Wordless Wednesday: That Time Of Year Again.

This Might Be Why They Know Who I Am Before I Tell Them My Name.

SCENE: WALGREENS - 5:43 PM

Kim walks towards the back end of the store but gets sidetracked by some Pinot Grigio in the clearance bin. Somehow, a bottle ends up joining her on the journey.

She approaches the counter. And waits.

The pharmacist finishes up with the drive-through customer and heads towards the counter.

PHARMACIST: Oh, hey. 

The pharmacist pivots and heads straight for the refrigerator. She returns with bottles of insulin.

Kim plops her wine bottle on the counter. The pharmacist eyes it for a couple seconds, rings it up along with the prescription, and begins to bag the items. Kim realizes what the pharmacist must be thinking.

KIM: Well, you know. One keeps me alive... the other keeps me sane.

The pharmacist smirks.

Those Rings Are Sleigh Bells, Not My CGM Alarms.

Thanksgiving weekend usually marks the beginning of holiday decorating at the Vlasnik household - it's a four-day weekend for Aaron and I (and now Billy, too - although really, every day is a day off for him), so we've got a little more free time to deck the halls and jingle the bells, and all that junk.

The storage-room-digging, garland-hanging and tree assembling also made for some awesome CGM graphs. It's sneaky exercise!

No-hitters fill me with holiday cheer!

The yuletide-ization process also made for some fun times with the dog - our tree goes right where his kennel has been, and we worried about him getting upset. Turns out he couldn't care less about the tall, glittery thing in our living room. 

So, alright then.

I'm Thankful.

Much as I was last year, I'm thankful for the wonderful family and friends I have in my life.

For otherwise good health. For the advances in diabetes management that allow me choose what food I enjoy - not the other way around.

For Aaron and Billy, who are playing a rousing game of fetch in our living room as I write this.

For the internet, which not only brought me the best support system I've ever found, but also introduced me to people who will introduce me to things like Nutella Rolls. (I'm making them as we speak!)

For a home; for a job; for food in my fridge. (And the electricity to run that fridge, while I'm at it.)

I'm thankful for my life, and everyone and everything in it.

This day-late Thanksgiving Day post is doubling as my post for Diabetes Blessings Week - organized by the ever-awesome Mike Durbin!

Wordless Wednesday: Puppeh!

I'm having a creative brain cramp this morning, so a gratuitous cute dog picture will have to do. I hope you don't mind.

This is his "serious" face.

The Book Of Better.

Earlier this month, someone at Three Rivers Press (part of the Crown Publishing Group at Random House) sent me an email about a book they just released, written and designed by a creative director at Nike who has had type 1 diabetes for 30+ years. The book was called The Book of Better and they wondered if they could send me a promotional copy. (I almost missed their email, as I've never had any contact with RH before, and it sort of looked like spam. Whoops.)

I got the book. I read the book. I sticky note-d the crap out of it.

I really do like the book. I would have paid money for it.

Really!

It's not without its faults - I'll get to that later on - but overall, I'm a big fan of both the message behind the book and the way in which that message was delivered.

The whole theory - if you hadn't guessed it yet - is that while life with diabetes can never be perfect, it can always be better. Even if "better" is just a teeny tiny bit better. The book's author, Chuck Eichten, uses a casual, self-depricating approach that I appreciated. He admits early on in the book that he's made plenty of mistakes himself; that he is, in no way, a medical professional; that this book is a way to share what he's learned in the past few decades with diabetes.

There's plenty of humor, which I totally hated. (What? I'm kidding. Of course I loved that.) It's hard to not like a book about diabetes that uses wording like "work my ass off", "A woolly mammoth's diet consists of (I don't know what).", "Diabetes makes you holier (Editor's note: Ha! Puns! Love!)", "There's plenty of fallout poop that comes with diabetes", and "OMIGOD!". There were several times while reading that I "Heh!"ed out loud. It's clever writing.

The formatting reads in much the same way as a blog - it goes heavy on the graphics, uses a lot of short and repetitive sentences, and tends to go HEAVY on the CAPITALIZATION and BOLDED WORDS. (It was a little overboard for my liking.)

One of my very favorite parts of the book was the following analogy:

"We shouldn't get confused into thinking that one variety [of diabetes] is not as bad as another variety. It's like saying, "My hair is not on fire that bad." That is crap. If your hair is on fire, you should treat it with concern and the utmost haste. My rule: If my hair is even slightly on fire, I don't pretend it's not. [...] Whatever type you've got, diabetes is screaming - YOUR HAIR IS ON FIRE! And we need to get that issue under control before it negatively affects our future."

And that's pretty typical of how the book works - humorous analogies made, strong viewpoints established, and suggestions for action supplied. Chuck makes the smart choice to address the viewer as part of his team - "we" instead of "you", most often. He addresses all of those real-life complaints and concerns that PWDs have. He makes relatable analogies about motivation and persistence. He uses his own experience to supply the "why should I". He can scold you while making you laugh, which in turn, makes you think.

He talks about feeling "at fault" for having diabetes, about how we PWDs can become obsessive over food, about how frustrating it is when results are anything but consistent, about the "foreverness" of living with diabetes - and he does it all in a way that makes you feel like he gets you.

