a mission & just kept going to get to the end of that list.  There is that thread of control at any price with a lesson in there for me to learn.  I could feel the beginnings of what I sensed to be low blood sugar about halfway through my list of stuff to do.  I know that diabetes in some ways can resemble a kid having a tantrum with one major difference & that is that diabetes carries a high price if it is ignored when we are in too high of a blood sugar range or too low of a range.  I gave my diabetes a you can wait answer until I am done as if I can will my blood sugar back up I realize in humility. (in hindsight)  The lower my blood sugars goes the less ability I have to make a logical decision.  Low blood sugar is big time physiological like a mini brain starvation & that is a very bad thing.  To make what seems like a long story quite a bit shorter, I went into the lowest blood sugar I have ever had last Thursday morning.  I finally checked my blood sugar once I got into our van after I was finished everything I had set out to do.  Robotically & thankfully I might add I always & I do mean 100% of the time test my blood sugar before I start my vehicle every single time.  When I saw my result I felt panicked & realized that I had better start “inhaling”/”hovering in” fast acting sugar sources at the speed of light followed up with a slow acting sugar.  I also realized that I would not be going anywhere at all for close to an hour after getting my blood sugars back up.  That is just one of many reasons that I always carry a book with me everywhere I go.  I just cannot be in a bad mood about being “temporarily grounded” when I have a book with me.  I just don’t feel sorry for myself when I have a book.  I don’t feel sorry for myself by nature & by choice.  Diabetes is what it is.  It is a beast & a bully & on Thursday morning it scared me like it had never scared me before.  I am past being scared now though & have shimmied my way through to the other side which is to choose to learn something from that experience.  I have learned to respect diabetes & that I need to keep closer watch on it when I have changed my routine.  Thursday morning I started the day off with 2 mini bags of gummy bunnies & 2 cookies before breakfast.  That ticked me off because I had it all figured out about the improvements I was all set out to make with my complete eating habits.  My eating habits are pretty healthy already but I thought I was going to decrease sugar intake even more.  That was humbling.  And I needed to be humbled because although I am managing type 1, there are some instances that can come up that can become emergencies in a big hurry & I cannot afford to ignore even for a couple of hours the consequences of my trying to put diabetes on the back burner.  I have learned what not to do in the future.  As an aside, after I had consumed the significant number of carbs needed to get my blood sugar back over  a 5, my van looked like a scene of carnage with wrappers flung about.  You will know what I mean when I say that manual dexterity & things like that are not available when a low blood sugar of a certain level comes about.  I missed the wee garbage baggy in my van by a lot when I was in the low.  Later I went back & cleaned up my own mess. 

Here’s the thing that I really want to share with you about this past week directly from my heart to yours.  If you have diabetes or someone you love has diabetes, please notice the feathers & not the carnage.  We can learn from the carnage but we can be forever grateful for the feathers.  The feathers are from our Guardian Angels.  I believe with all my being that every single person has a Guardian Angel.  My faith roots teach me this as well however I am not here to get up on a soapbox as that is not my style.  Without a doubt I will say that I believe that people living with diabetes each have “specially trained” Guardian Angels.  If you have experienced a low blood sugar in the night & have woken up from that, how did that happen?  Yes it is a royal pain to have a low in the night however I hope that I never forget to say an all in thank you to my Guardian Angel for saving my life yet again.  My Guardian Angel knows I am a rascal & need that angel very much.  I am going to work with my angel though...that is what came out of the carnage of Thursday.  Thank you Guardian Angel. 

My heart’s hope for you is that as you live your beautiful story frame by frame that you are all in in your life & know that you have someone that is fighting the fight with you day & night.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Next Monday’s writing piece is yet to be written however I am leaning towards a lighter story next time.  I would love to share something that put a smile on my face on Thursday afternoon.  If angels operated sound systems I believe that my angel did just this.  When I have been “knocked about” by diabetes, I put on the song “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba really just for the chorus..”I get knocked down but I get up again...”  My youngest son & I went to Chapters Bookstore to choose a special birthday gift for one of his buddies & when we walked into the store this exact song was playing.  I literally smiled, winked & said right out loud to my Guardian Angel, “got cha!”  :D

Pincushions, Anime, Anomie

Could there be a connection between pincushions, anime & anomie?  You know how my brain works by now & so stay with me as we link these seemingly unrelated ideas up.  It will be a windy road yet so is diabetes so we are used to that.

