November Notes

If you're swinging over here as a result of seeing me as the featured blogger on the Diabetes OC, welcome! And if you're a regular reader, welcome back.

So it's national diabetes month, national write a novel month, national blog every day month, and Thanksgiving is 'round the corner.

With the exception of Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays, I'm not really an active participant in these activities.

I've got a novel half-written, but it won't get finished in a mere 30 days. Same thing with the blog: I blog, but don't have the time or stories to keep it interesting every.single.day.

And sure, I'm diabetic, but since that's a year-round thing for me, I don't see the point of singling out one month, or even one day, commemorating it. To me, it's like saying one day of the month is National Breathing Day. Or National Eat Healthy Day. 

On November 14, though, I have my next appointment with Kind Endo, where she hopefully will give me the go-ahead to start trying to conceive kid number two. It'll be my own personal diabetes awareness day.

I fully support the efforts of other bloggers making mention of any of these activities, though. More power to you.

Over here, I've done a little housekeeping. 

My archives are now more easily searchable by keyword, date, category, and for anyone who wants to know my history, by stage of life. Blogger only lets me link to the latest posts first, so if you're interested in reading the blog this way, start from the bottom from the appropriate date and read up. It's all over there on the left.

I've tweaked some colors to make things more eye-catching and added some excellent reader kudos on the right. Thank you for those!

None of this would have been possible without the fabulous Julie at Absolute Stock Photo. Definitely contact her for your web design or stock photo needs.

Please Introduce Yourself

I've been blogging for nearly three years now. 

I'm still tickled when someone stops by and comments and gives me some bit of insight or encouragement.

But I'm a bit sad when people comment as Anonymous. 

Sometimes I want to email you to say thanks. Or to ask another question. 

And other times I wonder exactly who some of you are and how you found me. Did you just stop by because a Google search brought you here? A headline from a diabetes blog update? Are you planning a pregnancy with diabetes and want to read how one person did it? You just like the writing?

Who are you? What made you click here? Anything else you'd like me to write about, within the general confines of pregnancy, type 1 diabetes, parenthood and the assorted labels I've started to tag my posts with?

Looking forward to your responses.

One Year Old, Doctor Updates, and A Date

Managing the Sweetness Within is officially one year old this week.

I've learned a ton of stuff since my first post in 2005. A lot about living with type 1 and trying to conceive. A lot about infertility issues and invasive diagnostic tests and Intra-Uterine Inseminations (with Clomid and without) and In Vitro Fertilization. There have been disappointments, but thankfully, there have also been things to celebrate.

My year has been dominated by blood sugar control. By eating the same stuff every day to maintain that control. And it's also been filled with waiting: waiting for the right time to conceive, for another doctor's appointment, for the best time to have an IUI or to start IVF drugs. To schedule an egg retrieval or an egg transfer. To wait for a pregnancy test result. And then, finally, to move from trying to conceive to pregnancy itself, and all the waiting and watching pregnancy entails.

Thank you to all my readers and lurkers who have posted something over the past year. I've read and saved every single comment and love to get them--please keep them coming, as posting lets me know people are out there reading (and enjoying) this blog.

(And as a public service announcement, definitely go VOTE for Lyrehca at Managing the Sweetness Within for Best Female Blogger in the Diabetes OC. Voting closes by December's end, and if you like what you've read over the past year, go over and give me some love. I'll wait right here.)

And now, on to the pregnancy report.

I had three doc's appointments Friday morning. My endo continues to assure me that my blood sugars look fine and that I am weathering the pregnancy well. I still suspect she's being a bit of a Pollyanna, because I'm hitting insulin resistance hard and have been seeing much higher numbers than usual over the past week. At night, in particular, I can take a huge bolus to get my numbers back down to under 99 and will wake up hours later and the blood sugar hasn't budged. WTF? My seven-day average on my meter is higher than it's been in awhile, but I plan to actually get to the gym today for an elliptical workout (which I sorta stopped around the time I found out I was pregnant) to see if I can get some better control (and release some general aches and pains) today.

Of course, not eating all the holiday crap I've been eating will probably clear things up as well.

Sigh.

So yeah, Friday's docs.

I had a scheduled fetal echocardiogram, which is a detailed ultrasound that looks at the fetus's heart to make sure everything looks good (and is standard for diabetic moms). I went to the hospital where I was first diagnosed at age 7 to have this test done, and while I walked through the halls with Mr. Lyrehca, I pointed out how the builidng has changed. "That's where the gift shop used to be! That's where the old entrance used to be! I was admitted in an office right there!" Mr. L. certainly didn't have the history I had with this building (I saw my endocrinologist there until I turned 23).

The fetal echo went reasonably well. It's funny to be in a doctor's office where diabetes isn't the focus. I was there with another woman in the waiting room who was also pregnant, and the receptionist came out into the waiting room and offered us some pastry from a box on her desk. Mr. L. and I just said "No, thank you," but the other woman was like, "Oh, no, thanks, I'm diabetic." The receptionist was like, "Oh, I'm sorry." It's funny--you'd NEVER see something like that happening in a doctor's office serving primarily diabetics. Sure, there are signs telling you to ask for juice or peanut butter crackers if you're low, but free pastry? Never.

I looked over at the other patient. "Me too," I said. "Type 1 or type 2?"

"Type 2," she said.

