It's Been a Year Already . . .

Today tastes like calcium and breadsticks, like Bradbury ice cream, like chronic illness flambe. With cherries, whipped cream, and sprinkles.

It was one year ago today that I was diagnosed with diabetes. What kind of cake is appropriate for that anniversary? Black frosting drizzled with thinned raspberry filling, with candles set on lancets and tester strips strewn like confetti? It would have to have Mexican sugar skulls posted at the corners with floral eyes and numbers on their foreheads--105, 236, 724, 42--or to make them more personal: 60, 425, 175, 116¹.

Happy anniversary, Spike.




Okay, diabetes is not the death sentence it was a century ago. (Three to five years was the life expectancy following diagnosis. The link between the illness and insulin wasn't made till World War II.) The only treatment was to eat as little as possible--like the supermodel diet of distilled water for breakfast, a lettuce leaf for lunch, and half a Tic Tac for dinner. (Except, of course, being diabetic, you don't get the half a Tic Tac. Too much sugar.)

Diabetes is not the horrorshow ball of suck it was even thirty years ago, when you had to pee in a cup and drop a tablet in to see how your sugars were running. Of course, since urine gets produced over time, you'd get the broadest sketch possible. "Okay" or "Oh, shit". Nothing in between. And well, okay could mean okay . . . or it could mean you're about to pass out from hypoglycemia.²

I remember when my father was diagnosed some twenty-odd years ago. The in situ testers were new--you had to calibrate the machine, then the sample size was huge, and the test results were color-coded. That was marginally less awful, I suppose, although I remember cold days where he had to prick his finger several times to get enough blood (and let's not mention trying to get the drop on the right spot on the strip. It was like threading a needle. With your lips and tongue.) And the color-coding! "Is this a rusty greenish orange (borderline high) or an orangish rusty green (definitely too high) or a greenish orangey rust (okay, but just barely)? Spike, you're the artist, come and look at this."

However, I can't say that it's been a picnic. (Hah, hah. I'm here all week; tip your waitress.)

Those of you who've read my previous dialectic manifesto wild-eyed frothing rant on this subject will recall the emotional issues that pop up around this disease for me. It should be no surprise that it took me six months to be able to share this with the dozen or so Tonstant Weaders. And it should be no less amazing that I've only told one skinterface friend what's going on.

Oh, look, prezzies! (rips through paper, scattering shreds and ribbons everywhere) Blame, shame, and guilt! Oh boy!!!

I was going to talk about the hardest part here, but really, it's a revolving calliope of hardest parts. Do you want to sit on the Black Dog of "I have to eat to live, so it's not like an alcoholic where 'all'³ I have to do is give up what's killing me"? Or would you prefer the Swan Chariot of "I can never eat anything that tastes good again"? Why not the Pale Horse of "I've been fasting for 24 hours, and my sugars are still out of target range but not high enough to go to the Emergency Room"? How about the Sea Monster of "Everyone wishes me luck but nobody can help me figure out what to do"?

Ah, that last bit. It would have been so very helpful if one--any-- of the medical professionals had sat me down and said, "Look. Metabolism, especially individual metabolism, is wonky. You will have to figure out what effects your sugars. Some foods will surprise you by giving you a high read, some will surprise you by giving you a low read, and some will utterly confound you by swinging back and forth depending on what else you ate that day. Keep a food and blood sugar journal, and track everything." I figured out the last part on my own, discovering that my sugars are highest when I fast, and slowly climb down through the day to hit a pre-dinner lowest point. (Assuming, of course, that I don't get into cookies and crackers and candy during the day.) So really, if I'm out of target range, my best bet is to have a small mixed salad or a bowl of greens for my next meal, rather than trying to get my sugars down with fasting and exercise.

I'm more than slightly tempted to implement a late-night snack, say around 1:00 a.m., so I'd be eating roughly every six hours around the clock, and see if that made my morning read better. A quarter of an apple and a handful of walnuts, or a devilled egg with a bit of pickled herring. "Research, Gareth--it's RESEARCH!!!"