We all are pretty familiar with the pincushion whether we sew or not.  I will share that I failed sewing back in the home economics days of elementary school.  Somehow, I even dropped a sewing machine on my finger.  Being painfully shy in those days together with feeling embarrassed I made sure that my teacher was not even a little bit aware that I was in big time pain that day.  By the end of the day I remember my left index finger was the width of a sausage & throbbing like a brute.  To this day sewing is one task that I outsource & I am ok with that.  I just laugh at myself when it comes to that lack of skill & life goes on.  So what…or sew what I suppose is my attitude.  Please don’t get me wrong, I am impressed with other people who have this talent & happy for the help.  I remember some of the creative pin cushions that some of the other gals in my elementary class sewed up to hold the pins needed for that class.  I did up something that resembled an apple.  Yes, let’s say that it somewhat resembled an apple but could have been mistaken for a lop sided red ball or smushed in tomato.  I received the usual mark for that small project in sewing which was a mercy mark in the D range.  Cooking & baking is my thing & since I have the honour of helping to raise 3 sons, I think it all worked out pretty well.  If you or someone you know has diabetes, you will be able to relate to the feeling of being the pincushion.  We have the numerous glucose tests each day.  Do each of your fingers have calluses from that testing too?  There is no mistaking a person with diabetes when it comes to our finger tips.  If we are insulin dependent then we may feel like we are even bigger pincushions.  I still remember being encouraged to take my injections of insulin in my tummy & thinking that was going to hurt beyond belief.  One day not too long into my diagnoses though I gave it a try & found out that surprisingly the tummy worked out way better than the other areas of my personal pin cushion that I had been injecting into.  A couple of days ago it was time yet again to change my insulin pump infusion site.  Even after thousands of needles & 7 years into having type 1 I still find that psychologically it is counterintuitive to poke myself with a needle.  Although putting the infusion site in only takes literally a few minutes, I set the stage for it from a mindset perspective every 3 days.  I let my family know that I will be unavailable for a few minutes & to please just give me some space for 5 minutes while I deal with yet another infusion site.  Intellectually it is easy to tell ourselves that we have to put an infusion site in or give ourselves an injection to sustain life however emotionally it is a conflict I find.  It is always a relief to have the infusion set done for 3 days.  Some things we just might not get used to so we suck it up & do it anyhow because life is precious & we just have to do what we have to do when it comes to diabetes. 

Feeling like a pincushion got me somehow thinking back to first year university & a course that I took.  It was a class that was a mixture of sociology, philosophy & psychology.  The class was taught by Professor Campbell who was also the Dean of the residence.  Each semester a formal dinner was held at the residence that was mandatory & the Professor would tell us essentially that we were minions to put it politely.  He had a presence about him & the word intimidating does not quite capture how most of us felt during class those 2 times a week for a semester.  It was my demise that my maiden name was MacDonald because the battle between the Campbells & the MacDonalds seemed to be very vivid & still present centuries later for the professor.  I was not even aware of the battle between the clans however the professor ensured that we were all very familiar with it & I kind of wanted to be “beamed up Scotty” during those mini rants.  Thankfully I was no longer that painfully shy girl however just like giving ourselves injections it is no fun subjecting ourselves to confrontation don’t you find?  The students who had taken Professor Campbell’s course in previous years warned each of us newbies that if we got a C grade that we should be grateful.  Then on top of that we found out that no matter what course we were taking, all of our essays would go through the Renison English marking department & marks would be deducted from our grade further for any grammatical or spelling errors.  Our papers looked pretty marked up by the time we received them back with the scathing remarks.  When Professor Campbell assigned the essay for the semester he added that he hoped that we could achieve something greater than a fail.  He was a character & he scared the pants off me at the time.  Looking back now I realize that I felt that level of intimidation due to the point I was at in my life together with the fact that I was basically Rex the dinosaur from “Toy Story” & Dr. Campbell was the polar opposite in that he had a dominant personality that loved a big debate.  He respected people when they challenged him.  My goal however at the time was simply to get through his class as I needed the credit.  The essay topic that he assigned was on the subject of anomie.  This was back in the day of actually having to go to the library & read a handheld book.  The strange thing though was that when I arrived at the huge arts library on campus I discovered that there was only one book on that topic in the whole library & it was located in the rare books section.  Books in that location could not be taken out.  You had to read the book in the library.  Thankfully I have always been a speed reader so I was through the book quickly.  That was the up side.  The down side was that I was more confused than ever about what the heck anomie was even after reading the book.  To be brief, it is essentially a state of normlessness.  To make a long story short, somehow even after the butchery of the English marking department & my misfortune of somehow being the clan enemy of the professor, I received a B- on that paper.  When I think of anomie (which is not often), it does not take long to equate it to diabetes.  There is no norm I think with diabetes.  There is nothing normal about having to be your own bodily process engineer 24 hours a day & to give ourselves injections to stay alive.  There is nothing normal about how it feels to have profoundly high or low blood sugars either.  I do not need to tell you any of these things.  Some days I feel like diabetes is putting me through a parallel world of the loathed English marking department.  Diabetes is beyond brutal that way right? 