I heard Mr. L. start to say something, like, "my wife rarely refuses food for diabetic reasons." I pointed out to him, after we'd left the waiting room, that I can take insulin and pretty much cover whatever I want to eat, while type 2s can't. It was an interesting little interlude.

The actual fetal echo went well-ish. It was about an hour and was an ultrasound focusing just on the kid's heart. Unfortunately, fetuses typically don't enjoy the prodding and poking that comes with an abdominal ultrasound, so while it didn't bother me at all, Baby L flipped and twisted and waved its hands so much that neither a technician nor the actual doctor could get a good look at about half the kid's heart.

"Jesus!" the doc said, after the kid vaulted out of the way yet again. This caused me to laugh, which threw everything off. "Laughing is like an earthquake during an ultrasound," the doc told me. I bit my lips, looked away from the monitor, and held it together until the doc finally gave up on seeing the entire heart that day.

The fifty percent of the heart the doc could see looked normal, which was reassuring. But we're returning to the hospital in another four weeks to see if the kid will give us another good look at its heart. Apparently by week 28 or so, the fetus will be bigger and there will be less room for Baby L to move around like a gymnast. So hopefully we can get past the heart issue by then. If there is a heart problem, the doc told us, a doctor will hear something through a stethoscope after the kid is born, or Mr. L or I will notice the baby isn't gaining weight, or eating or breathing right after birth. For some reason, knowing that half the heart looked fine to the docs makes me think that the other half is likely OK as well. And if it isn't, we'll do what we have to do to get the baby whatever procedure or medication it needs to treat it.

And then it was back across the street to the adult hospital to see the high-risk OB. She had called me earlier in the week with a decision.

Due to my diabetic eye issues, my eye doc didn't want me to give birth with a lot of pushing, which could further mess up the tiny blood vessels in the back of my eyes which are already plenty messed up. So Eye Doc and High Risk OB determined I should either give birth vaginally using forceps or a vacuum, or schedule a planned ceserean section.

Vaginal births with forceps make me think of a kid coming out with clamps on its head (not a good "welcome to the world" journey, in my mind). A vaginal birth with a vacuum, my OB said, is common with non-diabetic births, but because diabetic moms, even in tight control, tend to have larger than usual babies (and the estimated calculations the OB makes pre-birth are usually a little off, either over- and under-weight, because they're estimates, so it's hard to know exactly how big a kid will be at birth). With the potential of bigger babies, OB said, a vacuum can cause shoulder dystocia, which means the kid's shoulder could get stuck behind my pubic bone and could cause the baby some permanent shoulder paralysis or disability should the dystocia situation actually happen.

I definitely do not want that for my kid. So a planned c-section it is.

"Are you OK with that?" the OB asked. "I'd only want you to do an assisted vaginal birth if you were planning to have many children, because repeat c-sections aren't recommended for that." Repeat meaning five, four or three kids. I have never wanted that many kids in my life, and had always thought two was my limit. I figure I'd wait to see what one was like before definitely planning for two. While I have recently entertained short thoughts about three children, birthing four or five myself is most definitely out of the question.

I've read some stuff about the natural birth movement, and recently read (and recommend) a book about the history of childbirth that came out this fall. I know some women feel very strongly about having a vaginal birth because they consider it crucial to the experience of being female. That a cesarean birth is sometimes seen as a procedure that cheats women out of a particular kind of birth experience. And there are many arguments about the high risks of c-sections in the United States and how many low-risk women are given c-sections to speed the process along, when a longer vaginal birth could have been done if the doctors would have just waited it out.

Frankly, with all my medical issues, these are all positions I don't feel I have the luxury to hold. And while I haven't given birth yet, I feel like the experience is just something to have so you can focus on the main event: loving and raising the actual child. It's akin to focusing too much on your wedding day and not thinking as much about the marriage afterward should proceed.

"I want my kid to get out happy, healthy and alive," I told the OB. "And I want to be happy and healthy as well. If a ceserean is the way to do that, then that's fine with me."

So when I met with the OB on Friday (we'd had this conversation over the phone a few days before), she told me that she's in the process of scheduling the c-section in early-to-mid April (about two weeks before my due date) and is coordinating with another doc who can assist because the large abdominal scar from a previous surgery and there may be pesky scar tissue in the way. There's a book about preparing for a c-section I need to track down, and while my estimated due date remains April 24, if I don't go into premature labor for any reason, my kid's birthday is expected to be on April 9, 2007.

I looked up the day in an astrological chart and at least for my astrological sign (which will be the same as the kid's), April 9, 2007 is a good time for new beginnings. That sounds like great circumstances for Baby L to come into the world. And if anyone has any further advice, zodiac-related or otherwise, about having a c-section on April 9, 2007, please do send it my way.

The Crowd Not Followed

An interesting post over at Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters made me think last night. Mel compared infertility to being Jewish. Infertiles know they're in the minority, and often have to deal with the full-on-ness of fertiles who gush about their kids, who presume to understand what infertility is all about. Jews who deal with the relentlessness of Christmas can feel the same way: everyone is celebrating a holiday that frankly has nothing to do with them.

I can relate to both concepts.

And then I started to think about other ways I've felt outside the norm:

Being a longtime type 1 and having to test my blood sugar, or go refill my insulin pump, right in the middle of a fun meal out.

Needing to go to the doctor's office way.Way.WAY more than most of my pregnant (non-D) friends because of my assorted health issues.

