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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

The Invisible Woman: The Job That Really Matters

Sometimes when I'm researching I come across the greatest gems when I am least looking for them; when my mind is somewhere else and I am intent on going down the road I think the book is taking, and suddenly I am on a different one altogether. And the two worlds I straddle - the world of my book and the world of my real life - collide.

This happened today as I dug around for more information about developing cures for diabetes. After heaps of JAMA articles and university hospital reports, trying to wrap my mind around medical jargon and simplify what is incredibly complicated biological and chemical information, I stumbled on a blog, of all things, where a mom of a type 1 posted a youtube video about a doctor who has found a cure for diabetes in mice. I scrolled down to find what other tidbits of type 1 motherhood I can gather and there it is: the gem.

At first I thought she wrote it. I was so moved, I went to comment, which I almost never do, especially on a stranger's blog (see Cyber Ettiquette- I'm Not Stalking You, I'm Just Old ) when I realized this woman hadn't written the post. I researched a bit (but not extensively; I do, after all, have my own research and book to write) and could find several copies of this, but no author.

In the spirit of flagrantly reproducing someone else's work and spreading it with no credit, I'm reprinting it here. It's not about being a writer, but it is about being a mother: my number one job. If I never get published, if I never make it as anything the world notices, I'm doing the most important work in the lives of my kids. And if, by the grace of God, I become a published author and the world notices, I am still doing my most important work in the lives of my kids.

Sometimes, especially in the life of a writer, it pays to bear in mind what really matters.

Read. Have a Kleenex nearby if you are one of those who weeps at Hallmark commercials.

The Invisible Woman

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I’m on the phone and ask to be taken to the store.

Inside I’m thinking, “Can’t you see I’m on the phone?”Obviously not. No one can see if I’m on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all.

I’m invisible.

Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this? Some days I’m not a pair of hands; I’m not even a human being. I’m a clock to ask, “What time is it?” I’m a satellite guide to answer, “What number is the Disney Channel?” I’m a car to order, “Right around 5:30, please.”

I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude -but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again.

She’s going … she’s going … she’s gone!

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at my out-of-style dress; it was the only thing I could find that was clean. My unwashed hair was pulled up in a banana clip and I was afraid I could actually smell peanut butter in it.

I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, “I brought you this.” It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe.I wasn’t exactly sure why she’d given it to me until I read her inscription:”To Charlotte, with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees.”

In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work:
* No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we have no record of their names.
* These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished.
* They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.
* The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, “Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it.”
And the workman replied, “Because God sees.”

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, “I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you’ve done, no sequin you’ve sewn on, no cupcake you’ve baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can’t see right now what it will become.”

At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my strong, stubborn pride. I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on.

The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree. When I really think about it, I don’t want my son to tell the friend he’s bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, “My mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table.” That would mean I’d built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want himto want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his friend, to add,”You’re gonna love it there.”

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we’re doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women.

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?

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.

The Age Old Question: To Agent or Not To Agent

Someone in my internet-generated writing group brought an interesting if not well-argued question to the table: Why bother paying an agent 15% when you as an author are more invested and have more passion to sell the book on your own?
My first reaction was to roll my eyes and say, "he must be new to publishing!" But in an effort to be magnanimous and fair, I began to think, are there times where it is better to forgo the agent? After all, all of my opinions about how valuable agents are come from agents. Hmmm.... there is something a bit biased there.

BookEnds Literary Agency has a post about the value agents bring here and here.

Interestingly, Miss Snark has a very open-minded post about it here, in which she does give circumstances (or types of books) in which it is acceptable to self-publish.

An editor writes from the publisher point of view here about how important it is to have an agent bring your manuscript to them for consideration.

I also found an excellent blog written by a publishing consultant (who knew those existed?) who also details many different facets of publishing for profit, both agented and non.

After researching the possibilities, this is my take on the issue.

If you are writing non-fiction, it is easier to get published without an agent than if you are writing fiction. I'm not talking to the non-fiction side because I don't know that as well, and I have a sneaky suspicion it is an entirely different beast (the way people think all diabetes is diabetes, even though type 1 and type 2 are entirely different).

If you are writing fiction, there are options, but you have to weigh what it is you really want, and how much money and time you are willing to pay or give up in order to reach that.

• If you want to have a publisher publish you, as opposed to paying a vanity or POD or equity press, you're options are very limited. Most big publishing houses won't accept unsolicited manuscripts. You could have the next Harry Potter and it will used to break in their new shredding machine. No one will even look the teensiest look at it.

• You can go to smaller presses. The competition here is fierce, but you have more of a shot than the big houses. You don't, however, get the same level of marketing expertise or large print runs. Depending on whether they decide to publish traditionally or Print On Demand (POD), you may not have a shot at even getting your book into a bookstore. They also can't afford the masses of editors and layout experts, and often can't even afford people who are trained in this, and as such, your book is much more likely to be fraught with typos and strange layouts.

