The Girl Who Was Hungry

A little less than two years ago, my sister came to visit. We are both type 1 diabetics, and there's a sort of sad hilarity in our conversations at dinner.


"I'm out of reservoirs for my pump. You have one I can borrow? I need tubing, too. And maybe an insertion set if you can spare one."

"How many carbs do you think are on that plate? I bet I can calculate the carbs on this table faster than you."

"Yay! Food with lots of fat! Fat slows the absorption of carbs! Fat is a diabetic's best friend!"

"This entire side of my abdomen is now over-saturated. I've run out of places to put the needles that will still absorb; I think I'm going to have to start sticking the needles in my feet."

"Your pump is purple! That is so cool!"

"Your pump is blue! I love it!"

"Did you hear about that celebrity that was diagnosed with diabetes and claimed it was type 1 and that she cured herself by not eating sugar? Bahahahaha!!!!"

Yeah. It's pretty hilarious. Sometimes it's like a code no one else at the table gets.

Two years ago, though, she pulled out a new drug to shoot up before dinner. Something called Symlin that her endocrinologist told her every T1D should take now. I'd never heard of it.

"What's it for?"

"It makes me feel full. I never felt full before. I used to just stop eating because I saw other people stop."

That was the oddest thing I'd ever heard. She never felt full? How could you not feel full?

After she left, her words stuck in my head. In the afternoons, I realized I was always famished. Like eat a horse and the saddle with it kind of hungry. I'd eat lunch, and feel like I'd eaten nothing. The entire day from lunch to dinner was a struggle not to shove everything in the house into my mouth. I'd been that way for so long, I thought that was normal. Wasn't that everyone's afternoon? Isn't that what vending machines in office buildings are for?

But now I was thinking about it. And I realized that when I put dinner on my plate, it had nothing to do with how hungry I was, but how much I thought a reasonable portion should be. I didn't get seconds most of the time because I didn't think I should. But I rarely left the table full. I mostly left the table thinking I could eat an entire new plate of dinner if someone placed it in front of me. Or not. But probably I could if it were there.

And slowly I realized... I was hungry all the time. And I realized that maybe wasn't how everyone else felt all the time.

It's easy to think we are always at the pinnacle of science and medicine. Sure, we don't have a cure for many diseases, but gosh look how far we've come! Look how much we know! I thought we knew everything about T1D except how to cure it. In reality, we are still, every day, learning things.

Just a decade ago, the thought was to cure T1 diabetes with pancreatic transplants. If diabetes is caused by the pancreas breaking down and not working, you just replace it, right? When the transplanted pancreases also stopped working, some smart scientist discovered that the pancreas doesn't just break down... it is attacked by a person's own immune system. The immune system, for some unknown yet reason, sees the organ as a foreign object and attacks it. Put in another one, and it'll attack that, too. The problem isn't even the pancreas... the problem, it turns out, is the immune system.

In light of this sudden awareness that I was hungry all the time, I began researching this new drug my sister was taking, and I found out something mind-blowing. A scant few years ago, scientists discovered that the pancreas, contrary to popular belief, actually makes TWO hormones... insulin, and something called amylin. This second hormone, amylin, is the hormone that helps your body use the insulin it produces better and more effectively. It keeps the liver from dumping excess sugar into the bloodstream and helps keep the glucose from the digestive track from building up in the blood. Beyond that, though, it slows the digestion of your food and sends the signal to the brain that you feel full.

Mind. Blown.

When type ones lose their beta cells, they not only lose the ability to produce insulin, they lose the amylin as well, and over time, like a frog in cold water set to boiling, you forget what it feels like to feel full. Food goes in the mouth and through the stomach like water, barely stopping to fill it up. You brain doesn't get the signal that your stomach is full. And all that glucose from the food (not just sugar foods, but everything from milk to vegetables have glucose in them) rushes straight into the bloodstream, where the insulin cannot possible work fast enough to catch up.

This is all so complicated. Much more complicated than it sounds, because everything is connected.

Type 1s don't make insulin, so they have to take it in the form of shots (or through a pump). That insulin, over time, makes many diabetics gain weight. (This is controversial, unfortunately. Science has shown it to be true, just ask the NIH, but insulin manufacturers and many doctors and websites resist this idea.) The more weight you have, the more insulin your body tends to need. The more insulin you take, the more weight you gain. It is a vicious circle that I've found screamingly, cryingly, depressingly true.

Add into this not being able to feel like you've gotten enough to eat.

Over the past five years, despite a five-day-a-week gym membership for two years, despite walking miles a day for the others, despite kettlebells and zumba and small-portioned meals, my weight kept going up.

And here... suddenly here is the key.

A synthetic hormone called symlin that mimics your natural amylin, that will make me feel full, slow the glucose into the bloodstream so that the insulin I take has time to work, makes the insulin work better and blocks the liver from dumping glucose so that I take less insulin, so that I can finally lose weight, so that my blood sugars are more even and low.

It sounded like a miracle.

Do I hear angels singing?

I began hounding my endocrinologist. My endocrinologist was frustratingly resistant to symlin. He didn't think it was effective. He didn't think it worked. He thought it was far too expensive. He told me if I wanted to lose weight, I should walk more. He told me my blood sugar averages were fine, even though they'd gone up above the acceptable range. He disregarded my research. He wouldn't listen to my reasons. He shooed me out the door.

This went on for a year. Finally, last May, I parked myself in the chair and said, "I want Symlin. It is my money, and my body. I want the chance to have what your body makes naturally. I think I should have the chance to at least try it, and see if it works. And I'm not leaving until I get it."

So I got a prescription. And a healthy dose of skepticism.

Three months later I went back. I'd cut my insulin use by a whopping 30%. My blood glucose averages (taken by a test called an HbA1C), which had peaked at 7.5 - a whole point above what is considered decent control - were down to a near-non-diabetic 5.5. I'd dropped 17 pounds. My doctor was speechless.

I feel fantastic for the first time in years. I have energy. I am not falling asleep at 2pm every day in the middle of work or struggling to stay awake while driving. I hardly ever have to correct a high blood sugar reading.

I am not hungry. I didn't even remember what not hungry felt like.

I feel like... like me.

Today is World Diabetes Day. It is Type 1 Diabetes Day. We, as type 1s, are suppose to help others know what it is like living with diabetes.

Yes, it is shots. Yes, it is counting carbohydrates and being careful of what we eat. Yes, it is the danger of heart disease and kidney failure and amputations and blindness, but less and less of that as knowledge increases and medicine catches up. Yes, it is pricking my fingers ten times a day to check my blood sugar. It is all of this.

It can be feeling hungry. All the time. Not because we have no self-control. Not because we crave the foods we shouldn't have. It is because we don't have the hormone you have that tells us we are full. It's because we don't have the hormone that let's our stomachs fill up as we are eating.

I may not be a celebrity who is able to somehow, miraculously, reverse the damage done to the pancreas and make myself not diabetic anymore. But a little science on my side goes a long way to making me feel like I am.

Snaps for Vacation

 Our vacations haven't been going so smoothly over the past year. Case in point, last year's vacation of DOOM.Anything that can go wrong, has been. While we've managed somehow to stay away from emergency rooms, the vacations have still been a little less than relaxing at times.

We make the best of it. We have a family that laughs a lot, that can find something funny in just about everything, that loves being together, no matter where we are.

But just in case the location was jinxed, we thought we'd go back to where we know we love.