Not just being diabetic, but having to deal with an odd abdomninal tumor a few years back when the C word was bandied around. Thankfully, my avocado-sized lump has never returned, but it definitely generated a WTF?! expression every time I told someone new about it.

Having to deal with laser surgery when most of the people I read on the OC seem to be more shorter-term diabetics, or haven't had the complications pop up in the same way.

At work, being one of the few people who live out in the suburbs, away from the coolness of the city, and having a husband and friends I'd rather see on my after-work time than socialize with younger coworkers, who are often not in the same place in their lives as I am. (And therefore, we don't relate all that much to each other).

At home, having a bunch of suburban mom friends, most of whom work, but all who have been moms for awhile now. Until I got pregnant and came out about it, I sat through many conversations about children, about day care, about breastfeeding, where I simply had nothing to say.

Heck, even being nominated for one of the OC awards has made me feel this way. Compared to some of the other bloggers nominated, I don't have the traffic, the comments, or even the time to post as often as some do. In a way, I feel like the indie actress who was nominated for her art-house film going up against high-traffic big studio bloggers. I'm Parker Posey up against the Reese Witherspoons and Julia Robertses of the d-blogging world.

But the truth is, I'd like to think I can revel in my other-ness and enjoy it for what it is. While the annoyance of being different from the crowd has its place, so too does the coolness factor of being different and proud.

Being diabetic for so long means I am used to having my body not work the way it is supposed to, so my bout with infertility, as frustrating and trying as it was, didn't shock me the way I've seen other infertiles write about. I am just supremely thankful that IVF actually worked for me, and pray that it will again in the future. I'm also incredibly grateful I live today, and not ten or twenty or 100 years ago, when insulin pumps or even insulin, as limited as they are, didn't exist.

I have decent doctors who actually find me funny and entertaining and "clinically interesting" so that I can relate to the care they give me, and run with it instead of blindly rely on a doctor to be the person who will save me from it all.

And again, dealing with a potential cancer meant I knew what resources to call on when I got a second opinion. In a high-volume cancer center in another city. And I had the strength and feisty-ness not to be afraid about (yet another) surgery, but instead to face the experience head-on with a kick-ass attitude about it. The email I sent out to my friends and family the day before the surgery was probably one of the best things I ever wrote. And after the surgery, when I was able to walk slowly down the hall and find a computer in the hospital where I could check my email daily, I was able to read dozens of emails each day from people wishing me well and making me laugh. Having visitors that week come and tell me how awesome I looked after abdominal surgery just made me feel stronger. And while I haven't written about this in full before, should any of you ever find yourself in similar shoes, email me about my experiences at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. As much as dealing with a cancer experience sucked, my time there was about as positive as it could have been, and for that I am grateful.

Even working where I do and living where I do, though it's made me feel unlike the crowd many times, still has its benefits. I have a cool-sounding job that seems to impress other people, which childishly gives me a charge even though the downsides of holding that job are long hours and get-rich-never wages. Living in the suburbs gives us the space and quiet and yard that my city-dwelling friends seem to covet, even as I dream about walking the streets of New York and getting more exercise and culture than my suburban ass ever gets anymore.

And even Parker Posey, with her hipster vibe, appeals to me more than Julia Roberts (though I've always liked Reese Witherspoon.) The off-center films, the ones that show in the independent theater on the artsy side of town, always resonated with me more than the big-budget films, with their huge sets and giant opening nights and the endless media coverage. They seem realer, more honest, and somehow more authentic to me than yet another film sequel.

I guess that's what I'm taking away from this (yowza!) long post about infertility and Judaism and pregnancy and working and assorted health issues. Being different lends itself to honesty and being authentic.

And sometimes it just means you do things in the way that's best for you, despite following a path that the crowd doesn't always follow.

Back from Vacation

The Mister and I just returned from a glorious week away in Florida.

We spent every day wallowing in 80-degree heat, chilling out, shopping and swimming. Mr. L's father has a condo in one of those senior communities, so while we were often the youngest people around when we went out to eat, we also stayed overnight in South Beach in Miami.

Mr. L. likes to say he raised the roof in Miami, but considering a late night for us is 10pm and our favorite use of the word "club" is with pastrami on rye, a dance night out wasn't quite our scene.

But except for the night we were in Miami, we had no web access. This meant I've spent a good chunk of this weekend catching up on blogs and reading week-old email. At the same time, I also spent a lot of time last week just relaxing, instead of sitting in front of a computer.

A friend called our trip away a Babymoon, as in "one last trip without kid." It really was. We did whatever we felt like doing for a week. Swimming at 10am. Spending all day in an outlet mall (where I couldn't buy much because, hello! Nothing regular fits me anymore). Having long discussions about potential baby names. Eating, um, bags of Cape Cod potato chips.

Speaking of, my sugars were pretty good. We walked a lot on some days, were slothy on others, but overall, my average for the week only went up a few points. However, my recent A1c was 5.5, my lowest yet, so I didn't sweat the occasional highs.

In fact, eighteen weeks into this pregnancy this week, all I do when I see something higher than my post-prandial reading should be is just test and correct, test and correct. My sugars are usually pretty compliant so that two hours after a reading, the numbers are often right where they should be.

But then it's usually time for another meal.