There are upsides to the small press, though, which include better communication and author involvement, and more personalized marketing. A much more comprehensive article about small presses is here.

In short: small presses offer opportunities to get published for the novelist, but if you want to make real money, you may need to later look for an agent who can then sell your book to a large press. Also, if you want to sell foreign language rights or movie rights, it behooves you to have an agent in your corner for that, as well. If your book sold well you have a better chance of landing an agent than if you hadn't published at all. If your book didn't sell well, you'll have a harder time landing an agent.

My instinct, though, with this gentleman who initially brought this question up, is that he thought it would be better to self-publish and market the book yourself. Take your boxes, if you will, and sit in front of a bookstore or a library and peddle them yourself. Which, frankly, is something many agented authors do anyway.

• The downside to self-publishing, unfair or not, is that is has a really poor reputation among the publishing community. If you self-publish, most agents and publishing houses do not recognize that as published. You can't go to them and say, "I have published one book, and now I want you to re-publish it, or publish my new one." As most self-publishing presses accept almost anyone who wants to shell out the money, you buy no credit with those who are picky.

Here is a great article on what to beware of in vanity presses. They are fraught with sneaky, thieving companies who prey on an author's desire to see their words in print. Some are fine, but many are not. Be very careful who you go with if you choose this option.

• Money is the thing other than reputation that makes this seem less viable to me. You end up paying for these publications more than most authors can recoup selling. Unless you are an amazing seller, in which case maybe you should be doing something else other than writing.

Let's take Lulu, which is one of the more popular self-publishers these days. If I want to publish my 300 page novel in paperback book form the size of a regular paperback (and not a trade), the cost per book is $49.95. For 25 copies, it's $1,238.25. For 500 books, it's 22,135, about $44 per book. I'm not sure how I am going to peddle that in front of Border's when someone can go inside and buy one for $7.99.

I recently read a book published by ACW Press, a reputable small self-publishing press which includes cover design and ISBN number so you can supposedly sell it in a bookstore, if one would take it. They also say they have professional editing, but the book I read had many typos, and occasionally the wrong name of a character or grammar issues which were most definitely not intended stylistically. If I wanted to publish my 300 word book there, POD, I'd have to pay $1,799. That would get me 15 books, which I would have to sell at $119 a piece. I could order more at $10.28 a piece. If I wanted a traditional press run of 1,000 copies, it would cost $10,220, which is only $10 a book to break even, if I could sell them all. There are extra costs, of course, which range from .10 to 3.50 per book, which you almost certainly would want.

I'm not saying this isn't viable. I just think it would be very difficult to break even, money wise. I didn't get into writing to become wealthy, but I certainly didn't do it to lose money, either.

I'm quite sure I didn't cover everything, and I am equally certain I probably got something wrong, but in my own opinion, agents make their money, and it's worth waiting to get one. I'm not expecting Spielberg to pick up my book for a movie, or fifteen European countries to snatch up French, Italian and German translations. But if they did, I'd want someone who knew what they were doing to take care of it. And frankly, I'm too busy writing to figure out all these details. Maybe if I only had one book in me, and wanted to spend the next ten years peddling it.... nah. Even then, I'd need someone else looking out for me.

At least that way I have someone else to blame other than myself! :)

Sometimes there's just not enough jelly beans

It's spring break and all the kids are home. My children are pestering me with questions. Mom, where are the crayons? Can I have duct tape? Can we watch a movie for lunch? I answer in jibberish: The orange juice feels fuzzy. I know it makes no sense to them. I think it makes sense to me, but I'm not sure how. The meaning is just out of reach, but I am lucid enough to know it is futile to try.

This is what happens when the brain doesn't get enough glucose. It goes on the fritz. It misfires. It mixes its signals. It wants to shut down. I hear words but I don't understand them. The simplest of sentences spoken by my seven year old makes no sense to me. I ask her to repeat. Then repeat again. I say ask me again in a few minutes.

My hands are shaking uncontrollably. I drop things. I yell when I don't mean to. I am suddenly angry, though there is no rational reason why. I apologize. I am suddenly hot, like someone turned up the thermostat to 120. Sweat begins to trickle down my hairline. I sit on the floor in the middle of the kitchen and put my head on my knees. I am surrounded by food that would make me normal again, at least for a little while, but I don't want it.

I have type 1 diabetes and my blood sugar is low. I don't feel like testing it. The lows bring that kind of apathy. I gauge, by experience, it's probably in the low 40's. I rationalize it doesn't matter what the number is; I know it's low and that's all I need to know. The point is, I need to eat. But I don't feel like doing that either. Fatigue overwhelms me. I just want to lie down and sleep.