We've had a beach we're crazy about in Florida, but finding a hotel room there lately (there is only one hotel) has been difficult. So, we decided to get almost as close as we could, and try a new hotel a dozen or more miles down the road. Nothing but beach and sand and ocean and relaxation, right? And a hotel that came very, very highly rated despite its reasonable price tag.

 If only reversing a curse were that easy.

Halfway between Virginia and Florida, I realized that, despite my obsessive worry and second-checking, I'd forgotten a key piece of diabetes equipment: the small plastic double-sided needle that gets the insulin into my pump. I had insulin. I had a pump. I had no way to get that insulin into me.

Ensue panic.

I went over all the options I could think of, which involved calling my dad to break into our house and find the needle and ship it to me overnight. Or call my sister, who also has a pump, and ask her to overnight it. Problem here is that it was Sunday, and they wouldn't be able to even get it in the mail until the next day, which would mean Tuesday before it would get here. Which would mean I wouldn't be able to eat until Tuesday.

I thought about calling my doctor (on Monday) and having him fax a prescription to a local pharmacy for a regular syringe, which I thought might be able to work. Then, once in Florida, after hours of panic, I realized that I didn't think you needed a prescription at all for needles - the AIDS crisis bringing needle-sharing health to a crisis point. So we swung by a CVS, and the pharmacist asked me a lot of curious questions, which I think defeated the point of helping out drug addicts who need to not share needles, and I walked away with a 25 cent syringe that worked like a charm.

(This is long, I know. Bear with me. We're getting to the snaps.)

Off to dinner, happy I was. We stopped at a favorite restaurant down here - a quick-stop burger joint. We'd just spent 13 hours in the car with only one stop. We were tired and thirsty and hungry - especially me, since I'd spent ten of the last hours envisioning not eating for three days.

I cannot over-emphasize how poorly run this restaurant was. We waited fifteen minutes before a waiter even came by to get drink orders, then another fifteen before he brought the drinks. We needed refills for another ten before he came back, and it was at least another hour before we got our food, which was burned. It took us two and a half hours to get out of this place that is a semi-fast-food service restaurant. We'd missed the sunset at the beach. We were all grumbly.

In complaining about dinner and the horrid service, I said, "Well, he did always at least get our drinks right. Snaps for getting the drinks right."  And I snapped.

Which no one got.

So then I had to explain the clip from above from the movie Legally Blond (2), and how, when one is tempted to gripe about something, instead one can find something good about it, and then snap. Kind of like mini-applause.

So we snapped for the waiter getting the drinks right.

Then we found our new hotel. I'll tell you right now, I will never look at online reviews and trust them again, even if there are 408 positive reviews of them. This hotel is next to the worst I've ever been in, and that's saying something since our Vacation of DOOM hotel was no picnic.

I won't even go into all the details of the hotel. It is very, very old. Looks like a prison. The pool is miniscule. The rooms are sub-par. The bathroom might as well be an outhouse. You can hear everything through the walls. And they "upgraded" us to a "beach view," which consisted of being on the beach side of the hotel, only the beach is blocked by the nightclub which blares live rock music until 2am. Which, of course, we can hear all too well.

Finally, after talking about just packing up and going somewhere away from the beach, or heading home, my husband said, "At least the rooms are clean. For a beach hotel, there isn't any hardly any sand on the floors."

And we all said, "Snaps to the cleaning lady for no sand on the floors!"

And so began our tradition.

I'd like to say things got miraculously better, but only marginally. What has gotten better is our ability to laugh about it all, and to find the little things worth complimenting.

Waiting another hour and a half for food to arrive in another restaurant and missing another sunset and having the food arrive cold? "Snaps for the pretzel bread, which was unlimited!"

Getting horrifically sunburned despite having SPF50 painted on us liberally? "Snaps for it not raining!"

The list goes on, but for every bad, there is a snap, and that keeps us laughing. We are together, at a beach, where I do not have dishes or laundry and my husband does not have all the politics at work and 4am wake-ups and my son does not have summer school (which we just found out he got an A in! Snaps for the brilliant son who got an A in advanced Spanish over the summer so he could take more science classes during the school year!). We have swum hours and hours in a perfectly clear ocean, rode the waves, watched the fish, had great service at one restaurant that we absolutely didn't take for granted. From the balcony of our room (which is, I promise, much more glamorous sounding than it is, since we share it with three other couples who smoke profusely and it overlooks, as I mentioned, a bar), I can reach out and touch a palm tree laden with coconuts.

And we did finally get to see a sunset. Snaps for a beautiful sky!

Book Club Skypes and Other Humbling Things

Years ago, when I was writing Some Kind of Normal, I dreamed of what it would be like to be a published author. To say the least, those dreams were unrealistic. Hitting bestseller lists, traveling on book tours, seeing my book on every bookstore shelf - maybe even in the hands of a stranger in an airport. Being the book of the month for some big book club.

I knew they weren't realistic dreams, but they were fun, and sometimes, in the grueling, lonely long hours of writing when nothing on the page seems to come out right and in those long months of rejections by agents, dreams are what you need to keep you going.

Life as a published author hasn't been quite the way I hoped - at least not continually - but it's certainly had its moments. I hit a bestseller list on Amazon for a few weeks. That was a buzz! I signed books in Barnes and Nobles. I saw my novel on a shelf recently in a bookstore a few miles from my home. I've had strangers approach me in public places or email me to say they've read it and loved it. I've had book clubs choose to read it.

And this past month, I was asked to join a book club in Canada via Skype. I can't even begin to say how cool that was.

So last night blogging friend Lynn Simpson Skyped me from her group in Alberta, Canada, and we chatted.

I'd like to say I felt like a rock star, but really, I felt like myself - a bit overly-talkative, embarrassed, and completely inadequate to be a part of their night.

They asked great questions, seemed like a great group of people... I wished I was there with them, talking to some other author via Skype.

I'll make a confession - it's been three years since my book was published, and just that long since I've read it. The editing and proofing process made me sick enough of my writing at the time that I haven't had the heart to go back and read it again. And I realized, as I was getting ready to chat with the book club, that I had forgotten some of the minor character names and minor plots. So I took out the book and read it.

And cringed.

Three years, a graduate school degree, two more novels and a handful of short stories later, my writing has really changed, and I could see all the weakness of this writing, could see why agents rejected it, could see places that were just rough.

I felt almost apologetic about them reading it.

I didn't hate the whole thing. There were places I really loved, things I did really well that I haven't since done as well. I cried through most of it. I marveled at a few turns of phrases and scenes and dialogue. I love those characters with all my heart.

But still... if I wrote it today, it wouldn't be the same.

And I have to be okay with that. I certainly don't want my first book to be my best - for my writing to go downhill from here. I want to get better. One lady said, "That was really great for a first book," and I loved that comment because it is how I feel. It's not some literary groundbreaker, and I won't win big awards for it, and I hope it's not the best thing I'll ever write, but it's pretty good for a first book.

But what I did realize talking to them is that I loved writing that book. I wrote it because I was passionate about it. I was passionate about diabetes and stem cell research and finding faith when it seems like questioning God isn't allowed. Just answering their questions, I found myself excited again about all those things.

And that is what I've been missing. Writing from that place of passion. I can love my characters. I can love my story idea. But it hasn't been that same level of passion that makes me stop people, corner them and talk to them for hours about how the real world could be changed by what I'm learning as I write. I'm not sure how to get back to that place, but I'm working on a new novel now that I hope will be that way.