How does the brain get from pincushion to anomie to anime anyhow?  Part of the legacy that I want to someday leave behind is to beremembered as is a gal who laughed a lot…laughed a real lot.  There is a point I find at which it is medicinal to laugh at myself.  Sure, I could live in the land of high level academia but that is a tiny portion of who I am.  I would rather make someone laugh then wow them with what I may or may not think I know.  I would rather hug the absolute stuffing out of someone & tell them that they are a beautiful original than anything else.   I just want to keep loving out loud.  And I will keep laughing big time & without stifling my laugh or anyone else’s.  I don’t live in the land of the library so no shushing is allowed in my little corner of the world.  On Monday mornings I help out with a reading program with 4 & 5 year olds.  I get to be my rascally self & the children know that I love reading & they catch that love of reading too just all on their own.  They catch that love because we are anything but quiet when we read together.  I have gotten anything from the “hairy eye brow” to closing of doors in the general vicinity to an egging on to other responses from some adults in the environment but the kids & I just keep being rascals with a shared love of reading.  I am ok with being a rascal that way.  Anomie to anime made an unexpected connection this morning when I was talking to my husband.  I was making a fun reference to something that was driving me up the wall about diabetes as what I meant to be “anomie” but I mistakenly said it was “anime.”  Our oldest son wows me with his drawing & writing talents.  He loves anime & has described it to me with enthusiasm.  A lot like anomie though, I still kind of don’t get it & so just laugh at myself.  That is also what I did this morning when I referenced anime instead of anomie.  And then my husband laughed at my bellowing laugh at myself.  Have you caught yourself having a medicinal belly laugh lately?  I encourage you to go right out of your way to get in as many laughs in a lifetime as possible.  Let’s make that the new normal!

Smiles, Saundie :)

How about a few wee jokes... (from the book "Positive Words, Powerful Results). 

"For sale:  antique desk suitable for lady with thick legs & big drawers. "

"Now is your chance to have your ears pierced & get an extra pair to take home too."

"illiterate?  Write today for free help."

"Bear a diner/gas station in Indiana:  Eat here & get gas."

An especially dear quote to me is by W. H. Auden, "Among those whom I like or admire I can find no common denominator, burt among those whom I love, I can:  all of them make me laugh."

Have an outrageous funny week.  Next Monday's writing is in the ether :)

How would you describe February?  We may think of it as literally the middle of winter.  Instead we may look forward to it at this point as it can be both a celebratory month as well as a perspective grounding one.  February in my little corner of the world brings the gift of Valentine’s Day & Family Day.  That means that we get to enjoy celebrating the sweethearts in our lives two days with even more enthusiasm this month.  February is also the beginning of a 6 week timeframe whereby I take a brave & honest look at how things are going in many aspects of my life.  Strangely I have come to see the gift of this February mini personal taking inventory of where my habits are lingering, what needs tweaking, my attitude, relationships & of course diabetes self management.  It is the month where I kick it up a notch.  To be aware is to give ourselves the ability to straighten up any aspects of our lives that have gotten beyond messy.  For the past 7 years the consistent point that I have found within February is that I am offside.  Little by little I have gotten off course.  In the Spring, Summer & Fall I find it pretty easy to keep my exercise habits, socializing, creative projects, eating habits & diabetes care top notch.  During those seasons I feel naturally stoked.  My energy level is high & I take things on with enthusiasm.  How about winter?  Okay, confession time…no not so much.  I kind of drag myself through the months of December & January until mid February.  Then I do my getting real with myself thing & realize that yes, here I am again offside.