It must be like this at the top of Everest, when climbers are overcome by lack of oxygen and the cold seeps into them and hypothermia overtakes them. I have heard this is such a peaceful way to die. People just lie down in the snow and go to sleep. This is how I feel when my blood sugar levels plummet. I know I should keep my eyes open. I know I should eat. But I feel sick to my stomach and eating is the last thing I want to do. I just want to lie down and sleep, and let the feeling go away.

Sometimes, eating is all I want to do. The lows make me ravenous. I want to eat and eat and eat until I feel better, though I know this will only result in really high sugar levels. Mostly, I dole out exactly twelve jelly beans and wait for the shaking to go away, but sometimes the self-control goes out the window too.

Today I take the jelly beans. No one is home except me and my kids, and this knowledge makes me do the right thing. I hate that we taught them early on how to dial 911 and what to say to emergency operators if I "go to sleep suddenly and won't wake up." The lows happen rarely these days, as I have gotten better at counting carbs and more conservative in dosing out my insulin and, sadly, less effected when my blood sugar is borderline low (while 90 is normal, I often don't notice if I'm in the fifties, or even the upper forties if its been a slow descent). Still, when it happens, it's my kids I feel the worst for.

It's a curse. And a blessing. And because I believe God can make all things work out for good, I am choosing to see mostly the blessings.

My newest novel deals with diabetes on the very basest level. It deals with a family trying to cope, with a well-meaning church congregation that becomes adversarial, and with stem-cell research and politics. It is about people who struggle with their own ethics and morality in the face of a dying daughter.

I won't complain about the shaking and the sweating and the moments where I jabber about fuzzy orange juice and other convoluted topics. Mostly, I am so thankful I have it and not my kids.And if my own experiences help me to write a book that may eventually help someone else, change a few opinions and perceptions, or raise awareness and maybe bring about change, what an amazing gift my own struggles are!

I think the jelly beans have kicked in.

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!

How To Get Your Novel Published: An addendum to Part II: The Query Letter

Yesterday I focused on what agents want out of query letters, but there are plenty of other places to get valuable help as well.

The very first resource I found was AgentQuery. It's an outstanding overview of queries, along with do's and don'ts and suggestions about how to make a query intriguing. It also has links to other websites, including query letters that have garnered an agent.

Which leads me to this addendum. It's not just what agents say that interests me. It's what they do. What kind of letters are they truly, actually responding to?

Here are some authors who have posted the query letter that landed them the agent and a published book:

Nicholas Sparks
Various Romance Authors
Lynn Flewelling
Sara Rees Brennan
Simon Haynes (From here there is a list of links to other author queries in what is known as "The Query Project")
Heather Brewer

(If you are an author and have landed an agent and would like to post your query here, or have me place a link to it, I'd love to do that!)

The thing to be careful of here is that there are many reasons someone may have gotten requests from an agent. It could have been that the plot overshadowed bad querying. It could be that the agent had some connection with the material (which is, actually, ideal if you can find that, the way I tried to find agents with some connection to diabetes).

Times change, too. With the acceptance of email, agents are getting hit much harder with queries. People who wouldn't invest in the money for stamps for 100 agents two years ago might well send out 100 emails today, and an agent who used to get 20 queries a day may be now getting 100. The more competitive the field, the more you need to WOW them, the less sloppy you can afford to be.

Here is another interesting post about querying and breaking into the publishing world by a new author, David J. Williams, whose tongue-in-cheek approach to this topic made me laugh - in that sad, I-want-to-cry-because-it's-so-true kind of way.

And just for fun, because it's Friday:

Here's a great satire on writing the query letter

And here's what agents do on Friday night.

Phew. I think I'm done with queries. Next up, finding agents.

It's Friday; It's a Good Thing

This week has not been a great word count week, but it has been a great writing week. That is, although I haven't amassed thousands of words in my document this week, I have put quite a bit of time into the process. I've plotted, I've outlines, I've organized, I've gotten to know my characters better, including all their motivations and the baggage they bring to the book.

I have also done quite a bit more research into treatments for diabetic comas and stem cell research and systemic allergies to insulin. These medical details are the things which, later down the road, could hang up my writing, and I'd hate to get to a glitch and then have to rethink my entire plotting. These are good things to have under my belt in the early stages.

Also, I have contacted two individuals who are part of the Oxford Graduate Program as professors, one of whom is a judge and one of whom is a doctor, who both have agreed to read the finished manuscript and advise me on the medical, legal and ethical details of diabetes and stem cell research (which are their specialties). This is a hugely good thing!

And as for the rest of my life, these are the things this week that I am especially grateful for:

1. Old friends who have become new friends. You once were lost, but now are found. Friends are a very good thing.

2. Music. When I am sad, it comforts me. When I need a lift, it is there to raise my spirits. When I am happy, it gives me something to sing and dance to. It brings back memories. It creates new ones. It is a very, very good thing.