For now, I'm loving the women in that book club who took their time last night to talk to me, to tell me what they loved about the book, the characters they fell in love with, how they'd guessed where I'd drawn the line between fiction and real life, who read so carefully and treated me like a honored guest. To me, they are the rock stars.

In Transition

I wrote a blog post earlier today and decided to delete it. It was long. And boring. It was about revising and rewriting and the thesis. Did I mention it was long? And boring?

I've been re-thinking my blog - about what I want it to be. Heidi the Hick posted her 7th anniversary blog post last week and it got me thinking about all the years that have passed here at this blog.

When I started, it was a way for me to connect with other writers, to not be alone in this journey that can be so isolating. It was a great place for us - all of us - to share what we struggle with, what we learn, when we meet success.

There was always a splash of me, too. Adventures in family vacations and experiences with diabetes and the occasional what to do when the pellet stove guy takes all day. But mostly, it's been writing.

I thought when I started grad school I'd be here all the time sharing what I was learning, but it didn't work out that way. Part was time, of course. I ran out of it. But there was a greater part where it felt strange writing about that - as though I were saying "This is the way to write well!" when really, I'm still just stumbling along like everyone else.

Now that I'm winding up school, I feel like a new phase is starting - of my writing, of my career such that it is, of my life. I'm not sure what I want this blog to reflect, but I don't think I want to be a blog for writers specifically. I really want it to be for people. Anyone.

So there may be changes here. Same me. But new format. Maybe a new look. I don't want to give up blogging, but I feel the need to shake it up a little. I hope you that read will still stick with me. :)

The Realness of Our Imaginary Worlds

Last year I sat with a group of people who were talking about those they knew with cancer. One spoke up that a good friend of hers had a son just diagnosed with leukemia and they were getting medical treatment at Johns Hopkins University.

Without thinking, I nearly jumped into the conversation with: "I know a fantastic doctor there."

Then I realized, Oh yeah. I made him up. He only exists in my head, in my book.

The thing is, this wasn't the last time that's happened to me. There have been other conversations where I've told someone how great Johns Hopkins is, as if I personally had experience with the doctors and treatment there. I have nearly told people that there is a cure for diabetes with adult stem cells that is in stage two trials.

Perhaps it's normal, after spending so much time researching and writing, to feel that what we have created is in fact real instead of imaginary. I have walked parts of the Johns Hopkins campus, but I have never been in or around their medical facilities. I do not know anyone who has gone through diabetes treatment trials of any kind. I do not know a boy with a turquoise Mohawk.

And yet, I feel like I do.

There are moments when I channel the bitterness of my newest protagonist, as though I have taken on her abusive history and angry persona. I wake up thinking I might start the day with coffee from the coffee-shop one of my characters owns before I realize that it, too, is just part of my imagination.

But I can tell you the color of the wood of the round tables, the pattern of the overstuffed chairs, the smell of coffee and mocha and baking bread all blended into a perfect atmosphere. Those details aren't even in my book, but I know them.

The short story I most recently wrote is the closest I've ever gotten to real life. The characters are blends of people I actually know, the situation one similar to one I saw a friend go through. Though the story is fictional, I have blurred the lines enough that even I have to stop and think about what is true and what is not. The characters are as real to me as the people that live in the real world on whom they were based.

Am I alone in this... this momentary forgetfulness of what is true and what is made up? I like to think that if it feels that real to me, it will feel that real to readers. One can hope, right? :) Or should I just be waiting for the crazy train to pick me up?

I Finally Took The Dive

It has officially been a year since I started PRODIGAL. The book I now refer to as "the novel that will not end."

Not that I haven't finished it. I finished it last June. Then I took a few weeks off to let it sit and gel, and then started revisions. One revision led to another, to another, to another until in November I decided, "Enough is enough."

Until January when I decided "enough" does not necessarily mean "good enough" and began revising again.

I can honestly say I'm loving the revisions. I can't even believe sometimes that the chapters now are the same chapters I wrote last year. They are, I hope, dramatically better. I credit great critiques, my MFA program, and my super-star advisor for that.

But still, because I'm doing it through school and sending only 20-25 pages every three weeks, I hate to get too ahead in case I get feedback that will throw it all on its head again. That, and reading two books a week and writing another paper a week and there really just isn't that much time to zoom ahead.

It is starting to feel like it's dragging on forever. While I love revising, I'm starting to miss creating. I'm getting the teensiest tired of these old characters and ready for something new.

So I decided to do what I swore going into the MFA program I wouldn't (because it never even crossed my mind to think about doing it or not doing it before the program): I decided to write a short story.

You'd think that would be easier than writing a novel, right? Not so much.

First off, I was scared of it. It's been 20 years since I wrote short fiction, and I had no idea how to do it anymore.

Also, I have no idea how to do it anymore. Did I just say that? Well, it bears repeating, because a short story is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT beast than a novel.

I've been stewing about it for a while now, gestating a few ideas. I even sat and wrote a brilliant first five pages and then stalled out, having no idea where the story was going to go from there. I knew the technique I wanted to use, but not the content. So I let it stew some more.

Yesterday as soon as the kids were on the bus, I sat down and started hashing it out. Let me tell you, for people who think writing isn't work, it IS! It hurt my brain. I struggled. I wrestled. I wrote and deleted, researched, talked it out, batted ideas around and then dismissed them. Tried outlining and gave up. And then wrote some more.

And wrote. And wrote. I took a break for dinner, because that apparently is what families - especially kids - expect, and went back to writing. Obsessively. Until midnight I wrote. And I finished.

12 pages.

And I LOVE it!

Well, it's probably not the best short story in the world. It needs serious revisions probably. It's not life altering or anything.

But oh how good it felt to write something new, and to like it!

And, still on a high at 6:30 this morning, I got a call from someone who heard from someone else that they'd read my book, Some Kind of Normal. Her friend had recently lost a daughter to complications of type 1 diabetes, and she'd found my book, bought two copies for her other children who were having a hard time coping with the death. My book is healing their family, she said. It's allowing them to talk. To not feel so alone.

It's that kind of thing that makes me keep going.

A Little More About Me

Today is the last day of November, recognized as Diabetes Awareness Month. Whoever knew this raise your hand. Anyone? Anyone?

See, it's ludicrous that the only people who actually know about Diabetes Awareness Month are people who are already aware of diabetes. Those of us with it, who live with it every day, minute by minute, are all too well aware. And those who aren't affected... have no idea.

I know lots of people with diabetes who have been posting this month, but their blogs are mostly read by other diabetics, or parents of diabetics. You, dear readers, are mostly (and thankfully) not diabetic. So this is my chance to spread awareness.

Also, it's been almost exactly eight years since I was diagnosed. It was Christmas season, and I remember this because I am a huge fan of baking Christmas cookies, and that year I baked hundreds of cookies and ate not one. For the first and only time in my life, I didn't feel at all like cookies. Or pies or cakes or anything sweet. All I wanted was grapefruit and water. And more water.

As the weeks in December trickled on, I became addicted to water in a way that became obsessive. I felt constantly like I'd walked through the Sahara. My mouth was like sandpaper, my throat like a dried sponge. I needed water in a way I'd never known.

I couldn't leave the house without it, at first just keeping a bottle or two in the car, but eventually having to carry it with me. I had to get up in the middle of church service because I'd run out and needed to refill it from the water fountain as though my life depended on it. I woke in the night to drink.