Back to work this week, my meals will likely become a lot more regimented, which is generally a good thing for my sugars. And just before the holiday this week, I have a follow-up eye doc's appointment to see how the recent lasering affected my non-proliferative retinopathy. I'm hoping to hear that I won't need another round of it.

In the meantime, Mr. L. is already planning where we should live when we retire in twenty or thirty years. I look ahead and think, "yeah, our children should be adults and be out of the house by then" and "I'll have published my books and be self-employed long before then, so a Florida retirement shouldn't affect my ability to hold a job," and "our retirement funds should be making us wealthy older people by then and therefore able to support us in our old age."

I'm pleased that negative thoughts about the future, my health, Mr. Lyrehca's health and the health/issues of our future children haven't (yet) crept into my brain. I don't want to think I'm being a Pollyanna, but rather, someone who has dealt with all sorts of adversity already and therefore not scared of the future because I know how to handle the bad with the good.

Especially if the future holds 80-degree days and no snow shoveling.

On Vacation

Mr. L and I are out of town all this week.

Not much time or access to the web.

Will return next week and catch up on blog reading and updating.

Tag Results: Pickles, Life Coaches, Mah Jong, Swimming, 1984

Thanks, Sarah, for tagging me.

Five things about me you (perhaps) don’t already know:

1. I loved them before I was pregnant, but damn, I crave half-sour pickles like nobody’s business. I buy them six- or eight-at-a-time at a local grocery store that’s a bit pricier than the nearby Stop-and-Shop, but no one else seems to carry these beauties. I’m talking about the fat green pickles sold at the deli counter, not the jarred pickles sold in the refrigerated section.

2. I’ve talked to two life coaches in the past year to try to figure out why I’m not moving forward on different writing projects. Both told me they thought I was motivated and had done a lot of groundwork on both of them, but that I just needed to make finishing them a priority. Sort of like scheduling a date night with your husband so that you can actually have fun, pleasurable sex, I need to set deadlines so I can move these projects ahead. On one hand, I think the concept of having a life coach is sort of cool, just like an athletic coach inspires athletes to do their best. On the other hand, I wonder why I can’t just get motivated enough to finish these damn things on my own. Insight, anyone?

3. I play Mah Jong, an Asian game played with these cool ivory tiles, in a weekly game with a bunch of friends. At first, I wondered if I was turning into my mother, who always played Mah Jong, or like others who have a weekly Bridge or Poker or Canasta game. But since I’ve learned the ropes, I’m hooked. It’s actually fun even though we never play for money. I’m told it’s a lot like playing Gin with cards, though I’ve never played Gin.

4. I swam on my high school (and earlier, my town) swim teams for a few years. This was in the mid-1980s, pre-pump, and I rarely tested my blood sugars. I don't really remember having insulin reactions, but remember eating big snacks before I went to afternoon practices. It’s odd, that I don’t remember having major insulin reactions, but again, this was in the days of long-action (NPH and regular) insulin and my average blood sugars were probably pretty high those days. At the same time, I wasn’t particularly fast or much of a finessed swimmer, so I wonder if my performance was because I wasn’t built to swim for speed, or if my blood sugar control just wasn’t that tight. Probably a combination of both.

5. I won a town-wide eighth-grade speech contest back in 1984. I competed in the “original oratory” category, and wrote an original speech about how the (then) present-day 1984 was similar to the book 1984. I won a plaque and a blue ribbon and performed the speech in front of a big audience (about 40 other eighth graders competed that day). I never did anything quite like that again (no high school debate team for me), but today, I don’t have any trouble speaking before a crowd.

A lot of the d-bloggers I read have already been tagged, so I'll stretch out to some of the Cyclesistas I now read. Tags mean you write a post about five things about yourself. Tags out to:

Violet at Pumplandia
Serenity at Serenity Now!
Gary at My Diabetes CGMS
Heather at Big P and Me
Watson at My Dear Watson

101 Things

Inspired by recent events and Kerri's NYC pedicab experience, I just thought of 101 things to write about:

1. I’ve left my meter in strange places.

2. Once I left it in either a dark NYC cab or in the bathroom of the Nederlander Theatre, where I took Mr. Lyrehca to see Rent while we were still dating long distance (he in Mass, me in NY).

3. I went back to the theatre after we’d headed uptown for dessert, but never found the meter.

4. I have also left my (replacement) meter in the back of a cab when I was heading home to my then-uptown apartment at the end of a night.

5. I had my receipt because I was freelancing full time then and therefore deducting anything I could for tax reasons.

6. I was able to call the NYC Taxi & Limo Commission listed on the taxi receipt, get them to call the cab driver at his home in New Jersey, and he returned my meter (with a vial of insulin and a just-opened bottle of test strips) to me the very next day.

7. “Go on, open it,” he told me. “It’s all there.”

8. “I trust you,” I told him, grateful he’d brought my meter back to midtown where I was working. Besides, why would he want a bottle of insulin and a meter if he wasn’t diabetic?

9. I gave him an extra $20 to thank him.

10. Before I went on my pump, I once took insulin while sitting on a (nearly empty!) subway car because I’d just eaten a container of yogurt and needed to take a shot for it.

11. I didn’t look at anyone, and injected into my arm.

12. A woman sitting a few seats down from me apparently watched. When I was done, she declared that “Jesus loves you.”

13. Since I'm Jewish, I am pretty sure he doesn’t.

14. I used to read the Insulin-Pumpers.org emails religiously.

15. Mr. Lyrehca asked what was so intriguing about them, and asked if we diabetics had a secret code, like a word jumble.