3. Johnny Depp days at Heidi the Hick's blog. I'm not a Johnny Depp fanatic, although I think he is incredibly talented, but you can't help but love him for all the enthusiasm Heidi shows for him. It's fun to know on Friday, though, you can almost always rely on some Johnny love at her blog!

4. Libraries are a good thing. I may have said that before, but I am having a serious love affair with the library now. Free books. Quiet writing room. No distractions. Wireless internet. A couple gorgeous cherry trees blossoming out the window I am sitting next to. Tons of windows. Comfy chairs. This is tax money well spent.

5. Smiles. From me. Directed at me. With or without laughter. Smiles are a warm-you-up-inside good thing.

6. Emails. Remember when you use to look forward to mail time, because you always hoped there would be something personal in it? A letter, a postcard.... something other than bills and advertisements. Email is better. It comes at any point in the day, often during the day, sometimes at night. You get to wake up and turn on the machine and there it is: a friend waiting to say hi. Sure, they miss the distinct handwriting that makes a letter feel personal. But still, they are pretty cool.

7. New bookshelves. To say this is a good thing is a gross understatement. It is an amazingly awesome, phenomenally terrific good thing. There. Two adverbs and three adjectives in a nine word sentence. And they are worth every modifier!

Off to actually write, now. Happy Friday!

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.

Sick Day

Yesterday's word count: 1,441

Today's word count: 300

Today my youngest woke with a terrible cold. We took a sick day, which included me having to ditch most of my writing time. A tiny part of me is frustrated with this, but mostly I think, this is what is great about being a writer and a mom. I get to do both. And be one more than the other if necessary. Today it was necessary to be more mom than writer.

I did spend an hour with some new emails from parents who wrote me about their experiences with their children's diagnosis, which were extremely helpful. These parents continue to amaze me with what they go through every day, and the incredible trauma before diagnosis. If my children ever develop diabetes, I will be so, so thankful that I have it; that I will know the signs before it gets too bad, and that I can say, "I have been there. It will get easier, and feel more normal, and you will survive and live a great life." I tell some of the moms who write me this, who only know what it is like to have a child with the disease and see only the uncertainty of the future and the frustration and fear in each day.

Is it bad that I really want this book to make a difference in the world? That I want, through a story of one fictional family, to educate many, to give hope to some? To let people know it can be life altering, but not life ending? That crisis can make you stronger? That faith will sustain you, even when your friends won't?

I spent my precious little quiet time today reading about children who almost died before being diagnosed, whose pathetic, arrogant doctors misdiagnosed or undermedicated or simply didn't care enough. I wrote back to parents who wrote to me about their fears of their children seizing and dying in the night while they were asleep.

Then I went and held my daughter on my lap and watched Little Bear and wiped her tears and read her books, and thanked God all she had was a terrible cold.

Writing Is Just Another Word for Insanity

It's now late at night, and I am just now realizing that writing books is just a defensible, excusable way to cover for being crazy. Looney. Insane. The talking to the people in my head kind of thing that puts people in years of psychotherapy with prescription pills on the side.

I have relationships with people that don't exist.

It's true. It's late and I can hardly wait to wave my husband off to bed and settle down with my new friends: the characters in my books. As Babs would say, "Lord have mercy!" These people are real to me! When something sad happens to Babs, I feel sad. When Babs is determined and plowing through life with the kind of gusto I wish I had, I am empowered. When she feels overwhelmed and wants to crawl into a ball in the corner and close her eyes and wish life away, I feel that way too. It seems sometimes that the only time my life that is completely my own is when I vacation from writing.

I long for their company. I can't wait until Logan shows up because I am like a giddy school girl around him. He is rebellious and brilliant and completely a surprise. And I never know what color his Mohawk is going to be. And I loathed the appearance of the church ladies until today, when I got a glimpse of what they are going to be, and how they are going to totally be the saving grace the Babcocks need, and now suddenly I see them with entirely new eyes. And I feel all motherly with Ashley. And I am over the moon excited that she gets to be the guinea pig that changes the face of diabetes.

And sometimes, when I talk about these people, I think about the characters I left behind. I think of Caroline and Tate and Nathan, who are languishing with the dust bunnies waiting for me to decide if I think their story is worth taking out again and struggling to make more salable. My heart actually aches for them, the same way it aches for my real friends that have somehow slipped away over time and distance, and I am almost desperate not to lost them the way I have lost others. I want their stories to matter. And I ache for Tate, who is the best of the lot, and got the rawest deal.

And even as my heart hurts, I realize I am crazy. This is insanity. They are words on a page. Figments of my imagination.

I keep telling myself this. In time, I might believe it's true.

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?

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.