I lost weight. In less than three weeks I lost 10 pounds. I figured it was the combination of water and grapefruit.... sounded like some diet I'd heard of years ago, and here I was just craving it. I'd given up most other foods, so of course I'd be losing weight.

I suppose I was tired. Then again, I had three children under the age of five, one of whom was only seven months old. What mother of kids that age isn't tired? To top it off, with the last child I'd become very anemic and bled out during delivery and had to get several blood transfusions and have never really recovered. I'm sure if I noticed I was particularly tired, I attributed it to that.

It was my mom, my mom who'd seen my sister go through the very same thing nearly twenty years before, who suggested on Christmas day that I go to the doctor. Just to make sure.

That doctor appointment was brief... I glibbly told my symptoms, sure it was nothing but still concerned because the water thing was getting out of hand and downright disabling. He nodded, said I probably had diabetes, pricked my finger for some blood, tested it and in two minutes my life had changed.

So in a nutshell, this is what I've learned over the past years:

There is an organ in your body called a pancreas. Like the heart, stomach and lungs, it has a specific purpose. That purpose is to produce hormones that control the amount of glucose in the blood stream. When you eat, almost anything you eat, has something in it that can be turned into glucose for your body to use as energy. Sugar is the obvious one, but anything that is considered a carbohydrate - like bread, or corn, or peas, fruit or milk - is high in glucose, but even meats and wine has glucose. The pancreas produces two hormones that regulate the delicate balance between too much and too little glucose in the body. Glucagon increases blood sugar when it falls too low. Insulin stores it when it gets too high.

Diabetes is when there's a problem with the insulin.

There are two types of diabetes. It's surprising to me how many people don't know this, but since 95% of people with diabetes have the Type 2, it's easy for the type 1 to get misunderstood, even though they are really very different diseases.

Type 2, the more common type of diabetes, is when the body can't use the insulin that's being produced. A lot of times an excess of insulin is pumped out by the pancreas, but the cells can't use it to store the glucose, and as a result, there's lots of extra sugar floating around in the bloodstream, damaging all the other organs it passes through like a poison. Sometimes, even though the pancreas is making the insulin, there is a higher need for it and it just can't keep up.

Type 1, which is what I have, is when the pancreas just gives up altogether. Type 1s make no insulin at all, which is why one of the first symptoms is severe fatigue. If the cells aren't getting any glucose at all, there is nothing to use as energy. So it uses its stored fat as energy, hence the rapid weight loss. And water is needed to flush all that extra, poisonous glucose out of the blood stream, hence the extreme thirst.

Despite sharing the same name, the two forms of the disease are hardly the same. Causes are different. Treatment is different. Type 2 might be caused by weight gain, stress, genes, poor diet, lack of exercise, high blood pressure and certain drugs. A type 2 can often take pills that help them to use the insulin their body is already making. With certain lifestyle changes ( which are by no means easy!), sometimes the disease can be put into reverse.

Type 1 is an autoimmune disease that may be caused by a virus that sets off a genetic predisposition. The whole pancreas-dying-thing isn't really the root of the problem. The problem is that the immune system sees the pancreas as foreign and harmful and attacks it. This is why pancreatic transplants haven't been successful in curing diabetes. You can replace the defunct pancreas, but the immune system is going to attack the new one as well, and pretty soon you end up back where you started: insulinless. You can't take pills. There are no insulin pills as insulin can't be processed by the stomach. Pills only help a person's natural insulin to be more effective, and as the type 1 doesn't produce any insulin, the pills are useless.

The only way for a type 1 to control their blood sugar is by taking shots of insulin. Every day. All day. When I first was diagnosed I was taking two shots a day just to stay alive, and then another shot for everything I put in my mouth. Thankfully, I've since gotten a pump that I wear all the time. The pump has a needle that I shoot into my stomach once every three days, and then just stays there, dripping insulin into me all day, more the way my pancreas might. (That photo isn't me, but my pump looks just like that)

Still, it's not a pancreas. It doesn't know what I'm eating, or how stressed I am, or how hard I'm exercising, or what infection I might be getting... all of which increase my blood sugar. All the pump knows is what I tell it. So I prick my fingers ten times a day to test how much blood sugar is floating around, and then I either give myself more insulin if there's too much, or I have to eat something if there isn't enough.

Being my own pancreas is hard work. And tiring. And frustrating. I know sometimes why my pancreas just gave up. It seems like I am always off by something.... there's too much glucose and I'm tired and thirsty and not seeing very well and slowly killing off my nerve and kidney cells, or there's not enough glucose to make my brain function well and I'm fuzzy-headed, dizzy, sweaty, confused, volatile, and headed towards a coma. If I pump in too much insulin, I die. If I pump in not enough, I die. I'm not melodramatic about it. That's just the way it is. It's a tightrope to walk.

But I'm thankful that I've become much more aware of my health since I've been diagnosed. I exercise more faithfully, I eat better, I get medical tests every few months and know that my cholesterol and blood pressure are outstanding, that I'm still anemic and vitamin D deficient (who knew??) and now I can take vitamins for that.  I'm thankful for the advances that have been made in the past twenty years that allow me to live a normal life, with the prognosis being long.

This is a long post, but I wanted to somehow recognize this month, and all the people that I know with diabetes who struggle daily, minute by minute with it. And so that you... if you or someone you knows, starts drinking a lot, going to the bathroom a lot, sleeping a lot, losing a lot of weigh fast... you will know. And you can be the one to save their life. Or your own.

It's November... You Know What That Means...

Yeah. It's National Diabetes Awareness Month and in less than three weeks my first big assignment, including my writing submission, is due to Pacific U.

What? You weren't thinking the same thing??

Okay, I'll admit... It's NaNoWriMo, and I'm not doing this... again. I've thought of it, but somehow November never works out in timing for me to start and write a full novel. Last November, my debut Some Kind of Normal was going through it's final, final checks and getting ready for publication. I spent all my time reading through the book blocks. The November before that I began my querying for that book, and querying was a full-time job that month.

I have legitimate excuses, for sure, but I admit also that I'm secretly pleased I had great reasons not to try to write 50,000 words in a month. For one, I think it just sets me up for failure. I don't write fast. I can't even write badly fast. The words just don't come that fast. I get spurts of great productivity, but they usually come later in the book, when characters are fully entrenched in my head and scenes are unfolding.

Also, no matter what time of year it is, family always comes first. And family tends to get sick in November. And sick kids don't make for great writing days. And Christmas is around the corner, and plans need to be made and executed for that, or I might just go crazy in December. The more I get done this month, the more I can enjoy the holiday season - and make it special for the kids - without stress. (Okay, I'm still working on this one, but I swear one year I'm going to master the no-stress holiday season!)

Finally, writing, I've figured out, has to be a lifestyle. Tayari Jones wrote a great post at SheWrites about NaNo, comparing it to a crash diet. You work like heck to fit into the size smaller dress in a few weeks, but in the end, you end up going back to your bad habits and not being able to maintain it because it wasn't a life-style change. That's what writing is to me: a discipline and a life-style that I choose everyday to do, not 50,000 words in a month but in a few hours a day, consistently, every day, week after week, month after month.

I'm certainly not saying NaNo is bad for everyone. I think it's a fantastic tool to jumpstart projects, and enthusiasm in weary writers, and to build a community of like-minded, like-motivated individuals. It's just not for me.

So are you joining the writing frenzy this month, and why or why not?

While you comment, I'm going to go celebrate National Diabetes Awareness Month by chowing on my kids' Halloween stash.

AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING!!!