16. “Do you all sit around and talk about your “TERMEs,” meaning meters, he asked.

17. To this day, I don’t read the emails quite so closely, but Mr. L. still calls my meter a Terme.

18. We’re dorks like that.

19. I thought of this last night after I got home from work and couldn’t find my keys in my purse, so I dumped the whole thing out on the floor of our back hallway.

20. There were the keys.

21. A bit later, I couldn’t find my meter, and although I searched the back hallway for it, I didn’t see it.

22. I wondered if I’d have to call the local commuter rail service to ask if they’d found my meter.

23. I shuddered.

24. I looked one last time and found the dark meter case behind the back door, shrouded in darkness.

25. Our back hallway doesn’t have a light, if you haven’t guessed.

26. We honeymooned in Hawaii, and the first night there, I thought I hadn’t packed half my supplies for my insulin pump.

27. I searched the bottom of the bag I was *sure* I’d packed them in, and couldn’t find them.

28. I called Minimed’s customer service and begged them to send me the supplies directly to the hotel in Hawaii that day.

29. They did so.

30. After they arrived, Mr. L. looked in the bag and saw a second smaller bag, also a dark color, jammed into the bottom of the larger bag I’d frantically searched.

31. Voila! There were my supplies I was so sure I didn’t have.

32. Honestly, I was finally glad I had more supplies I needed, rather than less.

33. I mean, it’s not like I wouldn’t use them up eventually.

34. Which I did.

35. And when I called Minimed to re-order the next batch of pump supplies, do I have to tell you where they were sent?

36. That’s right. To the Hawaiian hotel.

37. Where we definitely do not live.

38. Sadly.

39. That place was awesome.

40. They eventually shipped my supplies to our frigid Massachusetts home.

41. The frigid home is living up to its name, since I prefer things “tropical” and the Mister prefers them “bracing.”

42. My New York apartment used to be tropical without effort.

43. It was in a building where they turned up the heat, without fail, from October to May.

44. I didn’t have a thermostat, so I often walked around the house in a t-shirt and my underwear after I got home.

45. I didn’t pay extra for heat.

46. Our current frigid home doesn’t work that way.

47. We most definitely pay for heat.

48. Hence, the bracing effect.

49. It’s the first day of fall, officially.

50. This means we should probably close our windows.

51. The windows the Mister likes to keep open.

52. Our house has something called “a whole house fan.”

53. You turn it on and a giant fan built into the ceiling starts to whir.

54. When the windows are open, it will suck cool air from outside into the house.

55. It was nice in the summer, and at night, we didn’t need air conditioning if there was a breeze outside.

56. Now that’s it’s September, it’s contributed to the bracing effect.

57. I love summer, love wearing shorts and sandals, and sincerely miss it when it’s over.

58. I hate being cold.

59. Fall to me just means the beginning of nine months of cold.

60. Should this pregnancy continue on in a healthy and positive way, it means our kid will be born in the spring.

61. And I’ll have the summer to hang out with the kid.

62. If I take a full 12 weeks of maternity leave.

63. I’m undecided about whether I’ll return to my job.

64. I love working, and love making money.

65. But I have an hour commute each way and with a young baby at home, will I want to spend that much time away from her/him?

66. Particularly when it was such an effort to get pregnant in the first place.

67. While some of you have charmingly called this fetus “Baby L” or “Baby Lyrehca,” the Mister continues to call the baby “Hod.”

68. I continue to point out that the name is a disaster in the making.

69. Odd and fraud rhyme with Hod.

70. So does God, Mr. L. retorts.

71. “What if Hod was watching us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a baby on the bus, trying to make his way home,” Mr. L. actually sung to me recently.

72. I couldn’t stop laughing. (See 18.)

73. We couldn’t remember the singer who sang that song.

74. Then I remembered: Joan Osbourne.

75. She had a fake nose ring and curly blond hair in the video for the song.

76. Where is she now?

77. Thank you for your nice comments about Mr. L’s convalescence.

78. We saw a local doc on Tuesday, who talked to us for two minutes, then said the Mister had a bulging disk in his back and needed surgery ASAP.

79. Like, next week.

80. Being medical snobs, we want to get a second opinion from a bigger-city hospital where we think the doctors are better.

81. Trying to get an appointment with one has been a production.

82. I am pushy and unyielding when it comes to getting my way into a doctor’s appointment.

83. Mr. L. is less so.

84. He refers to me as his pushy wife who is much better at these things than he is.

85. I had to call his primary care’s office, the preferred specialist’s office, and calmly explain, yet again, that I was calling because my husband was in agony, on drugs, and needed to get a surgical second opinion ASAP.

86. Doctor’s offices tend to remember when I call them.

87. The latest is that I’ll get a call tomorrow telling me exactly when next week the Mister can be seen.

88. The Mister thanked me for doing all the legwork, and said he would be very grateful when it was all over.

89. I told him I could be thanked properly if we could paint our kitchen a more interesting color and replace the horrific country-klatch wallpaper that currently hangs there.

90. I am partial to bright colors, particularly on the walls of my living space.

91. My New York apartment had a turquoise living room, a bright green bathroom, and a bedroom with two walls painted fuchsia, and two painted hot pink.