In the spirit of being a Canadian, I will use a hockey analogy or a few.  I have been a hockey fan since I was a wee girl.  This girl was a fan complete with the homemade corny oversized fan signs.  My Dad purchased season hockey tickets each year to the local hockey team, The Collingwood Blues games.  It is with a huge smile that I remember learning about the sport from my Dad in the chilly arena stands with a hot chocolate in one hand & a program listing out everything about the team in the other.  If you mentioned the names Garth Beer & Peter Crawford to my Dad even after all these years I am confident that he would remember those players.  My Dad taught me the rules & the “hockey talk” like what actions qualified as penalties, power shots, why you might pull a goalie out, the CAT line, what side of the blue line a play was to be made in, a hat trick & many other hockey related “need to knows. “ My Dad is & always has been one “cool cat”…pun intended Dad.  He has an infectious humorous side complete with a joke file in his filing cabinet.  My Dad was my first stand up comedian & there are a number of jokes that I remember him telling to this day complete with the voices that he did.  He sure had the patience with me during hockey season especially when I disagreed with a rule.  Some did not make sense to me especially when it came to penalties.  I came to realize that rules are there to keep things civilized & orderly & to make the sport more fun.  They are what they are.  It took me a while to get that but I finally did.  Off hockey season, my Dad tried to teach this girly girl how to fish.  Even though I would only use corn niblets for bait & would talk too much during fishing, my dad never gave up on me & my potential in any area of life.  I guess in some ways I was an offside fishing buddy.  I was what I was though & my Dad accepted that with a sense of humor & a lot of love.  Off side is one of so many gifts that my Dad grounded me in growing up & he still has that way even from almost 200kms away of doing this. 

Offside…shooting from well over the blue line…icing…that is kind of where I find myself in yet again at virtually the same time of year again this February.  Complete with a case of January blahs still in play, a bit of a penalty box attitude & a little less than the needed brawly spirit needed especially for the moving target of diabetes management to combat diabetes is where February finds me yet again. As an aside if you talk really fast there just is no such thing as a run on sentence ha ha!   Whether I feel like it or not I know I need to get back on track to analyzing my glucose graphs & trading some of my plays when it comes to managing the beast of type 1.  And no, I don’t feel like thinking about diabetes right now much less looking at what looks like some epic fails of glucose graphs & coming out with a new play book for myself moving forward.  Here’s the thing though when it comes to hockey & diabetes management & that is that to get the results that we strive for takes huge work.  It means that feeling like doing something or not has nothing to do with it.  It means rising above emotions & concentrating on the goal.  My Dad taught me that by his example & his words which is a rare & beautiful life lesson.  Diabetes is what it is & whether I feel like putting full effort into combating it or not  I know that I have a bigger yes to do this than no on any given day.  On the days where I don’t feel like doing what I need to do I just remember that my family needs me to be here & I love them indescribably so yes, I will combat type 1 & whatever else every day no matter what.  Thank goodness for the gift of the bigger yes.

Let’s go back in time for a few minutes to those Collingwood Blues hockey games.  My Dad helped me create 2 big time corny fan signs.  One was, “Let’s Cheer for Beer; go Garth go” & the other was “Crawford is the coolest Cat.”  (Crawford played on the cat line).  Each & every game, I took those signs along to the games & cheered like a maniac.  These are special memories of this small town Canadian girl.

