Post A New Comment

I read blog post yesterday by Christopher Snider. Chris is hoping that on Monday, July 22nd people like you will take the time to comment on every diabetes blog that they read. Chris thinks that, "comments make the world go ’round, as far as blogging is concerned. Yes, there are stat counters and analytics reports you can run, but pageviews and unique visitors don’t mean much to me when it comes to sharing personal stories and experiences. What matters to me is when someone reads something I write, and then takes the time to leave a comment.". I couldn't agree with Chirs more and I am hoping that you to read his blog about the topic.

You already know what some of your favorite diabetes blogs means to you, but did you ever wonder what they are for the writer? Or how your participation completes the connection between the two of you and the other people reading? Diabetes blogs aren't like a tech or news blog, I'm not a guy reporting on a story, I'm a person sharing deeply personal thoughts and feelings in the hopes that my sharing will strike a cord of commonality with you. My only goal is to make your day a little easier, better, happier, lighter, more informed. My personal hope is that my sharing will, in some way, help you to not worry, panic, feel alone. I just want to help because I know how it feels to be in your position and no one deserves to feel that alone, scared and helpless - because we really aren't... but sometimes it takes finding others living the same life to realize that is true, at least it did for me. 

What you may not know is the act of writing on this blog is how I find peace with type I diabetes. My calm comes when I can see people like you reading. I tell myself that it doesn't matter if you leave a comment, that I can tell that you are getting something from the experience when you return the next day. I think what Chris is saying is that he believes blog comments perpetuate more blogs. He may be correct, I don't know. I'm not sure how seeing more comments would effect my writing frequency but I do like his idea for Monday.

Anyway, Chris's blog made me want to tell you that I have faith that you are out there and that sometimes I write stuff that you find valuable. But if I'm being honest, some days it is really nice to hear a voice come back from within the abyss.

I hope you have a second to read about what Chris is calling, #dblogcheck - Have a great weekend!

It's my party, I'll reflect if I want to

Life expectancy for an American male is seventy-five, I just turned forty-two. What that means is, barring any unexpected endings, I have thirty-three years left.

Yesterday Cole and Arden took me to see a movie for my forty-second birthday, when we exited the theater it was pouring rain. I told the kids to wait by the door and I would bring the car to them. I sprinted to my car, it was perhaps seventy-five yards from the door. As I was running I passed a gentleman in his fifties, he was walking to his car and getting drenched in the process. Cole and Arden jumped in when I arrived at the door and Cole said, "You are faster then people would expect". I smiled at his kind, if not slightly backhanded shot at my weight but all I could think was, "Ten more years and I'll be that guy walking".

It's funny but after my mid twenties I never thought about my mortality once, I was carefree about my age until Arden was diagnosed just after my thirty seventh birthday. Now, everything that aches, my right knee, both of my ankles, my throwing elbow, the stiff neck I can't shake - all of it makes my think about Arden or more specifically, about Arden's diabetes. Lately, I've been extra tired. I'm not ill and nothing has changed about my schedule, I think that seven years of late nights full of blood glucose wrangling is catching up with me. Last night I tried to get some sleep. I told myself that Arden was going to be fine, gave myself permission not to sleep with one ear open and it worked great. I woke up this morning around seven thirty completely refreshed with a streak of warm sunlight on my face. The first thing that I saw when I opened my eyes was my beautiful wife. I laid in the quiet for a few minutes and thought about how pretty Kelly is and how lucky I was that she said yes on the day that I asked her to go on our first date. But that glow only lasted for a few minutes.

A muffled BEEP, BEEP rang out...

My heart sank into my stomach, that sound is the unmistakable cry of Arden's DexCom after it's fallen onto her bedroom floor. The beeping made me feel instantly sick for two reasons. First, the only way that thing could have fallen is if it had been vibrating all night and second, two beeps means Arden's BG is over 180. All night plus two beeps, equals this isn't going to be good.

I walked into Arden's room and tested her BG as she slept. The night before Arden's BG was falling before bed, she had a few slices of an orange and a cookie to combat the fall and her BG found a balance at 89. Thirty minutes later that number was 95 and her DexCom indicated that the number was drifting, ever so slightly up. I remember thinking, "Good, I'll take a 120ish number tonight, I'm exhausted". It was not twenty minutes later that I gave myself permission to pass out, and I did. I slept all night like a baby while Arden's BG slowly rose over the next two hours before it settled in at three hundred and ninety-one. I don't have words for how 391 makes me feel.