92. I loved it.

93. I called it the Rainbow Treehouse, because it was on the seventh floor.

94. Our current house does not resemble a rainbow at all.

95. The Mister’s favorite color, before he met me, was beige.

96. We painted a few rooms a few colors “between beige and bizarre” of the apartment we first lived together in.

97. I’m thinking that if we have to make one of our current rooms into a nursery, it’ll necessitate painting that room.

98. And the bathroom next door, which I’d like to paint the same shade of green as my last bathroom.

99. The kitchen would be gorgeous with a light green. Or a yellow. Or a blue.

100. I’ll get my surburban rainbow house someday, I swear.

101. And the Mister will love it.

The Wait and the Water

Unlike other blogs I've been reading, I have not been anxiously peeing on pregnancy tests this weekend to see if I can figure out I'm pregnant before my official doctor's pregnancy test this week.

Why tempt fate? Why get excited by a false negative? Or a false positive?

Or throw away money at CVS to go buy the tests?

So this week is it...I'll learn if our first IVF venture was successful or not.

I just made a list (in my insomniac state; it's 5am over here) about what I'll do next if the test is positive, or negative. If negative, start working out hard every day to take off the ten pounds I've put on since I've started trying to conceive and call the fertility doc to figure out what to do next. If postive: call my army of docs and figure out when to get the eyes lasered, when to see the endo next, when to see the high risk ob/gyn, and oh yeah, maybe read a few pregnancy books so I can overanalyze every bodily feeling.

Speaking of, despite some odd twitchings here and there, and another story I'll get to in a moment (and I apologize now for the TMI part of this post), I really don't feel all that different. Occasionally, I forget and pick up something not-all-that-heavy, and I get a little abdominal ache. I don't know whether to cheer silently and think, "that's our embryo! You grow!" or to freak out and think "Shit! Did something bad just happen?"

And diabetic-wise, sugars have been OK except for a few weird highs, along with some more lows because I've gone back to correcting highs (i.e., more than 140 an hour after a meal) with what I think is my own mental calculation of Insulin On Board (I still have a Minimed 508 pump), only to go low and snarf Life Savers a few hours later. And eating a shitload of Trader Joe's chocolate yesterday certainly helped contributute to my current insomniac state (I corrected a 227 at 3:30am). Ugh. Is the embryo, if it's still in there, choking on too much sugar? Did that chocolate craving just make my future kid's abdomen a little bit rounder? Just increase the kid's chances of being diabetic by 1 percent?

Working long hours all last week helped keep my mind off of things within, although frankly, the hours of my job are really annoying and make me resentful. I love the essence of what I do, the field I'm in, and the job title/publication of where I work, but working 'til 8, 10, or 11pm one week every month is truly getting old. My mother worries it's stressful to do so, but I'm not stressed because I know it's going to happen every month. I just wish I could make more money working out of my own home, being my own boss. (Send your lucrative freelance writing/editing/research assignments my way).

On Friday, however, I got some news. Working at 7:30pm, trying to finish up a very long week, my eyes blurring from reading some copy in a typeface that frankly, was hard to read, yet chosen by a pompous art director, I picked up the phone to hear Mr. Lyrehca's voice.

"We have a problem."

"What?"

Turns out it was a toilet on the second floor of our house. A toilet that, yes, had gotten clogged earlier in the day by someone who wondered if constipation was a positive sign of an early pregnancy. Although the toilet looked OK when that someone left for work in the morning, the toilet instead somehow leaked all day. Water flowed from the second-floor bathroom, to the first floor kitchen table (with all sorts of paperwork on it) to the basement and garage. For 12 hours.

Nice.

I finally got out of work (my boss seemed sympathetic when I told her and added "I hope we don't need a whole new kitchen") and got home around 8:30.

Driving home, I had visions of Hurricane Katrina floating through our house. Would we need to spend thousands of our (IVF!) money to renovate the kitchen? Was the bathroom OK? Was sewage floating through the house? Did I need to call in, among many other high-priced professionals, a feng shui expert to figure out why bad things were happening?

My husband is a handy man. Not officially. But we happen to own a wet-vac (yes, a vacuum for water), and he went to work sucking up the wetness on three floors. By the time I got home, I didn't see any water on the floor anywhere. Soggy papers, a water-logged library book and upholstered kitchen chair, and some paint bubbles all over the kitchen ceiling and walls, yes. Two feet of water, no.

Turns out my visions of Katrina were overblown, and that there never was two feet of water, but just wetness on three floors. And after we called in a flood disaster company to assess the scene at 11pm Friday night, they agreed that Mr. Lyrehca had done a great job cleaning up the (sewage-free, they confirmed) water, and that they didn't think they needed to break through the kitchen ceiling to see if there was any mildew. Instead, they left three humming fans and dehumidifiers, which have been blowing and drying things out all weekend.

As I pointed out to Mr. Lyrehca, while having a flood is annoying, a waste of our savings, and an effin' hassle, it was not what I pictured when he called and said we have a problem.

Nobody broke into our house and stole precious irreplacable things. We did not lose anything in a fire. No one died. As of right now, I can still think that I might be pregnant.

In the big picture, it was just a little water, water everywhere. Right now, there are more important things to worry about.

IVF, Week One

It's been a busy week filled with freelance jobs, my regular job, Mr. Lyrehca's company picnic yesterday, a hair color change, and oh yeah, Lupron shots.