There's also that whole ball of suck that comes from being different. (Do we ever leave grade school? Really truly leave it, in our hearts and minds?) No one is going to scream "Ewwwwww!!! Spike has sugar cooties!!!" and run out of the room when I'm taking my pills or checking my sugars, but for the first eight months or so, I'd lock the office door to take my lunchtime stick, or juggle my meter, lancet, and strips in the bathroom in order to get my reading. I very nearly had a wet meter several times.⁴

So I decided it was a big deal if I made it a big deal. Attitude, baby! I started taking my lunchtime read with the door open--it's not like I have to bare inappropriate parts of my body to do this. And no one batted an eyelash. Hopalong walked in one day as I was setting meter to blood droplet, and began to apologize for disturbing me--as if I had been on the phone--and I told him no, I was interruptible (as the meter beeped and I set it on my desk to calculate).

And then there was the time a hypoglycemic friend and I went out to lunch. We were both just about to dig in when she said, "Shoot, I need to take a reading," and I said, "Me too." We whipped out our meters, stuck ourselves, and applied droplets in synchronicity. I said, "We should make this a game for support. Whoever's closest to 100 wins--but FIRST you have to guess if you'll be too high or too low. It's Blood Sugar Liar's Poker!!!"

Anyone up for Blood Sugar Hold 'Em??

Maybe next year.




1. My lowest low so far, the number I was at when I was diagnosed, the average for post-diagnosis 2008, my average for the past thirty days.

2. Cue ironic music--the things we need the most (sugar, water, and oxygen) are things where too much kills slowly and too little kills quickly. Elevated glucose in the blood will tear up your internal organs, burn out your nerves, and collapse your circulation--over time. Over months and years.

Not enough sugar in your blood will knock you out and kill you dead in a matter of hours as your brain burns up what's there and shuts down.

3. Not to dismiss alcoholism, or any other true physical addiction where the struggle is to give up the addictive substance. Which is much like saying all you have to do is flap your arms and fly to the moon.

4. And THEN there was the time when my sugars were at a personal record low (in the dead flat normal range, perfectly in the middle of the bell curve). I had gone into the ladies' room at the restaurant to take my predinner reading, and was elated to get a 92. That was so much better that I'd ever done before--heck, that was my very first normal range reading. I was so excited and happy. I put everything away and went to leave . . .

. . . and got lost in the bathroom.

It was the most basic bathroom you get--a door that locked, and a stall. The sinks were in the foyer. I was in the toilet cubicle, and I could. Not. Get. The door. OPEN. I pushed and pushed and pushed . . . nope.

So I sat down on the toilet and thought for a minute. I figured if I could get someone to open the door for me, I'd be fine. I tried to call Gareth on his cell phone--no signal. Too many pipes.

I pushed again. I could see the door pop away from the jamb, so it wasn't locked, but I couldn't get it open. I would up hammering on the wall adjoining the kitchen until someone came and opeed the door.

Notice I didn't have one functioning brain cell to PULL on the door? Granted--there was no handle or sign, but still. Having been raised with doors and having learned that they open one of two ways, if way one doesn't work, you try the other.

Except when your sugar is too low for you to think, that is.

O is for . . . Openness

Today tastes like olives and okra, oysters and oatmeal, Oreos and opopanax.

Well. Where to begin?

Tonstant Weaders will no doubt recall (because every word here is a pearl without price, ha-ha) that I've written about how fall tends to be the sucky depressing time in my life, filled with the smell of loss and frost even as the days shorten and the few leaves turn.

Fall 2008 was the maggot-ridden cherry on the pus-covered excrement sundae of Worst Fall Ever.

I went to the doctor's office for my semiannual urinary tract infection. I came out with Type II diabetes. (Rather like the Englishman who went up a hill and came down a felon. That was NOT what I had in mind!!!)

And here's the thing. I am an intensely private person in so many areas of my life. I share odds and sods, and sometimes surprise people with what I'm willing to say out loud, but this . . . well, this was different.