Am I too old to care for my daughter properly? Too tired, too out of shape? Have the health and food choices that I've been ignoring over the past two decades caught up to me, is this my penance for those... I haven't exercised regularly since my twenties, I hardly eat and I haven't had eight glasses of water in a day, maybe ever. Funny thing is that up until recently it didn't matter because nothing could stop me and I could power through anything. I've sat up until two, three, four, even five o'clock in the morning if that's what was required to keep Arden's BG where it should be. I've had nights like last night in the past where I slept through a DexCom alarm, but I don't think last night was a repeat of those nights. I think my age is catching up to me and even if it hasn't, how much longer until I'm that guy in the parking lot that has to let the rain soak him? How much longer until I'm exactly as fast as I look like I should be?

I've never been in great shape, never really cared about it enough to put in the time and work that fitness requires. I don't honestly know if I have it in me but I'm going to try because I can live with a belly and I may not care about a double chin, but my heart can't handle Arden's BG being 391... that beeping cuts right through to my soul.

What do you want to tell diabetes?

This morning on Facebook I found myself wishing that diabetes was a 'someone' instead of a 'something' so I could tell it to go f#^& itself for keeping me up all night. I had a particularly long day working around our house in the heat yesterday and today I find myself with more writing to do than time in the day - I really needed that sleep.

I must admit... venting about it online felt good!

In fact, I liked the experience so much that I thought you may like to tell diabetes off and start the week with a clean mental palate too. So feel completely free to leave any message that you may have for diabetes in the comment section of this post. Don't worry about language or tone... let it fly. Usually, I love to see who left comments but today, wanting to be anonymous is completely understood. I hope that you find it as cathartic as I did to say, "fuck you diabetes".

Voldemort

I remember one summer when it felt like I heard the words, "Harry Potter" everyday. There were commercials online and on television, beach towels by the pool with the young wizard's face and it seemed like everyone wanted to see the movie about the boy with the scar on his forehead. I felt like I couldn't get away from the words, "Harry Potter"... but then one day it was all gone. No one uttered the words, the towels were packed away and the world moved on to the next thing. Today, maybe I see one of the films on cable while trolling the channel guide or because the films are so engrained into out lexicon, someone makes a joke with a HP theme, but for the most part I live my life without hearing the words or focusing on a visual reminder. 

Last night, still a little loopy from our vacation, Arden and I fell to sleep on the sofa together. Kelly asked me to bring her upstairs as she went to bed, I agreed, and then promptly went back to sleep. I slept last night next to Arden and held her DexCom receiver like it was my teddy bear. When I opened my eyes this morning that receiver and Arden's OmniPod PDM were the first things that I saw. Then, as it does each time that I awake, my mind sent me a message. I receive this message each time upon waking without fail. It comes to me when I open my eyes in the middle of the night, at my alarm in the morning, and after I nod off for ten minutes on a flight to a family getaway.

I wouldn't call the message something I hear in words, it's more of a feeling that I get, like someone whispers into my brain, "Arden has diabetes, is she okay... check on her".

After I woke up this morning I wondered how many times do I hear, say or think the word, "diabetes"? How much of my conscious and unconscious consideration is used everyday, managing, calculating and worrying.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to live an entire day without that word popping into my head. Would it be freeing, would I suddenly have all of this free time that I wouldn't know what to do with? Do you think that I'd find a new hobby or take more time to write. Would I exercise, get a bike, could I finally plant the vegetable garden that I know my wife desperately wants but I just can't figure out how to make time for?  I'd like to find out...

You know what though? Forget about me, I'd love to see Arden live a day without the word in her head. I'd like to know what it feels like to write one last blog post wishing you all well before I closed my diabetes blog because some company developed an artificial pancreas that was foolproof or a genius in a lab found a way to reverse all of this. More realistically, I'd take a day pass, but they don't really exist do they? Remember in the first HP movie when the wand salesman, Ollivander, told Harry that no one speaks his name and then everyone went on to say Voldemort about a thousand times? I bet if there was one more film about life in the Wizarding World after Harry defeated him, I bet people would still say, "remember when we were fighting with Voldemort, that shit was crazy!". 

Perhaps everyone gets a Voldemort in their lives. Maybe that's each of our chances to add to the collective human understanding. I think that I prefer to think about diabetes like that, not as a burden but a mantle. Still, I would like a day off once and a while. But since that's not going to happen...

Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort!

Number Thirty Seven

Have you ever heard that if you ask a person to name a number between one and one-hundred, the most common answer that people give is thirty-seven?