I had an interesting conversation over twitter with a mom of a diabetic last week. In a diabetes chat forum, the question was posed: Do you think there will be a cure of diabetes in our lifetime?

I was actually shocked to see that the resounding answer was no.

Have people waited so long, heard so many "We've almost got it," been so beaten down by the day to day dealing with poking fingers and shooting insulin that they've lost hope?

If you ask a group of people with cancer if they think there will be a cure, they will resoundingly say yes.

Why the difference?

Of course, after doing so much research on diabetes cures for Some Kind of Normal, I couldn't help but chime in. There are SO many avenue's being looked at right now, and we really are, truly, so close.

And one of the moms countered back: "Like what? Name one."

Me: "Adult stem cell research is already curing people in other countries."

Her: "I'd never let my son be immunosuppressed."

(Can I break here to say this is the main treatment for leukemia, and has been done successfully for many years with bone marrow transplants?)

Me: "Well, Dr. Faustman has found a vaccine that's worked on reversing type 1."

Her: "Have you seen the chemical in that? They're very dangerous."

Me: "It's a commonly used vaccine."

Her: "Well, they haven't gotten past the mice stage, and everything works on mice."

Me: "Actually, this is the only thing that's successfully reversed diabetes in mice."

Her: "My son is not a mouse."

Me: "Did I say he was? You brought up mice. She's past that and has had great success in the 1st human trials."

Her: "It's a long way from working."

I sighed, because what can you do with someone who doesn't WANT to believe? What I really wanted to tell her was that the question was whether or not we could find a cure, not whether or not she would like any of the cures they found.

Heidi the Hick passed on to me this morning this AMAZING video of a Canadian morning talk show segment in which the host and an actor previously battling cancer explore a lab where adult stem cells are being used to create new hearts (!!!) and produce insulin. The actor herself underwent adult stem cell therapy in which they extracted some of her own stem cells and tweaked them and now she is in a very solid remission. There was a shot of BEATING HEART CELLS!!  Did I say AMAZING!!!?

The host of the show literally had his jaw dropped the entire time. It is that incredible. It is that possible. We are that close to cures.

And they echoed the same thing I say all the time: Why isn't EVERYONE talking about this???

If you want to see the video here is the link. I don't know how long it will be up, but if it's not the top video when you click on it, find the link on the side for "Lisa Ray and Seamus explore stem cells." It was the best five minutes of the morning.

Here is another link I found from the same news program about the success of adult stem cell treatment in reversing MS in a patient. This is especially encouraging to me because I have a very dear friend in the early stages of MS.  Another great five minutes of time.

Because no matter how bad things get, or how long you've waited, there should always be HOPE.

A Firestorm of Controversy: Spoiled Rotten

I don't rant often. I rarely get involved in someone else's rants. But last week, one discussion on one of my yahoo groups really got under my skin.

The group is one for diabetics, and the thread started with an innocent enough comment by someone who'd traveled outside the country and run out of insulin. Having to buy it out of pocket from a local pharmacy, she paid an enormous amount for the small vial. Truth is, if you have diabetes, you pay what you have to for insulin, because it keeps you alive.

Her comment though, was that she realized how spoiled she was in the United States with her insurance because she only pays a small co-pay here.

That was it.

You'd have thought she'd written something incendiary with the intent of starting World War III. If there were more diabetics on the yahoo group, I have no doubt WWIII wouldn't have been far behind.

The word spoiled, apparently, is a highly loaded word to which many people take offense. It lends a vision of Paris Hilton and pampered dogs and having too much you didn't work for and having no gratitude for that stuff.

The emails began flying. "I pay good money for my insurance. That isn't spoiled, that's working hard." "I can't take my family to Disney World because we spend that money on insurance and co-pays to keep me alive." "How dare you say we're spoiled because Medicare pays for insulin? Taking care of those who can't care for themselves is government's job!"

When someone people started mentioning how good we have it in comparison to other countries where people actually don't have access to medication, someone else wrote back this:

"Some people are dead. Am I supposed to be thankful I'm alive?"

Ummm..... Yes. Yes you are.

Is this not the most basic principle of gratitude? That every morning we wake up and we are gifted with another day? I can only think this man has never lost anyone he's loved, or come close to losing his own life, and for that, even he should be thankful.

Life is precarious. Every breath can be your last. In the two years I've known two people - both young (one in his early 20s) – who died in their sleep. Two who were murdered in their own house by an intruder. One who, while walking across his kitchen to get a cup of coffee, had a brain aneurism and fell to the floor unconscious.

Every day people die in car accidents. People are diagnosed with incurable illnesses. People who are otherwise completely healthy, have a tiny part of their body give out with catastrophic side-effects.

In many countries, walking down the street can get you killed. Sleeping in your house can get you killed.

There are people without food. People for whom clean, drinking water is not an option.

So yes. Yes you should be grateful you are alive. And yes, we in the United States are spoiled. Even if we don't have all we want, the majority of us have what we need.

If being spoiled means having more than what we need and not being grateful for it, I think we are spoiled. I grumble when I have to shell out money for insulin and test strips and pump supplies. Yes, they are expensive. Yes, I'd love to do something more fun with that money. But I am ever grateful for the ability to have them.

Even on my worst days, I'm glad to be alive, and grateful there is the promise of another day that might be better.

BIG NEWS!

I had a whole post planned for today, it being Friday and me having 3,000 photos from Germany still left to share and all...

But my publisher ruined that.

In the best sort of way.

For those of you who don't know, my debut book, Some Kind of Normal, is about a family dealing with the diagnosis of their 12-year-old daughter and sister, who suddenly gets type 1 diabetes, and then develops complications from it.

One of the reasons I wrote this book was because I have type 1 diabetes, and because I constantly have conversations with people who have no idea what diabetes is, and how it effects someone's life. And thought here are plenty of books with characters with cancer, I've found hardly any with diabetes. So I wrote one.

And I contacted the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, the world leader in research and cure-hunting for type 1, and asked if they'd be interested in reading my book.

They said yes.

Yesterday I got word back from my publisher that they not only liked the book, they are going to feature it on their website in the fall (www.jdrf.org). They are setting up an entire new webpage for book reviews, and I am going to be the first book they review.

This is huge for me. HUGE. As in, international exposure on the world's largest diabetes website. My book is going to have the backing of the world's largest diabetes organization.

Newly diagnosed family are going to be put in touch with my book.

When I started writing, all I wanted to do was make a difference with my writing. Even if only with one person, I wanted my books to impact someone and change their lives. And now I have the opportunity to have thousands of families, hit with the shock of diagnosis. to not feel so alone, and to have a little hope that a cure is so darn close.

The book is so much more than diabetes, but this one avenue is a great start.

Can I do my little dance of joy yet? The dream continues to come true...

I Am Not My Character

When I began writing Some Kind of Normal in first person, the voice of Babs took over. There were times, especially in those early chapters, when Babs would say something that would make me cringe. Things that I went back and deleted, thinking: "I can't write that!" Especially when she calls diabetes a fat people's illness. Even now, I cringe.

Then I realized that this wasn't my story. It was Babs', and if it was going to be authentic, it had to be from her perspective, with all of her own quirks and flaws and prejudices. I had to let go of my internal editor and realize that readers will get that. Readers will understand that this isn't my opinion. It's fiction.

Yeah. Right.

Turns out, readers - especially those that know me - are looking for me in the book. And they assume some of it is me.