Honestly, if DH Gareth hadn't been with me at the hospital, I wouldn't have told him for a while.

As it was, I held onto to my secret for weeks, smoldering like wet leaves on fire, wrapped up in my judgment and perception of how others would judge me. If I hear one more person pontificate on how diabetes is TOTALLY avoidable, I will rip their living heart from their chest and eat it in front of them, saying to their glazing eyes, "THAT was totally avoidable, dumb-ass."

Hey, it's just protein, salts, and water. Shouldn't screw with my sugars too badly. (Thanks for your concern.)

And yeah, that's a lot of where my head was at. Three times a day for the rest of my life I get to stick a lancet in my skin and be reminded that I am TOOO STOOOOOPID to TAKE DECENT CARE of myself; can't even manage to FEED MYSELF RIGHT, F'R GODSAKES; and probably shouldn't be out among the ADULTS WITHOUT A LEASH. Anger and shame flambe with a sidecar of fury and humiliation.

Is this like pregnancy? Never having experienced the latter condition, all I know are the anecdotes that get told about how random strangers walk up and put their hands on your belly, how everyone has at least one horror story about how they were in labor for eighteen weeks and couldn't have any pain medication at all, and how their friend/sibling/third cousin twice removed tragically lost their child due to some ham-handed fuckup by the medical profession that left Little Turtle Dumpling dying in momma's arms, whispering, "Why did you fail me, o mother mine? How could you have brought me here like this? I loved you . . ." with their last gasping breath.

And it's kind of the same way. Others in my circle of friends have come up snake eyes on the sugar cube dice, and when they speak up, everyone has a story about an uncle or a friend or a friend's uncle who had the condition and either lived a long and happy life or had multiple amputations, starting with the toes and working inwards until he went blind, had a stroke, and finally died of a heart attack after being reduced to a drooling torso in a wheelchair. At fifty. And it's too bad, because diabetes is so easily avoided. *slowly I turn, fingers flexing, step by step, inch by inch*¹

So. Not counting on much support from that end of things.

I don't intend to turn this into Spike's Sainted Blog, where it's all Chronic Disease all the time. However, it is a part of my life now.² It won't get better. There is no cure at this time; just management. Kind of like addiction, only I can't take a vow of abstinence and stop drinking.

Although not eating would cure the condition, as much as it can be cured. Three weeks or so, and I wouldn't have diabetes any more. The side effects though, the side effects of that cure are a bitch. And permanent, to boot.

Back to openness, and secrets, and spilling your guts. (Not literally. I haven't heard you say the "A" word yet. Which "A" word? "Avoida--" *slowly I turn, fingers flexing, step by step, inch by inch*)

I've been telling the people it directly affects--the people I (used to) break bread with first, so we can plan around grains and carbs and meals when I may or may not be allowed to eat. The folks at the office, so they understand when I suddenly turn white and clutch the wall at about 3:35 p.m. when my sugars crash with an audible thud.

Ah, but the 'rents.

The damned disease makes frequent appearances runs gallops up and down both sides of the family tree. And yup, there's a genetic component. According to the American Diabetes Association, there's a certain amount of risk simply due to the way humans are constructed--it's a design flaw. Raise that to 1 in 13 if you have a diabetic parent who developed the disease after age fifty. 1 in 7 if you have a diabetic parent who devloped the disease before 50.

Anyone want to guess what happens if you have two diabetic parents? Anyone? Bueller?

Your risk is one in two. Flip a coin; tails you lose.

Can someone gimme "avoidable"? *slowly I turn, fingers flexing, step by step, inch by inch*

Yeah, choose your parents carefully.

And speaking of parents, how does one break the news that you have the family disease? "O hi, Mom, how's the weather? Uh-huh, and Dad? Uh-huh, and by the way Ihavediabetes. Isthatthedoorbell? Nicetalkingtoyoubye." Mmmm. Not so much. And I surely don't want them to read it on the blog. (Reason number 493 not to let your folks know where you keep your diary . . . Hi, Mom!)