Lupron has been a minor ripple, to be honest. It's just like taking a shot of 10 units of insulin, except that when I flick an air bubble out of the vial and notice a bit of medication bubble out of the needle onto the floor, I think, "Oy, that was expensive!"

Mr. Lyrehca has been very involved in the Lupron administering. Not in giving the actual shot, of course. But telling me to "wipe the top of the bottle with alcohol. Then withdraw 15 units of Lupron and return five units to the vial so that no air bubbles are in the syringe channel."

"Honey, I've been taking insulin for three decades. I know what to do."

"But this is different. Did you use a second alcohol swab to wipe your skin like the nurse showed you?"

Um, no.

And for any fellow diabetics out there, shooting Lupron is just like shooting insulin. The shots have to be taken at the same time each day, or within an hour of each other, and I've been on top of that. I've had a bruise here or there appear, but nothing that worries me. And despite what pops up on Google when you type in "Lupron and side effects," I haven't noticed anything different since taking it.

(Actually, I'm lying. Last week, I had some weird rash on my ankles, of all places. A quick call to the IVF clinic confirmed that my red ankles were probably heat rash. A Lupron-related rash would be more all over the bod. And a week later, the ankles look fine.)

In fact, considering the high humidity and temps over the past week, I've been more concerned that maybe the Lupron isn't working right. Last weekend, we went to a ginormous antique show/flea market and walked around in the heat for hours each day.

I carried the Lupron vial in my purse on Sunday, because by then we'd already checked out of the motel room where we were staying. I've been refrigerating the Lupron while at home, and keeping it in the meat-locker air conditioned motel room, but had to stash it in my purse (instead of in my hot suitcase in the hot car) as we searched for fun stuff to buy. (I like heart-shaped items and scored an awesome rhinestone-studded flower-shaped belt buckle; the Mister collects vintage telephones and picked up a cool U.S. military compass.)

So when I returned to work this week, I called the pharmacy where I ordered the fertility stuff and asked if the heat would bother them. Besides the Lupron, they sent the stimulation drugs (which have lived in my fridge for the past week and a half, per instructions), and two other meds that didn't have to be cooled (so they've been in the cardboard box they arrived in, in my unairconditioned-during-the-day kitchen).

The pharmacy assured me that everything should be fine, so I'm going to release my Type A tendency to think otherwise ("But it's been 90 degrees for part of this week. Are you sure the Lupron was OK inside my heavy blue leather pocketbook (now adorned on the strap with said rhinestone flower)?" and just see what happens.

The latest fertility event to happen is that my period arrived yesterday and today, right on schedule. While this has caused some negative energy in the past (see the "meltdown when the second IUI didn't work" post, or the "resignation, there it is again" past posts), the month-of-first-IVF-cycle period says to me "OK, we're moving on to the stimulation drugs. Here are the big guns."

So now I reduce my Lupron dose in half and also start Gonal-F, which hypes up my follicles to hopefully make some decent numbers of (and just plain decent) eggs. So while I'm annoyed about the extra trip to CVS to buy some tampons to replenish my stock (oy, I really thought I'd be done with those for awhile by now, months ago, when I bought what I thought was my last box of multiple-sized tampons), I'm pleased that things are moving along, IVF-drug-wise.

Once the egg stimulation begins, I'm not supposed to do things like train for a marathon or color my hair. While the training is something I wish I could say I'd miss (I haven't worked out seriously in ages, besides walking), coloring my hair will be a major life change. I've been enhancing my natural color, with various degrees of bleach, for a solid 20 years. As of Thursday, I was a typical over-processed, over-highlighted, roots-come-in-like-clockwork-every-three-months light blonde. And while I could see the hair colorists' concern that it was too light, too trashy-looking, too one-dimensional, and too drying for my hair, I just loved the look.

But on Thursday, I went back to my natural eyebrow hair color, which in the stylist's vernacular, is a "dark blonde." To me, it's just dark. Happily, no one's asked why, or even seemed to notice much of a change (which says that my natural hair color isn't all that dark, I guess) and Mr. Lyrehca said he liked it. The whole idea, though, is that should I actually get pregnant, I can avoid the whole should-I-or-shouldn't-I debate about hair color during pregnancy. Some docs forbid it, some say it's OK. Personally, I'd like to know how healthy Gwen Stefani's kid is, because I certainly didn't see her showing any dark roots over the last year.

Otherwise, this week was a nice blend of light work at my day job, and heavy freelance work from my side jobs. Oh, and my husband's company picnic yesterday, which I took a day off from work to attend. It was fine, and everyone was super friendly. One guy, though, who claims the Mister is like a grandson to him, came by to chat and wanted to know when we'd have "some crying around the office." I played dumb, and the Mister was similarly vague.

"You know, some little feet crawling around here," the guy pressed.

"Um, like cockroaches or mice?" I asked. "Hopefully not anytime soon."

He went on to talk about someone he knew who had adopted three kids. Which I appreciated. But at the same time, I certainly didn't need to get into a discussion about why we don't have children yet.

In the midst of all this, I was very clearly feeling some annoying cramps coming on, so I knew that the period was on its way. But because of all the IVF hoops, I knew that Advil wasn't recommended. So the Mister and I found a nurse at his company picnic who had access to Tylenol.

"I'm getting my period," I confided. "Do you have any Tylenol?"