I take it as a compliment most of the time. I've had a lot of people I don't know ask if Babs is a real person, because they feel like she's real to them. That's the hugest compliment I could get. But the fact is, Babs is totally fictional. She's not based on me, or on anyone I know. And for the most part, I worked really hard making her as unlike me as I could so people wouldn't see me in it.

Yet, a character is always some part of the writer. We write from our own realm of experiences and exposures. From the simple things, like the kind of potato chips a character might be munching on to the larger things, like the way the way they might react getting life-changing news. We don't have to have eaten those chips or had that exact news, but exposure to the vast array in a grocery store or hearing bad news of another kind form a foundation from which an author can draw.

It's true that I might place characters in a Mexican restaurant because I like Mexican food (one friend pointed this out to me), but in truth, I put them in a Mexican restaurant because they are Texans, and when I lived in Texas, that's what most restaurants in the small town I lived in were. It felt more authentic than putting them in, say, an Olive Garden. So even though my experiences influenced the character's choice, my personal preferences didn't. (As proof, one character ate chile rellenos, which I hate!)

The fact is, readers don't connect with characters necessarily because they are living out the same plotline in their real lives. They connect because, despite the differences in situations, human emotions are common ground. 

In the way that Babs was brash and opinionated and loud, my newest character is quiet and angry and deeply hurt. She is everything I'm not. Which doesn't mean I haven't felt hurt or angry at times. I, too, once packed everything I owned in my car and drove half-way across the country to a state where I knew no one to set up a new life for myself. But for very, very different reasons, and with a very different relationship with my family.

And yet, I have no doubt some readers will read the book and make assumptions that there are secrets in my life I haven't shared. That there are regrets I haven't moved past. That I can't cook, got sick on tequila once, drink frappacinos, hate kids, ate pizza out of dumpsters, and have a knack for managing questionable adult clubs.

If I write this book well, that's what they will think.

And I'm okay with that.

It's Friday; It's a Good Thing: Friends and Reviews

The good thing/thankfulness thing seems to be making it's way around the blogosphere today, and how cool is that? It's been a while since I've done one, I think, so I'm back with a special edition today.

What's a good thing?

Having someone you don't know read your book.

Having that person email you to say how much they like the book.

Finding out that person has a blog and becoming buddies.

Flying to a book launch of another author and actually getting to meet new blogging buddy!!

Finding out that person is even better in person than on the computer!!

THAT is the best!! But to top it off, she wrote a fantastic review that made me cry. Here's a peak:

And she leads us to discover that the story isn't about diabetes at all, or about controversial research, or really even about faith. It's about the love a mother has for her children, and the strength we find within ourselves to get up every morning and hope again, when we're certain there's no hope left.

In moments of panic and desperation, Babs will make you laugh out loud with her honesty and absolute simplicity. But don't be fooled by her candid humor; you're going to need the Kleenex, too.

But to read the rest, go visit her blog. All I can say is WOW!!

Hey Tam - You're my good thing this week! I love writing, just so I get to meet people like you!

Why You Need an Elevator Pitch (even if you're published)

The short, sweet and simple answer: because it will help you sell books.


Now I'm done with the blog and look at that! I have a half hour of free time now to go play with the pup, read a few more pages of a book and get another cup of coffee!!


Okay, I'm kidding. About the second part. The first part is true. You need an elevator pitch to sell your book.


An elevator pitch is a quick overview of your fiction book designed to entice someone to find out more about it.

The first time I ever heard of it was in relation to chance meetings with an agent. For instance, you're standing in an elevator in a hotel after a grueling day at a writer's conference, hoping just to get one of the agents there interested enough to take and read your query, and maybe even request pages. You've resisted following them into the bathroom and sliding pages under the door, or stalking them into the bar and buying them enough drinks to get them tipsy enough to beg for your manuscript, but you haven't found a way to talk to them that doesn't seem on the verge of desperate. Just as you push the button for your floor to go freshen up for dinner, that dream agent steps into the elevator, smiles, and asks the question you have always wanted an agent to ask you:


"Do you write?"


followed closely by, "What's your book about?"


Oh yeah. I rolled my eyes the first time I heard that, because honestly, what were the chances of that happening??

But it does happen, I take it. I've heard stories. Urban legends, maybe, but all the same, a girl can dream. But since I wasn't very many places where I would have happened to run into an agent, I didn't work too hard on perfecting one.  I did the most cursory of research and thought: this looks exactly like the pitch in a query! I've got this down pat!

What I neglected to see was the difference between sending something for an agent to read and actually having a conversation.

Because, as it turns out, my query pitch, which morphed into a back cover blurb, sounds much better on paper than it does as a conversation starter.


And how did I find this out?


I was sitting in a coffee shop last weekend blissfully typing away at my new manuscript when a girl sat down next to me and said, "You working?"


Duh!


"Yes," I said, glancing up and then trying my best to ignore her and go back to work. One would think the earphones and the frantic typing would have keyed her into the fact that I was perfectly happy being alone.


"Oh. Do you work from home? Do you have your own business?"


Sigh. I took off the earphones.  "I'm a writer."  I can actually say this now. And I'm not afraid of the question which almost always comes next, which did indeed come next.


"Oh. Do you have anything published?"


"YES!!"  Oops. I may have screamed that.


"Really? What's it about?"


"Ummmm..."


It's not like this is the first time I've been asked the question. The thing is, it hasn't really gotten easier to answer because I've never sat down and tried to figure out how to answer it. After all, I wrote the book, right? I've pitched it all over the US. I've sent out queries, talked to publishers, explained to family and friends.  Really, I do know what my book is about.


But here in front of me was a stranger, completely and utterly interested in the fact that she was talking to someone who had written a book, and she wanted to know what it was about. All I had to do was tell her.

It didn't need to be a summary of the book. All it needed to be was a few sentences - maybe not even more than one or two - that might get her to ask questions that could lead us into a great discussion about the book. If only I could think of something that didn't sound... stilted. Prepared. Back of the book-ish.

Luckily for me, she had nothing better to do than sit and talk, and she'd somehow targeted me to engage, so even though I stumbled through the first answer, she asked more questions, and the more we talked the more easily I communicated what the book was about and my passion for it.

Sometimes, though, you don't have that much time, or a person asking who is doing it for more than just being polite.

This weekend I ran into an acquaintance in the movie theatre who had friend in tow. She introduced us and said, "Heidi's a writer. She just had her first book published."  The friend, only mildly interested and probably more just out of niceties, asked, "What's it about?"

This time I was a little better prepared. I gave my one minute conversational elevator pitch. "It's about a mom who's daughter is dying of diabetes. Even though the doctors say she's terminal, the mom finds a risky stem cell trial that might work if it doesn't kill her daughter first. Unfortunately, all the people who have been supporting her during the illness turn against her because they think the stem cell treatment is morally wrong. The tagline of the book is: How far would you go to save someone you love?"

It's not the best... I'm still working on it... but in the two minutes we had to talk before the movie started, I'd given enough information to entice her. And I didn't sound like the back of a book. She asked a bunch of questions that I enthusiastically answered. She bought one right then and there.

Why should YOU have an elevator pitch? Because maybe you'll run into an agent in an elevator someday and she'll ask what your book is about. Or maybe because you've written a book you want people to buy, and out of the blue you'll have a chance to sell it to someone.

Even a stranger in a coffee shop.

It's Not Just Sci-Fi Anymore

This is amazing!!  There was a story on ABC news tonight about a boy named Brad Guilkey who was born without any cheekbones who, though the miracle of science and his own stem cells, was able to grow new ones.

