Sweet Victory

It’s never too late to find love. I had a dog once, rebooted from a home that Apparently had no toys. When we got her, we offered up a buffet of balls, bones and other expensive forms of molded rubber and plastic. She ignored them all, disinterested to find even a moment of bliss - in any one of them. She lived this way for quite some time Seemingly okay with a life without material - affection. One day, she came across a cloth mouse Long since discarded by the cat who now favored - killing the real thing. In a single moment, she became something we’d never seen before. Bringing it everywhere playfully pawing and chewing it, taking it to bed searching for it when she entered a room ignoring her food if it wasn’t beside her and unable to focus on anything else. I’d never seen her happier, or stupider. It only took me a short while to stop enjoying her bliss and start worrying what she’d do when - she lost this. Would she return to her previous mode of gent...

Were he alive, my father would not have been on Facebook. He lived in three dimensions, not two. He guzzled cheap beer when he was healthy and sipped blackberry brandy when he wasn't. He cut firewood in the late fall, sometimes with an axe sometimes with a chainsaw but always with snot dripping from his nose. I stacked the wood, going from annoyance to indignation until I finally came out the other end With pride. I held flashlights while he skinned his knuckles On everything. Late evening he'd watch the ballgame with a beer. I'd trace the veins on his hands, smell the Old Spice on his face and the bubbles in his glass. The wounds on his hands seemed so fresh but not once Not ever did I ever hear him Complain and never Not ever did I see him -flinch.

We come, young, old, etc. Those observing must wonder  What common trauma unites, bonds Brings us all together  - for this. First day check-ins, eager grins Mostly some Wondering what the hell they'd gotten Into. For some it takes hours for others Days but a week for all is  Plenty good to feel a sense of  Something you haven't  - before. We sweat, we cry, we bleed one Drop at a time confirming, affirming that What makes this perfect is nothing - more Than our own imperfections. An observer might say oh: Sweat, tears, blood - it's salt that Brings you all here but they'd be dead Wrong because it's the opposite of - that. It's the sweetness, the sugar the old Folks called it, that thing that robs Vision, limbs and even years from Our clutches. But not here. Here, we run we ride we jump we climb Higher and further away, away from Doctors from doubt from anything that says - No. Here, we laugh at our failures, here we Ponder possibilities consider new Realities and...

Today's topic: changes I want for diabetes. Great topic, as it gets to the heart of my interest in coming to Aspire Ventures and doing work for Tempo Health . To be clear, I don't need another diabetes app that allows me to log my stuff, even though we're building one. I don't need another place to put old news, and I really don't need another place to put data that's already been logged someplace else. What I want and what I need is insight. I need something that can comb through my data and find the trends that will lead me, and others, to better control. While my relationship with my endo is good, giving them spreadsheets of data and watching them scan over it in a short appointment tells me that they need this information, too. What we're attempting to do at Tempo Health is just that; focusing on turning all of that data into something that informs the patient and their caregiver about what matters inside of that data. From insights, there becom...

Today's post asks, "What needs to be cleaned out about our diabetes, either physically or emotionally?" I think you'll see some great posts today about the emotional burden of diabetes. You won't find that here, though. What you will find is a short commentary about how health insurance has changed what it means to be a diabetic in the US. What you see there is my back-up closet of supplies. There's probably about two years worth of Medtronic supplies (as well as two out of warranty pumps), and a much smaller supply of first generation Omnipods. (Let's be honest; the batteries in the Omnipods are likely shot and they should be disposed of.) Those items were acquired during several years of auto-shipped supplies when I was on a low deductible insurance plan. The boxes showed up every quarter and they got added to the pile where they were stocked up as if I were preparing for either Diageddon or - more likely - unemployment. What I didn't take...

Originally I didn't know what I'd write about when asked what parts of diabetes "I keep to myself." Truth is, I don't keep a lot to myself. Opinions? Oh yeah, I've got them. About diabetes. About the next Star Wars movie. About rye whiskey. You ask, I've got something to say. But there are certain things related to diabetes that I don't tend to talk about much and blog about even less. Not many, but a few. 1.) I don't talk much about infusion set failures that lead to high BGs. I've read some extremely emotional posts from diabetics who'll allow a bent cannula to be the catalyst for a tirade about the frustration of the disease. And I get it. It's annoying. But things - particularly mechanical things - fail. The added stress you feel because of the bad infusion set? It just pours gas on the fire, so I don't do it. 2.) I don't tell diabetic parents how they should feel or what they should do. I am a parent. I have diabetes....

So after nearly a year of not blogging, here I go committing to a week of posts for Diabetes Blog Week . A short disclaimer: I've actually been writing and posting a lot. Sometimes at LinkedIn. Sometimes on corporate blogs. But not here so much for the past year. Until this week. So pull up a chair and let's get to it. Today's post topic is "I Can," and is supposed to talk about what I've done despite diabetes or other positive aspects T1 has brought to my life. You might say I completed a hundred mile race "despite diabetes." I say that running ultramarathons requires an intimate knowledge of fueling, particularly carbohydrate fueling. Diabetes taught me to do that. You might say I'm a relatively disciplined person "despite diabetes." I say diabetes was the first thing that taught me that discipline and consistency are some of the best ways to stay on top of diabetes, and these habits will flow over to other aspects of your life....