It is an honor to share my Dad with you in a couple more especially dear stories.  Our thread of hockey enjoyed together continues in both of these following stories.  Fellow Canadians, you know how difficult it is on many levels to get tickets to a Toronto Leafs game.  When I was 12 years old, my parents surprised my cousin Lindy (Lindy Lou, my Heart’s Sister is what I call her) & I with an overnight stay in Toronto at a hotel complete with dinner out anywhere that we chose & tickets to a Leaf’s game.  This was a huge deal to get to go to Toronto, which was 2 hours drive away from my wee town (population 1200) & go to a Leaf’s game.  Lindy has always been more of a sister to me & so when we discovered that not far from Maple Leaf Gardens there was a restaurant called “Lindy’s Steakhouse” we instantly agreed that was the dinner spot.  We were thrilled too when we discovered that there was mini juke box at each table & my Dad handed Lindy & I some coins to feed the juke box.  The piece de la resistance was the fun that my Mom, Dad, Lindy & I had at the Leaf’s game.  Many memories have stayed with me & this one is as clear as if it were only a few days ago.  My next hockey thread memory with my Dad is more recent & whether you have diabetes or not you will be blown away by the act of love that I am about to share with you.  The first year with type 1 diabetes was especially difficult I found.  I was fighting that I was going to be stuck with diabetes permanently every step of the way.  One thing that drove me up the wall on a daily basis was the medical rule within my geographic area that I could not even apply for consideration of the insulin pump until a full year of multi injections had gone by.  4 needles a day minimum for a full year is what that meant.  I wanted the pump so badly & I had my eye on the one I longed for.  I counted the days down on the calendar as if Christmas were approaching.  At the same time I inadvertently also put my life on hold.  That first year with type 1 I declined more social invitations with a perception that I was safer to do that.  For sure I was at the beginning of a steep learning curve when it came to type 1 & the other thing that I found was that a zillion things affected my blood sugars in either direction so being around others or in unusual circumstances was too risky that first year.  That made for frankly a pretty miserable me that year.  I am a social animal by nature so I had imprisoned myself that year.  I missed the opportunity to go with a friend to see Maya Angelou in Toronto which is only about an hour away from where we live now.  I missed that chance because I had imprisoned myself or immobilized myself with fear.  I had the “whatifitis” pretty badly that year.  Do you know what broke me out of that state?  Fittingly, it was the thread of hockey yet again.  My Dad called me up one day & invited me to a Leaf’s hockey game.  My emotions screamed at me that a zillion things could go wrong with my blood sugars.  I was at that point still literally breaking out into a sweat every single time I had to give myself a needle.  I was panicking about so many things when it came to diabetes.  Diabetes scared me…insulin scared me at the same time as it provided blessings.  It was a trapeze act balance.  Insulin is of course like that anyway but I felt it in a way that magnified it that first year.  My Dad bailed me out though with the one thing that was bigger than my fear of what could go wrong if I went too far away from home that first year & that was with the bond of hockey.  Against my beating heart & cool sweat, I heard myself reply that I would love to go with my Dad.  We decided that we would have dinner downtown before the game.  My Dad was aware of my needle phobia & somehow knew that I would be worrying about this when it came to dinner out away from home but neither one of us spoke of this beforehand.  When we arrived at the restaurant, my Dad looked me in the eye & said, “Saund, don’t worry at all about the insulin needle before dinner.”  He went on to explain that he went to his doctor’s office the week before & had an appointment with the nurse there to learn how to inject insulin in case I needed help.  He told me about learning by injecting into an orange & how his nurse is the best at giving needles.  He said, “I’ve got you covered Saund.”  There are no words to say how loved I felt at that moment in time & how it is frozen in my memory as one of the most loving acts I have ever received.  I found that I was able to give myself the injection at dinner that night without breaking out into a sweat & we just laughed & enjoyed the dinner & the game.  As an aside on the way into the game, security checks bags & purses & they insisted that I could not take my emergency juice box into the game.  “Don’t worry about it Saund, we will get an emergency pop just in case.”  We just laughed that off & enjoyed every single moment of the hockey game together.  You know who has my back & always will…my Dad.  We have never spoken of the incredible act of love & how it helped me to break free of my diabetes fears.  I am grateful beyond words to & for my Dad.

I love my Dad.

My heart’s hope for you is that you treasure the Dear Hearts in your life that have you covered too.

Smiles, Saund :)

This week please find a way to honour someone dear to your heart.  Do that something special today.  Live without regrets for taking that moment to give someone dear a hug, a smile, a card, a cupcake, a phone call, a poem, a drawing or whatever is in your heart to give out of love.  Next week's writing piece is steeping xo

Guess what day it is?  Guess what day it is?  Okay, you know by now that I will reach for any reason to celebrate.  That is the outcome of diabetes I am sure in my life.  Everything is magnified & I do mean everything.  The bad days are very bad & the good days are ones of euphoria.  There is no fence sitting for this gal as far as life goes.  Okay then, what in the wide world could Monday February 2, 2015 be a day fit for celebration for?  As an aside whenever I ask one of my friends how she is feeling she always says the same thing, “I am vertical & breathing therefore today is a gift.”  She is a lady with a fast & ready sense of humour & she has a long list of chronic illnesses yet she always sees some sort of bright side every day with honesty.  She is a character.  I like her for her shared rascalness that she & I share.  Whenever I go to her house for tea she always serves me a “cup” of tea out of this huge soup like bowl & it has to be at least 20ozs (more like a pot of tea than a traditional 5 oz cup).  And she will always challenge me to finish every drop before it gets cold & to not have to use the restroom during the visit.  She also adds, “I hope this cup of tea is large enough for a tea-a-holic like you!”  Then she laughs her infectious laugh.  Whenever one of our sons are taking a hooky day from school to celebrate a birthday she always tells them that they will learn every bit as much out of school that day as in.  The cool thing is that she is a teacher herself.  Did I digress?  Of course I did.  The celebration for today (though hooky free since the schools are closed in the area due to a huge snow storm) is Groundhog Day. 

As I have shared with you before, I grew up in a wee town (population 1200) about 45 minutes away from another small town called Wiarton.  Once a year, otherwise little known Wiarton makes it on the map & the news due to a rodent.  Yes, you read that right…a rodent.  For sure you will have heard of the infamous “Wiarton Willy.”  Willy makes his hugest debut once a year on February 2^nd which is Ground Hog Day.  Willy’s job was & still is to predict whether we would continue to be up to our knees in snow for another 6 weeks.  If you grew up in Georgian Bay, you will know what it feels like to get snow in your boots.  It is snowbelt.  I don’t particularly know how long the average ground hog lives but I would guess that the groundhog Willy that I grew up with is long gone from this world & his grand-groundhogs are the groundhogs of honour for Groundhog day these days.