Did you read that?? He had no bones...then, at age 15, doctors engineered his own stem cells to grow bones in his face!!

This is like Harry Potter, only so much better! Because it's real! Because it's yet one more way that adult stem cells are changing the entire future of so many people!!

Some of you are nodding your heads and saying, "Yeah, yeah, we know, Heidi. You've told us this before," and others of you are scratching your heads and checking the blog address and wondering how a fiction writer got to blogging about stem cells.

But this is why: my book, the one coming out soon, is about this very thing. About the nearly science fiction idea of taking our own stem cells to cure the incurable.

I didn't start off my writing career with any idea that I'd end up writing a medical book and become fascinated - passionate really - about stem cells. I started with the idea of a family and a dying daughter. It was research - asking the questions that needed to be asked and answered by the main characters, and then looking for those answers - that led me to adult stem cell research.

I don't plan on having any more stem cell plot lines in future books, but I do intend on keeping up with the medical advances, and not just because it could someday cure me of my own diabetes, but because it's a modern day miracle. A boy's heart was basically regrown after being shot with a nail gun. Pancreatic beta cells are being regrown. I'm not exaggerating in the least when I say the blind are seeing, the lame are walking, and the sick are being cured.

Because of this passion, my crit partner Erin suggested I add a page to my website with links to new developments in diabetes and stem cell research. And so the website is updated.

If you are a writer, has writing ever taken you in to a place you didn't expect to be? Has it ever opened a door to something in real life you never thought you'd be a part of?

New Fears That Keep Me Up At Night

Just in case you think it's all rainbows and puppies here since I signed my book away into a publisher's hands, here's the flip side - the things that freak me out just a little before I fall asleep.

1. What if my editor wants the entire book in five points of view instead of one? Or worse - wants it changed to 3rd person instead of 1st? Or wants to change it to be about cancer instead of diabetes? Or wants a different ending? Or wants it to take place in New York instead of Texas?

2. What if the publishing press turns out to be this big scam and my book never gets published? Or they go bankrupt before it comes out?

3. What if the cover art is hideous?

4. What if I turn out to be terrible at revising with my editor's notes?

5. What happens if no one buys it?

6. What if, because no one buys it, no agent or publisher will ever look at anything else I write?

7. What if people buy it, and hate it, and think I'm a terrible writer?

8. What if I throw up from anxiety when I try to talk to people in public, like at a signing or conference or something?

9. What if it turns out I can't work on someone else's deadline schedule?

10. What if getting everything I want, turns out not to be everything I dreamed it would be?


You know, it's Friday. I should end this week on a more positive note. So here it goes.

What happens if getting everything I want, turns out to be even better than I dreamed?

Because, after all, why not?

It's My Blog and I'll Cry if I Want To

Forgive me if this post comes out whiny or cranky. Frankly, I'm working on less than four hours of sleep, none of that more than 30 minutes in a row. And I feel awful to boot.

I'm a bit of a control freak, and I like to be in control. I am certainly learning I can't control everything, but there are a few things I still would like to know I'm in charge of. One of them is my diabetes.

Since diabetes is really just a lack of insulin for me (darn pancreas that decided it had had enough), control should be as simple as taking synthetic insulin through shots. I just manually have to control my blood sugars as opposed to letting it go on autopilot. I use this thing to do it:



It's called an insulin pump and I wear it all the time. It's like my mini-pancreas. It's about the size of a small cell phone and it has a tiny tube that runs from the pump into a catheter I put in my abdomen. Sounds gross, but really, no one even notices it, and most of the time, I can't feel it. But all day it delivers a small stream of insulin in me to keep me alive, and when I eat, I just hit the buttons and it delivers more insulin. No shots. Sounds easy, right?

Except - and this is a huge EXCEPT - the science on this "let's mimic the pancreas" is very flimsy. And my body is very unpredictable. You'd think every time I ate, say, a ham sandwich made from exactly the same materials, I could take the same amount of insulin to cover it. You'd think if I exercised exactly the same amount every day, I could set my insulin for the same amount to cover how my blood sugar would rise or fall. You'd think, with a small amount of math, I could keep my blood sugars in the normal range easily. After all, that's what math and science is about, right? Having a right answer?

BUT: I can't. Because every freakin' day my body decides to do something different. I am like a moving target for that insulin.

And yesterday, I couldn't get it right. After coming home from the gym, my blood sugar was surprisingly good ( it usually goes up, but sometimes it goes down, so I wait and see and then adjust). I thought, Ah! Today's going to be one of those good days!
And then I ate lunch. A small lunch. Only 15 carbs (the carbohydrates are what you have to count to determine how much insulin to use). But my blood sugar went haywire. Into the 200s. Which is bad. I pushed more insulin. And it went to the 300s. I start freaking out. I change every variable I can (insulin, catheter, tubing) and push more insulin. Into the 400s.

I change it all again and then give myself a real shot, with a real needle. It slowly goes down to the high 200s. I haven't eaten anything else, and am guzzling water like I just crossed the Sahara ( highs make me thirsty). I think it's still going down, so I eat dinner. About half of what I'd normally eat. It shoots back into the high 300s.

This is not me. I am never that high. And I have never not been able to get my blood sugars down when I needed to. It's almost as though the insulin itself is causing my blood sugar to go up.

I change it all out again. This is getting expensive now. By eleven at night it's in the high 200s again. It's going down, I think. I'll read a little and then test again, just to make sure.

At midnight it's in the low 300s. At one it's in the 400s. I have no freakin' idea what is going on. Even if I hadn't taken any insulin at all for my food it shouldn't be this high. Another hour like this and I'll be in the hospital.

I change everything out again, and give myself another shot. I've given myself enough insulin at this point to have killed me three times over. I'm going to bed. I give up. I figure my blood sugar is either going to be 800 by morning, or 20, and either way I'll be lucky to wake up.

BUT: I also wear a sensor. It's the size of a quarter and attached directly to my skin, and it sends my blood sugar number to my pump every five minutes. It looks like this:


And if my blood sugar goes too high or too low, it makes this obnoxious beeping noise that won't go away until you hit a series of buttons. I've been hitting these buttons all day. I don't know why I thought I was going to get any sleep. All night they beeped, and in my hazy, fatigued state I'd glance at the glowing screen and see my blood sugar numbers continuing to creep up. And up. And up. I was scared to sleep too much, but too tired to know what else to do.

This morning I started all over. New bottle of insulin. New tubing. Another shot. I got it down to 104 after 24 hours of this. Now, two hours after it came down and hit normal, without eating anything, it's creeping back up.

I am beyond frustrated. And I feel tired and groggy and hungry. And confused. And worried. Because I'm pushing enough insulin now that whenever whatever is causing my blood sugar to go so high goes away, I'm going to be in a world of trouble.

I hate it because it is now controlling my day. I didn't go to the gym. I didn't have my coffee. I'm pricking my fingers every fifteen minutes to make sure I don't need to keep 9-1-1 on speed dial.

It's gone up 10 points just in the time it took to write this.

God, I don't complain about much in my life. I'm mostly very healthy, and I'm exceptionally thankful for that. And I'm happy to deal with living with diabetes if this is what you think will make me stronger. But really... I'd be so grateful if we could just go back the way things were three days ago. When I didn't feel like I had to review emergency information with my kids. Thanks.