It's not going to be easy. That much I know. So I'm tying up a shoe of Damocles here with this post, written ahead of time. (And even writing this has been tough. I keep running away and circling back. I've spent over five hours on this.)

I need to have broken the news before this publishes. If I don't, and I get a Rowling-style Howler from the 'rents, then it's my own damn fault for being too much of a chickenshit to put on my big girl panties and pick up the phone.

There. I've set up an auto-publish, and *gulp* the date's a lot sooner than I thought it'd be.

Well, I've said it before. I don't need inspiration. What I need is a deadline. And now I have one.



1. Hmmm. A human head is often compared to a cabbage in terms of consistency. I wonder if SKIN is much different? I'd think not; there's a lot of bone in a head. And you can avoid the rib cage handily . . .

2. Hence the tag, "Too Sweet For My Own Good." Read 'em or dodge 'em, but that'll be the thrust of these posts. I can feel several rants coming on . . .

E is for Ecbatic(1)

Today tastes like escargot, endive, eisel², and erasers.

Two lines and two footnotes. A record, even for this blog.

Some months ago, when I had That Conversation with my doctor ("You need to change your evil ways, Spike." "Or what, doc?" "Well . . . let's just say I wouldn't start any long books or all-day suckers if I were you.") I found a recipe for cauliflower soup that didn't taste like punishment, but was still actually low-fat and all that good stuff. I began carrying that for lunch each day, playing with the ingredients for variety.

DH Gareth came into the kitchen one day, and asked, "What is that heavenly smell?" I told him, and he poked his head into the kettle to see for himself. He smacked his lips and said, "I think we need to throw a dinner party, and feature this as one of the courses."

So we started planning. We'd wanted to throw a paired tasting dinner for our extreme foodie friends for some time; had discussed ways to do it--a travelling dinner where we'd have appetizers at one home, soup at the next, and so on; or possibly just getting together for dinner once a month and rotating the hosting duties. But nothing came together.

Until this last Saturday, when we whipped up a batch of soup, begged an insane foodie buddy to make us some pasta (fresh, from-scratch pasta with seafood sauce! So not on the cardiologist's diet, "If it tastes good, spit it out.") roasted a fabulous leg of lamb, and I made a Boca Negra-- a deadly flourless chocolate cake flavored with bourbon. The cake is a deep black souffle, and yes, you will have a black mouth upon consumption of the same.

Dinner was a hit, but Gareth needs to refine his pour a little. It's easier to serve some more wine to come out even with the course, not so easy to remove some excess wine from one's bloodstream! We almost had a house full of guests who came to dinner and couldn't leave!

This brough up a round of "we have to do this more often," and "we'd love to host the next one," and Mischief's Lad volunteered that he had some elk in the frezzer that he didn't want to go bad, so we told him that if he'd set the date, we'd be there.

Hoping something grows from this. I think once a quarter'd be nice, as well as dividing up among the participants well.





1. Ecbatic: a grammatical construction indicating result without intention. Like Topsy, it just growed.

2. Eisel: a sour wine, resembling vinegar

B is for . . . Box Jumps

Today tastes like bananas and butterscotch, beef and bilirubin.

New year, new slant on the workout. I still am athletically declined, but having been given notice by the doctor that I will lose weight or suffer the consequences (and what vey ugly consequences they are, m'dear) I am ramping it up a touch by incorporating a cash-out.

See, Crossfit incorporates a warmup into its workout. Or rather, "a workout before the workout," as one member refers to it. Three rounds as quick as you can--leg stretches (15 seconds per leg), 15 squats (I use a 25 pound dumbell and do goblet squats, I feel silly doing air squats), 15 sit-ups (on an incline board), 15 back extensions, 15 pull-ups, 15 dips.

Now you're ready for the workout.

So I've been warming up and working out for a year (and a third, come Sunday). I know where the holes in my armor are, and this year I've decided to get out the brazer and go to work mending them.