There were, however, some parts of the book I take issue with. Take it away, bullet points:

• While the book is advertised as being for anyone - type 1, type 2, parents, children, diabetes veterans and newly diagnosed folks alike - it felt mostly geared to young (and not quite as young) adults with type 1. While that isn't necessarily good or bad, it's something you may want to be aware of.
• While the dynamic visual presentation is nice, the choice of sometimes laying white text over a yellow background led to some squinty-eyed reading. No me gusta.
• Chuck sings the praises of insulin pumps. Loudly. Ear-piercingly. Like he doesn't have neighbors. And then he might get a megaphone. And then he might put a microphone in front of that megaphone. Really - it got ridiculous. I understand that insulin pumps can be a great tool on one's diabetes utility belt, but they aren't for everyone, and no one wants to be made to feel guilty for not using one. Insulin pumps are not the Holy Grail. (And not having one doesn't mean that your mother was a hamster, either.)
• The page title "You can make your type 2 diabetes go away" ranks high on my WTF? Meter. The author does admit that he's oversimplifying things by saying that, but really? Couldn't you just use a few more words to say that the only part that can go away are the symptoms? This isn't Reader's Digest, after all.
• When talking about how to treat lows, Chuck says, "When you start to feel low, you can simply turn down the amount of insulin you are getting. And the feeling of low bloods sugar goes away. I am not making this up. It actually goes away." Not if you've still got 5 units on board, buddy. Not every time.
• Lastly, I found it disappointing that with as many times as the insulin pump is mentioned, CGMs don't even register a mention until page 225 (the book has 275 pages). Maybe Chuck doesn't use a CGM himself? Hard to say. But if it were my book, CGMs would have been mentioned right after the whole "OMGILOVEDIABETESTECHNOLOGY!" bit.

All in all, it was an entertainingly relatable and encouraging book. I think it's worth the read!

Disclaimer: Three Rivers Press provided me a free copy of this book, but did not oblige me to write about it in exchange for receiving a copy. As I mention in my blog disclosure, I'll talk about things if I like them (or really don't like them), and this was one of those cases. 

Team Type 1 - They're Made Of Awesome.

My morning started off by seeing a tweet from Allison at Diabetes Mine:

My curiousity was definitlely piqued. And by clicking on that link, here is what I found:

A big "thank you" to Diabetes Mine for making this video happen, and also to the members of Team Type 1 who were willing to record this You Can Do This Project video after running across America!! (Yes, you read that right. ACROSS. AMERICA. In 15 days, no less.)

I'm in awe of what Team Type 1 does, and honored that Tom, Brian, Phil and the whole team participated in this video. To use Phil's word, the whole thing is simply amazing.

Wordless Wednesday: Motivation.

Grabbing Back That Balloon.

Maybe it's a result of all of the statistics shared on World Diabetes Day - the number of people living with it, and dying from it. The monetary costs. The images of who this disease impacts. The reminders that while this can get more managable, we're still a long ways from a biological cure. The fact that each time we find that another person has died from type 1 diabetes, our hearts break and our fists clench.

Maybe it's because I've been listening to the Smashing Pumpkins on repeat for the last hour.

In any event, my frame of mind is a little bit on the brooding side today.

Diabetes (and especially type 1, where the symptoms are so sudden and so severe) can make you hyper-aware of your own mortality. There are moments where I can't shake the feeling that I'm living on borrowed time; I think about the reality that if I had been diagnosed before 1922 I would have died as a six year old child. (Or, if I had been born when I was, but just in a different part of the world.) There's that little voice in the back of my head, saying you shouldn't still be here. You've cheated death. You're so lucky to be here.

I think this recognition can shape us one of at least two ways. It can mold us into cautious, tip-toeing beings who avoid risks because we already feel as though the ice is thin beneath our feet. We let the statistics become more than numbers; we personify them in what we choose and what we do. We let the "what ifs" take us over. We let go of dreams, like balloons released into the wind.

And for some, this idea of borrowed time translates to a feeling of freedom and fearlessness. The idea that we're here when we "shouldn't" be liberates us; a gratitude for the life we have propells us towards accomplishing the big; the daunting; the impossible. We want to make the most of this time we've been given. We want to have an impact on someone; something. We want to see change.

There has to be a reason we're still here. There has to be a purpose for what you and I have been through, to get to this point.

I've been in both places, and still go back and forth a bit. Lately, however, my pancreas heart seems to be leaning towards the latter - and at some point, I'll have to let it do an all-out freefall. I don't know what shape that will take or what that means exactly.

What I hope for myself and for you is that we'll use this time we have to do something that matters. Let's look past ourselves and think about what we can do for others. Let's turn the crappy hand that life dealt us into something good.

Let's chase back those balloons.

The Perils Of Being A Mouse In A Diabetes Research Study.

Infusion sites engulf your entire stomach.

Insulin pumps were not built for someone of your stature.

Blood tests require about half of the blood in your body just to fill a test strip.

How do you carb count cheese? I don't know, either.

You are the envy of at least 5% of the world's population.

(Disclaimer: none of this is actually what happens in a research study, I'm pretty sure. Facetious World Diabetes Day Celebration FTW!)