Handing it over to you, Brian

I heard this report on the news today: another possible cure for type 1 diabetes. These kind of reports come often enough it's hard to start planning the "I'm cured, let's eat cake" party, but it's very encouraging.

This is actually one of the possible cures Babs discovers in my book. It's fun to hear news reports about "break-throughs" and have known about it months ahead. It makes me feel like I've well-researched the book.

And, of course, it makes me fear a little that by the time I have an agent the book will be obsolete. It's a sad state of affairs when the publishing industry moves slower than the FDA!

Beginnings

It seems unreal to me that I should be starting my third book. I still have a hard time believing I wrote one, let alone two full novels. And that I am now writing fast enough to be writing one while waiting to hear about agents on the other (the first still conversing with dust bunnies)... just, WOW!

I suppose the ideas for all of the books come from different places, and come to me in different ways.

SOME KIND OF NORMAL is about diabetes and stem cell therapy (although the real story is probably about faith and family). It came from a simple question I had during the primary elections back in February. In looking at a list of where each of the candidates stood on certain issues, I found a checklist of types of stem cell research. I didn't know there were different kinds of stem cell research! The more I looked at the different kinds, the more I realized there was definitely a story there.

But in truth, though that was the impetus for a new book, the story, as all of mine, start at the same place: the characters.

In college a professor told me to write down a main character's name and walk around with it in my wallet for a week. I did, and ever since, I've kept to that same idea. For me, even if there is a general plot, the real story is with the characters, and the better I know them, the more able I am to let them tell the story, which, I've found, is the better story.

It's kind of like people: everyone has a story. You don't go looking for the person who has a story about stem cell experience to tell. You meet people, and then you listen to their stories.

So I start with names. And today I'll introduce you to some of the people in my new book by name, and tomorrow I'll list some of the questions I ask to get a better feel for who they are.

So my new friends:

Texas Winters
Maggie Mae Winters
Annabelle Abbot
Claudine Rose Rousseau
Olivia Rousseau
Tad Collinsworth
Jeb Houston
Jackson Ogletree
Trinity Summerlin
Wade Shaw
Margarita Bautista Cepeda


Whew! That's a heck of a cast of characters! Hard to know yet how many will play a major role. It's really Texas's story to tell. She's been lurking in my head for a few months now. It's time to let her loose!

It's Friday; It's a Good Thing

Last night I was going through pages I had sent my review group of the end of my book and came upon a comment that gave me a good laugh, and also gave me pause to remember why I wrote it, and how far research and development of diabetes has come, and how thankful I am. And it's Friday, after all. Time to list the good things in my life, and believe it or not, as far as diabetes is concerned, there is a lot of good.



The section of writing was this:


It takes less than ten minutes to drive to the church, where I park illegally in a handicapped space and march directly to the kitchen. The hospitality committee is exactly where they always are this time each week, their gossiping echoing down the halls off the sanctuary, which might as well be called the sanctimonious. I forget which SAT week that one was.

They stop the gabbing as soon as I fill the doorway.

“The devil has arrived,” I say, staring them each down. Yolanda. Gloria. Brenda. Vickie. Dina. Jen. Dot. Erin. Alicia. And two dozen angel food cakes.

The amusing part that my critique partner caught? I used the names of several of my group members in this! And yes, I did that on purpose. Hey, if Nicholas Sparks can name his main characters after his kids, why can't I throw in a few extras named after the people who have helped me along the way?

While I stopped to chuckle at the comment my partner left ("I like it that Jen and I are on the hospitality committee, but angel food cake is not my specialty…"), it made me reflect on why I wrote this in the first place. Because the truth is, I am not a fan of angel food cake myself. But it is one of my early memories of living with a type 1 diabetic.

You see, my sister was diagnosed before me - by twenty years in fact. I could write a post someday called "Everything I learned about diabetes I learned from my sister," but the fact is that everything has changed so much since that time. And when it came time for birthdays, my mother made angel food cakes, with barely-pink tinted cool whip lite frosting that looked like clouds. Angel food cakes were, at the time, the promoted cake of diabetics. Low in sugar, low in fat. And low in taste, I thought.

I don't actually remember the last time my mom made an angel food cake for a birthday. My sister left for college three years before me, and somewhere in the time between when she left and I was diagnosed, diabetic care changed by drastic measures. Today, I can have whatever cake I want. Ice Cream. Chocolate. White layer with raspberry filling. Okay, in moderation for sure, smaller pieces than I might if I weren't diabetic, but still: the options are there. And they are there for a variety of reasons, which bring me to this Friday post:

These are the good things about being a diabetic today:


1. Short-acting insulin. When my sister was a kid, she took one shot a day, and the insulin lasted that long, peaking at certain times and falling at others before finally petering out. She had to eat when it peaked, and not eat when it didn't, and eat a certain amount and not any more or less than that, because otherwise her blood sugar would rise or fall dangerously high or low. It's a tightrope to walk, especially in the school system when you have no control over when your lunch is.

Today, I eat when I want. The insulin hits within ten minutes of taking it and leaves within a few hours - about the same amount of time it takes food to hit my bloodstream and be processed. If I want a little, I take a little. If I want more, I shoot up a little more. And if I'm sick or just not hungry, I don't have to eat. It sounds simple, something everyone takes for granted. But for a diabetic, it's an awesome thing!

2. Blood testing meters. When I was diagnosed the first thing they did was give me a meter and show me how to prick my finger and test how much sugar was in my blood. If diabetes is about your body not being able to process glucose on it's own, and taking shots of insulin to cover that glucose, it only makes sense that a diabetic would need to know exactly how much glucose is there to know how much insulin they need. But it wasn't always like that. Back in the day, not that long ago, it was all a guessing game. I don't ever remember my sister having a meter. Which probably explains why she's seen the back side of a coma more times than I can count, and I haven't.

And can I add here that I love that most meters now can calculate that number within five seconds? It used to be much longer, which is a pain when everyone is tapping their fingers at the dinner table or honking the car horn ready to back out of the driveway. It's inconvenient enough to have to do it ten times a day. At least now it doesn't take that long!

3. Carbohydrate Counting. I feel like this is a superpower. I am carbo-count-woman! With a single glance I can calculate how many carbohydrates are on that plate! Half-cup rice: 15 carbs. 15 Doritos: 15 carbs. Slice of bread: 15 carbs. Small tortilla: 36 carbs. Bacon: NONE! Slice of cake: a gazillion. Okay, my powers are a little limited, but still, I'm pretty good at math now, adding and dividing in my head. 45 carbs on my plate. 1 unit insulin for every 15 carbs. I need 3 units.

When my sister was a kid (do you see this pattern?), it was all guessing, just like the blood sugar. She took a certain amount of insulin, and then guessed about how much food she's need to cover it. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes not. Sometimes she had to eat more than she wanted, because by golly the endocrinologist told her she had to take 8 units (her ratio is different than mine) and then cover it with food. Now, I do the opposite. I figure out the food, and cover it with insulin.

4. Pumps. Insulin pumps, to be exact. The size of a cell phone, it clips on my pants or skirts and delivers a constant stream of insulin. No more shots!! Well, there is a needle to put the tubing in my abdomen, but that's only once every three or four days. No more not being able to have spontaneous meals/snacks/ice cream etc when I'm out because I don't have insulin or syringes with me. It's like a mini-pancreas! Except I still have to do the math right... it's not that smart! Yet.

Every time I am tempted to feel sorry for myself, I remember my sister and how it was to live with diabetes only a few decades ago. Research, technology, progress... it's all a very, very good thing.