{"id":22593,"date":"2011-12-02T11:18:22","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T16:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=22593"},"modified":"2015-12-27T15:47:05","modified_gmt":"2015-12-27T20:47:05","slug":"climbing-out-of-the-wreck-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=22593","title":{"rendered":"Climbing out of the Wreck"},"content":{"rendered":"

I make one of the world’s worst cheerleaders, but right now I’m shaking some imaginary pompoms (they’re blue, of course) and cheering for JDRF and their efforts to make the artificial pancreas happen.\u00a0 Yesterday the FDA issued draft guidance designed to help investigators and manufacturers as they develop and seek approval for the artificial pancreas. (See\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0for more on this.)\u00a0 This is just a first step, but we’re on the road to somewhere and I couldn’t be happier about it.\u00a0 Last week low blood sugar caused Mike to\u00a0pass out at his desk<\/a>.\u00a0 The artificial pancreas could prevent such things from happening to Mike and everyone else, so please, bring it closer.\u00a0 Bring it on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition to Mike’s passing out, we’ve had quite a bit of sickness going around and \u00a0during times like this I get very unsettled.\u00a0 I get nervous.\u00a0 I won’t get Freudian or anything on you now.\u00a0 I’ll just keep this simple and say that my unconscious mind is hard at work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, the other night I got into bed just after midnight. \u00a0I shoved a few cats out of the way to make room for my head on the pillow, and a few tears slipped out of my eyes.\u00a0 I don’t normally converse with my bodily fluids (imagine if I said hello to each drop of blood from my fingertips!), but being exhausted and completely startled by the tears, I almost asked them where they came from.\u00a0 My first guess was sort of reasonable.\u00a0 Adam had just gotten over a contagious\u00a0 eye infection, and he had been all over me throughout it.\u00a0 Perhaps watery eyes were a precursor to pink eye.\u00a0 My second guess was a little more far-fetched.\u00a0 My tonsils are infected and for days I’ve felt like crap and it really hurts to swallow.\u00a0 Tears from the pain in my throat?\u00a0 Not likely.\u00a0 My third guess:\u00a0 I was worried about Mike sleeping on insulin after his dangerous low the other day.\u00a0 Yes, I’m worried, but not the kind of worry that would make me cry.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When those tears arrived, everything was quiet in the apartment except for the obnoxiously loud purring and social grooming taking place at the foot of the bed.<\/p>\n

But my mind wasn’t quiet at all. With a quick burst of clarity, I figured out what it was up to. Without having consciously acknowledged the date, I knew it was the anniversary of my mother’s death. The tears came out as if someone had set them on a timer. This is what I call a diving into the wreck<\/em> moment, after the Adrienne Rich poem. (The wreck here refers to the memories of my mother and her illness.) And when I’m there, visiting the wreck, I really feel lost and broken, like some of the images in the poem. I need to pull myself out of depths of the water, out of the depths of my mind, fast. I focus on the “treasures that prevail.”<\/p>\n

Luckily, that night the “treasures” quickly helped me out. \u00a0Adam coughed himself awake (three days later he was diagnosed with pneumonia).\u00a0 I carried him into bed with me and Mike, where he prefers to sleep.\u00a0 Just as he became calm, Tom appeared in the room.\u00a0 He was standing right over Mike’s face as he said, “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”\u00a0 Mike thinks fast, even in his sleep.\u00a0 “Then, you’re in the wrong place,” he said.\u00a0 “Go to the bathroom.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Within seconds, the vomiting began.<\/p>\n

The noise woke Guy, who also got out of bed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So we were awake, my boys and I (and those damn cats), and had I not been thoroughly exhausted with the rawest tonsils in town, I might have felt vital.\u00a0 Instead I felt misery, but blessed misery.\u00a0 And this is where I swing back to the artificial pancreas after that long, personal digression: \u00a0Diabetes is pretty much miserable, but I really do believe we are blessed with the treatments and tools that we have.\u00a0 And I love that they keep getting better.\u00a0 And safer.\u00a0 Maybe five years from now the artificial pancreas will be old news, and companies will give them away like glucometers, and islet cells will be easy to come by and easy to transplant.\u00a0 And the only injection that has to do with children and diabetes will be a vaccine – a safe and effective vaccine – that protects them from the disease.<\/p>\n

*You can read the full text of Adrienne Rich’s\u00a0Diving into the Wreck<\/em>\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0 I highly recommend it.\u00a0 You can easily read “diabetes” into it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1501],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nClimbing out of the Wreck: Diabetes is miserable, but...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Maybe five years from now the artificial pancreas will be old news, and companies will give them away like glucometers, and islet cells will be easy to come by and easy to transplant. 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