How do we go about celebrating some occasions that are a little off the beaten track like Groundhog day?  Well, maybe we celebrate in the same spirit as my rascally friend who celebrates another vertical & breathing day as a great day or maybe we add a little more.  I confess that basically anytime I can come up with what I think is a bonafide celebration/occasion, I love to go to this gluten & dairy free bakery that I discovered not far from where I live now.  The celebration goody is always a pumpkin cupcake & I will add that they are miniature ones so they are to me 100% guilt free.  Since this bakery is closed as most bakeries tend to be on Sunday & Mondays, I popped down there last Friday & got a mini pumpkin cupcake & put it in the freezer in readiness for today’s Groundhog Day celebration.  Although these cupcakes have no dairy & no gluten, they are indescribably delicious.  That is no exaggeration.  I have been known for creating occasions & that I have done my whole life.  I am looking forward to savoring this wee cupcake today at exactly 2pm with a cup of tea in one hand & an espresso in the other. 

Is Groundhog day a real bonafide celebration day?  At best it is pretty silly in my mind but I am okay with silly.  I am more than okay with silly.  In the middle of winter life can get a little heavy so why the heck not get a little silly?  Our sons are almost convinced that Groundhog day ought to become a stat holiday.  That is kind of funny.  Catching the bug of celebration is like that.  Looking for people & occasions to celebrate are awesome I think. 

Did you ever see the movie, “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray?  You will remember that his alarm goes off each morning & he has to repeat the exact same day over & over again for eternity possibly.  That was kind of how I thought of type 1 diabetes management the first year that I had diabetes.  Every day I would eat the same foods at the same time, take insulin injections at the same time & exercise at the same time, get up & go to bed at the same time & then basically pray for cooperation in blood sugar results.  “Blah, blah, blah” was the way I felt that year like I was going through the motions of a zombie.  Each day I x’d off another day from the calendar as I was counting down to the day where I could finally at least qualify to request consideration for an insulin pump.  That went on for 13 months.  I felt like a character out of the movie, “Groundhog Day.”  Everyone is a beautiful original so just because I find my insulin pump to be the bee’s knees does not mean that it is the answer for everyone.  There is no one size fits all in any part of life & diabetes is magnified in this regard as well.  I love my pump & the freedom it gives me including the option to enjoy carbs when I want.  That is not to say that the pump is the brains of diabetes.  I am still making decisions 24-7 because I don’t qualify for a continuous glucose monitor so I have to make corrections throughout any day or night 365 days a year.  The pump does not mean that I will be in range all the time.  That would be a dream come true.  That is fiction however.  I have had nearly a full month of horrible high blood sugars…that kind of also felt like groundhog day (as in the movie) because every day I would just try again to break free of the high blood sugars…correcting, exercising, changing out foods, trying to reduce stress & other real life maneuvers.  Yes, I do all my own stunts or in other words, I am the brains of my diabetes management or what feels like mismanagement some days & my pump is my little beloved minion.  It gives me a fighting chance but it is not perfect & it is not a cure.  I do hear that the cure is coming though in 5 years.(laughing)  I know , I know, if you have also had diabetes for more than 5 years, you have been hearing that line too.  Maybe you have been hearing that declaration for decades.  There is sure to be many new gadgets for diabetes care every 5 years but the cure well, I would love to believe that the cure will come some time in my lifetime.  I am not putting my life on hold in 5 year increments counting on that though.  I will however gladly investigate new management tools & make personal decisions as to what I think would work for me. 

Diabetes can at times I believe begin to feel like the perpetual Groundhog Day as depicted in the movie.  It at times is more of doing the same thing& at the same time trying to break free of having to do the same things over & over again.  Alas, there is absolutely no vacation, parole or running away from diabetes for even a single day.  We wake up, check glucose, eat, check glucose, exercise, check glucose, correct or gobble chalky tablets depending on the all mighty number on our meters (the all knowing guru’s that don’t agree with one another), eat, correct one way or another, go about the rest of our day, self analyze ourselves to determine whether we are stressing, check glucose, eat dinner, check again, check every time we are going to get behind the wheel of our vehicles, eventually get ready for sleep, check glucose yet again & of course more checks of glucose at random times for a zillion different reasons, go to sleep…well, try to go to sleep because diabetes loves to poke at us even in our sleep.  How about those 3am sweat feasts out of nowhere.  Yum, there is nothing like a handful of gummy bunnies at 3am for a low blood sugar followed by a tummy ache to spoil an entire potential night’s sleep.  The next day we do it all again.  Unlike the movie though eventually the stars come into alignment for certain days & we see those gorgeous in range numbers smiling back at us from our glucose meters.  It is so worth creating a celebration for those days.  Those are the days that remind us that yes, we are more than vertical & breathing.  We are going to take on that day & celebrate the heck out of it & appreciate it big time.