I don't know if that's something that can be proven mathematically but I have noticed it a lot over the years, that number just pops up all of the time.

Arden's All-Star softball team competed in their All-Star tournament last week. They played their first game on Thursday night and lost. Friday was rained out so they were scheduled to play two games on Saturday but they couldn't lose again or they would be out of the tournament - you can only lose two.

Thursday's game required a large bolus to battle Arden's adrenaline and the same was needed for the first game on Saturday. They won that first game Saturday and after a thirty minute break to recharge, they played again. During that second game her BG held steady until about the fourth inning. Arden's DexCom CGM was hung on the fence of the dugout during the games and I would check it every inning or so depending on how her BGs were acting. Arden ran out on the field when the forth inning began, as she did I walked into the dugout and looked at her CGM. Her BG was 120 with two arrows pointed down, she was falling fast but I knew that a juice box would handle it. I was actually waiting for this fall. Arden ran in to the dugout, drank a juice box in about ten seconds and ran right back to third base. Her BG balanced out as I expected and the girls won the game about an hour later. When Saturday ended, the team was 1 and 2, and scheduled to play again the next day at 1pm.

Arden's BGs were on the low side overnight, as I expected they may be and I handled them with a little juice and some temp basals. Nothing out of the ordinary after a day of activity.

Sunday brought high temperatures and a clear sunny sky, it was very hot. The girls warmed up at twelve-thirty, the game began at one and the adrenaline hit her about 45 minutes later. I bolused when her BG began to climb but I was too late, Arden's BG was on the move. I tried desperately to get it to come back down without going to low. Arden has trouble running when her BG gets above about 200 - she is normally very fast but above 200, her speed and dexterity become average, so my goal is always to keep her under that number when she plays. They won the first game and the next game was going to start in a half an hour. Arden's BG wasn't moving but I still only gave her a slight bolus (.20) for all of the food that she ate after game one. I thought that the .20 was a conservative approach to her game break snack as I was still leary of a fall from the earlier adrenaline bolus. 

We were now into the second game and my plan was to check her CGM after the third inning. The last time I looked at it was before the second inning began, it read 192 with an arrow diagonal down. Before I could get up after Arden made the last out of the third inning, she ran through the gate toward me holding her hands over her head and gesturing for me to come to her...

"I feel really dizzy!"

I didn't bother to test before I handed her a juice. She sucked it down as I tested her free hand...she was 37.

I said to Kelly, "Give her another one" as I ran to get the CGM from the fence. Arden's BG was dropping so fast that the CGM hadn't caught up yet, it read 101 but now both of it's arrows were pointed down. Arden's BG was falling way too fast, she drank two juices, ate a fast acting tablet and was now chewing on a handful of Mike and Ike's. I tested again, BG was 49 and she was still very dizzy.

Arden and I went into the dugout to get out of the sun, she alternated between sipping cool water and fuetly holding her head to try and stop the dizziness - seeing her press her hands into the side of her head broke my heart. I hugged her as she laid into me, I quietly told her that it would stop soon. We tested again, 69 but the arrows on the CGM were still pointed straight down. I decided to follow what the meter was indicating, I believed that her BG was climbing and stoped considering more carbs. It was then that Arden's place in the lineup came up... it was her turn to hit. "They can skip you for one inning", I told her.

"I can hit", Arden stood up squeezed her head between her hands one last time and put her helmet on, we tested again and her BG was 131 but she was still feeling the low. What came next was Arden's only strikeout of the tournament. She fouled off two pitches, running them both out before swinging and missing the last pitch of her at bat. I sat in the dugout staring at her, I was sure that I shouldn't have let her hit but I just couldn't find the parental wisdom in telling her that diabetes was going to make her miss that at bat. Secretly, I was so happy that she didn't get on base because I didn't want her to run but you can't imagine how proud I was of her for trying. She sat out the next half inning, opting to lay on the bench with her head on my lap so she could try to get her bearings. She only said two things to me during that time... "It's getting better" and " I can't believe two balls went to my position". She was annoyed that she missed the opportunity to make two plays.

When her team made the last out, she sat up, looked at me and said, "I'm okay, go back with mom".

Arden and her team went on to win that game and then they won the next one too. They never lost after losing the first game on Thursday and they won three in a row on that hot Sunday afternoon. I'm still not positive that I should have let her hit but, well, check this out...

 

That's Arden holding her trophy. Her team won the 2013 eight year old All-Star tournament last weekend! She played all but three outs in the field and never missed an at bat. Arden beat all comers, including diabetes - I think that if I was any prouder of her... my heart would burst.