Unfortunately, the only way to improve a physical skill is to do more of that skill. Over and over and over. Which leads us to box jumps.

I hate box jumps.

To perform a box jump, you set up an object that will support your weight in front of you. Squat down, feet together. Now jump up onto that object, both feet at the same time--otherwise you're doing step-ups. There's a balance component to getting your body settled upon landing on the box or on the floor as you hop down again. You need explosive strength in your hips and thighs to get enough air to land on the box instead of tripping over it.

As your box gets taller, there's an abdominal element since you have to haul your trailing legs up to get your feet on top of the box.

Yup, this is an example of Prime Suckitude. So of course, this is now the cash-out for the workout. 20 box jumps.

So I'm hanging with some pals, and we get to talking about chick stuff--bodies and maintenance of same, and how we wish things were different, and one notices that I've lost a bunch of weight. How'd I do it?

So I explain the workout, starting with the warm-up, and then go into the workout of the day--three rounds of 45 pound thrusters and pull-ups. The first round you do 21 of each, then 15 of each, then 9 of each. That doesn't sound so bad, she said. The kicker is, done right, you complete the workout in under five minutes. Done well, you complete it in under three minutes.

You could hear crickets chirping.

And a moment later, the group was back into bemoaning how hard it is to get fit, how hard it is to lose weight, how hard it is blah blah blah let's go get pastry.

Excuse me? Pastry? Weren't you just talking about . . . and now you want pastry?

Ok, I get it. Pastry is easy. Talking is easy. Wishing is easy.

But easy doesn't get'r done. Easy doesn't get the bar up over your head. Easy doesn't own your desire.

If you have a desire, then it only seems right to determine the cost of that desire and then decide whether or not you're willing and able to pay that price. The cost of a fancy vehicle is money, money, money; for the payments, the insurance, and the gas. The cost of six-pack abs is a strict diet and exercise routine.

Now, being unable to pony up is one thing. (Although one might want to consider what stands in the way and work on that, if one desires the object sufficiently. There are ways to make more money, more time, and exercises are almost infinitely modifiable to suit innate [or inert] athletic ability.) But it seems that most who claim to be unable are just unwilling.

I can't because I don't have enough money. Couldn't you take in a roommate, get a second part-time job, cut back on expenses? Instead of cable TV, go to the library? Well, yes, but . . .

There is a yes-but for everything. I have my own yes-buts. And the only one that trumps the others is "Yes, but THIS is what I really want."

And I really really want to be able to do box jumps at 36 inches. (Hell, just to be able to do them reasonably well and not internally whine all the way to the gym on a jump-centric day.)

And so, the cash-out. Four inches at a time, up and down, forward and back. Working my way through the yes-buts.

Has it Really Been a Month???

(blows dust off the blog)

This thing on? (tap tap tap)

Today tastes like cardboard and sawdust, like bitter almonds, like dandilions and pine needles.

It's not likely to get better any time soon.

First I was delayed because I was thisclose to a finished object, then needed the perfect picture to display said object and then . . .

Well. Then. I'm not ready to talk to those who ought to know, so I won't let them find out on the blog, and I may never be ready to share with the web as a whole.

I talked about needing a picture of a platespinner to pop up when I was just too busy keeping everything in the air to post. So when there's too much to say, and nothing to share, I'll do the emo thing and post poetry instead.

Pride

Even rocks crack, I tell you,
and not because of age.
For years they lie on their backs
in the heat and the cold,
so many years,
it almost seems peaceful.
They don't move, so cracks stay hidden.
A kind of pride.
Years pass over them, waiting.
Whoever is going to shatter them
hasn't come yet.
And so the moss flourishes, the seaweed swirls,
the seaweed pushes through and rolls back,
and it seems they are motionless.
Till a tiny seal comes to rub against the rocks,
comes and goes away.
And suddenly the stone is split.
I told you, when people break, it happens by surprise.

--Dahlia Ravikovitch