My heart’s hope for you is that whether you think of Groundhog Day as a gloomy thing of repetition like the movie, it can also be seen as a chosen day of celebration.  Whether Willy says that we have 6 more weeks of winter or not, who cares really.  The Spring is going to come.  The feeling unstoppable or spring like days with diabetes come for us too.  Those days are worth celebrating. 

Smiles, Saundie :)

There is a lot of snow going inside my boots in my little corner of the world yet there is so much to be thankful for.  Our youngest son woke up & sang the "Celebration" song when he found out the schools are closed due to the winter storm today.  Next Monday's sharing is especially dear to my heart & is in honour of my Dad.  What he did will melt your heart xo

Could it be that one simple letter can make a humungous difference in connotation, our willingness to listen or feelings of community versus isolation?  What if we exchanged a “s” in the place of a “c?”  The difference in spelling between “advise” and “advice” fits exactly within that question.  My experience with received advice has fallen more often than not into the critical pile whereas received advising has most often resulted in positive movement forward & connection.  When I have wanted to be advised I have most often sought out a valued mentor.  Advice on the other hand often comes at me in the form of the unsolicited kind more often than not along with ignorance or passive aggressive criticism.  Yes, one letter can make a huge difference I have found.  How about you?  Is this your experience as well?

The great thing is that whether we are seeking out someone to advise or mentor us or we are receiving unsolicited advice we are ultimately the ones that get to choose whether to embrace or reject either.  I literally cannot remember a time in my life when I did not have at least one mentor if not several at once.  To me listening to the  gentle giants who have already lived  certain life experiences  & choosing to walk along the tracks they have left makes sense.  Everyone is a beautiful original so this is just my view point.  I am not suggesting that I am trying to duplicate anyone else or do exactly what they are doing or have done.  Rather, I am saying that I choose to seek out mentors to advise me in different aspects of my life at times.  It is up to me to decide whether to go in the direction suggested or not.  I love that I have that choice.  There are times when something that has worked beautifully for someone else has been an epic fail for me.  That’s okay too.  When I seek out an adviser it is someone or many someone(s) that I am confident have my best interests at heart & genuinely care about my family & myself.  I seek out people who are the real deal, humble, truthful, spiritually solid & full of goodness. 

How about advice?  Do you enjoy receiving advice?  If you are like me, the answer may be, “it depends.”  I am admittedly quite repelled by the word advice.  Too many times I have been down the road of receiving unsolicited advice.  An example that comes quickly to mind is health.  I have lost count of the number of times I have received unsolicited advice about a health challenge that I have faced.  Often the advice tends to suggest to me that I just need to take better care of myself in some simple way & then I will have great health.  If only it were that simple for any of us right?  I have tried the simple things & I have tried the complicated in an effort to improve all my chronic illnesses for sure.  The newest & supposedly around the corner cures make it into my email inbox in a myriad of ways.  99% of the time, the cure is a total crock like the okra, cinnamon and other silly nonsense that is suggested will cure diabetes.  I wonder sometimes if the people who are writing about these supposed cures take even themselves seriously.  I consider myself an open minded person yet not naïve & I have a nonsense “gfilter” that is the size of Canada.  As an aside, the term “gfilter” is a new finagled word that I borrow from my husband who is a huge Rush fan.  In one of the Rush videos there is reference to the “gfilter.”  It is just kind of a play on the word filter.  My husband has a filter or “gfilter” the size of the world on a humorous note.  His gfilter is so large that he refuses to enter into small talk or do a lot of nonsensical activities that crop up in situations.  He has the superpower to filter out nonsensical advice in real time which is something that I aspire to doing one day.  It means for him that he is able to let things go right away instead of replaying the nonsensical advice over & over again.  Yes, I definitely would also love to have that ability yet realistically I am not so sure that I will become proficient in having that kind of super gfilter.  Sometimes when I share with my husband that I received a piece of mean spirited unsolicited passive aggressive advice he will literally tell me to put it through the gfilter. 

You know what is cool?  We can advise ourselves too.  We can take ourselves out perhaps for a walk or put the fire on & make ourselves a wee cup of tea & sit ourselves down & sort out our thoughts.  We can remember what has worked & what has not.  We can pull out words of wisdom that we have been told either verbally by someone else or have read.  We can think it all through & advise ourselves on how to move forward. 

Almost daily so far in 2015 I have advised myself to not get impatient & write off this year as a total miss.  Every single day except 2 so far this year have proven to be problematic in a health way.  Lately, I noticed a real transition too with a great number of people near & far that either have the blahs or at least are less cheerful than usual.  Is that perhaps par for the course in January?  We have had some bone numbing cold days out there so perhaps a number of us have a touch of cabin fever or imploding endorphins.  Are you familiar with Stephen Covey’s books?  Over the years I enjoyed most of his books & especially loved participating in a “7 Habits” 3 day workshop.  There is a gentleman who has left behind a legacy of thinking positively & without a box.  There have been so many times in life where I have shaken my head either physically or on the inside when I have found an interchange where the only go to position the other person will entertain is either lose lose or win lose thinking.  I remember it being a huge eye opener for me to learn that compromises through Stephen Covey’s model are lose lose.  It is disappointing to see just how often compromise tends to be the go to position in the world versus win win.  Worse than that though in my mind is the win lose where basically one person gets his or her own way at the expense of the other person.  I do not consider my life to be an experiment in compromise or living on the fence or some middle ground of neutrality that merely exists in an almost make belief fake world.  No thanks.  I am all in.  My health has been a mess.  I will not pretend that it has been otherwise.  Within the mess though I am okay.  I don’t like the mess but I know that I am far beyond my body & health & that is comforting.  There are people in my life that I value in the advising role & I continue to seek them out & I am also quietening my own mind to find different ways to combat the health difficulties that have been challenging me.   One of the things that I have given to myself is more patience to get better.  Instead of admonishing myself for having yet another sick day, I tell myself that I am all in with this fight…the fight against type 1 diabetes, psoriasis, and the other health challenges.  The challenges will not win & I will not lose.  I will not give up.  I will find a way to feel as well as I possibly can.  I will not stand down to the challenges.  I can be tired but I will not give up.  And I just call a spade a spade…like diabetes sucks…yes it does.  Feisty, stubborn, steadfast, determined are not words to live by but rather a daily and even minute by minute action plan.  I have advised myself to embrace these characteristics already within me in an even more magnified way & to appreciate that this is how God made me.  He made me strong enough.  Through grace I am strong enough.  Even when I don’t think I am strong enough somehow, somewhere or from someone, I get a tap on the shoulder when I need it with a shout of “Yes you are!” 

Recently, a dear friend of mine was speaking to my husband & mentioned to him that she could tell that I was not feeling well when she had seen me last.  That was almost a new one for me because what I usually hear from people around me is “I cannot believe that you have diabetes (etc) because you don’t look sick.”  Three out of four of my chronic illnesses are invisible so for sure I usually don’t look sick even on my most challenging days.  I also don’t go around all mopey in the world & dramatic so maybe that helps too.  I will admit that it drives me up the wall when someone who is otherwise healthy goes on & on about a cold.  The bubble captain above my head would say, “oh get a hold of yourself man!”  The thing is though, how could someone else understand another person’s challenge if they have not lived with it too.  I try to be patient realizing that 8 years ago I had no idea what kind of a fight for your life people have with diabetes every minute of every day.  I have chosen to try my best to be patient with people who don’t understand the battle of diabetes as long as the other person is not going out of their way to be mean spirited.  Most people’s hearts are in the right place.  I will not allow diabetes to change who I really am.  Diabetes can beat up my body but my mind & spirit are strong & get stronger every single day.  In getting back to the conversation that my friend had with my husband she shared something with him that stayed with me upon hearing it from my husband.  She shared that it is her belief that people who are pursuing a Holy path are attacked every step of the way by the evil one.  Having had read “The Screwtape Letters” a number of times I realized that I was sure that she was on to something.  My body can get worn down yet I refuse to get spiritually worn down.  That is my choice.  Being aware brings more energy for the fight.  Thank goodness there are so many beautiful & loving forms of strength in the world to embrace.  And there are angels & some of them are disguised as people.  You will know when you meet one.

My heart’s hope for you is that you always have genuine, loving, truthful caring mentors to advise you when you reach out for this.  And on any given day may you feel the arms of love surrounding you.

Smiles,  Saundie :)

This week & every week may you say the words to yourself, "I am strong enough...yes I am."  Yes you are!  Next Monday's story is "Groundhog Day Celebration."  And I am big, big, big time excited about the Monday after that (Mon. Feb. 9th) since I have just finished writing a true story in honour of my Dear Heart Dad.  It is heartwarming how he showed his love in a way that will cause you to smile from ear to ear.  Yes, I am bursting with excitement to share my Dad with you xo.