"What about Advil?"

"I can't take it."

"Why not?"

"I'm diabetic and Advil's really hard on the kidneys," I purred. Who knew where that came from, or how I managed to say it without tripping over the real reason I was avoiding Advil, but I managed to get the nurse to give me the Tylenol. Blessedly, those cramps were history.

And now it's the weekend, where I actually have a free morning to blog without worrying someone's monitoring my computer at work. So enough about me; how are all of you?

Oh! I forgot about this because it's been up for a few days already, but Jenni at ChronicBabe featured my recent IVF post on Grand Rounds earlier this week, along with a few other diabetes blogging babes. Go check it out.

Midnight Thinking

Coming out of a several-week stretch of heavy workloads and deadlines, I'm just about out of the woods this weekend. This is the busiest time of the year for the publication I work at, and finishing everything up is like emerging from a long tunnel.

As a result, I haven't blogged and I've noticed my meter averages creeping up. I'm seeing the endo again this Friday and am scheduled to start the IVF drugs this week. While I'm not worried, I'm also not waiting another six weeks if my A1cs are above 7. They've been between 5.6 and the low sixes for more than a year so I can get back on track when I need to.

On Thursday, I left work after midnight and walked to the garage where I'd parked my car. I was talking to the Mister on my cell when I noticed the locked doors.

Look at that--the garage closed at midnight, and my nice silver car was locked inside. I was stranded.

Oy.

The Mister offered to drive into the city to pick me up, but he'd already been fast asleep when I called him to tell him I was coming home. I told him I'd call him back.

Public transit stops running around 12:30 am, so that wasn't going to help me get anywhere closer to the suburb where we live.

I called my parents, who live 15 minutes away from my office, and brokered a deal: I'd cab to their house, borrow my father's car and drive home, then return it early Friday morning and take the subway back to work. My mother was OK with this, but worried.

"You're going to take a cab this late at night? That's so stressful!"

"I've taken many cabs at night when I lived in New York and you never knew. I'm not stressed at all. I'll be fine."

And I was.

That night, I crawled into bed next to the Mister around 1:15. He barely remembered I was there.

The next morning, since I left the house much earlier than I ususally do, I got to my parents' place around 8:15. I walked to the subway, saw that I'd just missed it, and ended up walking to work. It reminded me of being back in New York again, and I adjusted my insulin dose accordingly. Weirdly, my sugar was super high that morning, for no other reason that getting less sleep than usual.

I got into work around 9:15, a solid fifteen minutes earlier than usual. I was pleased about getting a good hour of exercise, too.

And when I picked up my car at the end of Friday night, they didn't even charge me for an extra night.

Stuff like this, I feel, happens all the time. If it's not the garage closing at midnight, it's the traffic slowing you down and delaying you, or the subway is late, or someone doesn't do what they said they were going to do and it affects your entire day.

But rather than get frustrated over these simple issues, I was able to figure out a plan on how to get home, felt level-headed about it, and things went accordingly.

Telling my story at work the next day, a few people were like "Wow, that's a story." The Mister told all his buddies at work about my night, too.

But for whatever reason, maybe from years of living with health issues, it didn't faze me much and I was able to move on to Plan B and make it happen.

Has living with diabetes, or infertility, or cancer, or *whatever*, helped give you a clearer head when faced with life's smaller challenges?

I mean, really, if I can manage the mental gymnastics of life with diabetes, or the disappointments of infertility, or living through a cancer diagnosis, who can get worried about how to get home after midnight?

Return of the Meme and Other Goings-On

Several weeks ago, I responded to Shannon's question meme.

Shannon and Flmgodog responded, saying they wanted to be questioned in return.

I'm not so prompt with my end, but here they are, five questions back. Go 'head and post your answers.

1. Vanilla or chocolate? And if chocolate, what kind (milk, dark or white)?

2. In five years, what do you want to look back on and be most excited by?

3. What's your favorite season?

4. In 30 years, will you go to your high school reunion? Your college reunion? An elementary school reunion? Why or why not?

5. How have you been affected as a result of keeping a blog?

I know I've been affected by NOT blogging these past two weeks. Work deadlines, nicer weather, and taking advantage of sleeping in a bit later most mornings have cut into the time I'd typically be blogging. I tend to write in the early morning, or on weekends, and this past weekend I took advantage of the sun and hung out outside and gardened. Being a city girl, I've never had the opportunity to really worry about a yard. But the house the Mister and I bought has this gorgeous landscaped backyard, so I feel an obligation to keep it looking nice so it doesn't get overrun with weeds and leaves and become the house on the block everyone sniffs at.

And yes, we could hire a gardener to manage the upkeep, but once you own a house, there's always something else you could be spending money on. At least for now, I can manage the weed pulling and shrub pruning, while the Mister mows and fertilizes the grass. I did, however, just write a check to have someone come and prune and treat our trees for pests. Trees. I certainly never thought about maintaining trees when I lived in New York.

In a high school way, I've also noticed that some bloggers who have started blogging around the same time I did have way higher numbers on their stat counters. Is it because I don't update more regularly? Should I branch out to other readers besides diabetics? Comment on many more blogs than I already do? What's the secret?

And finally, in a topic that's actually germane to this blog's focus, the Mister and I held off on jumping on the IVF train. This month, and I apologize for too much information in advance (WARNING: BODILY FUNCTION TALK AHEAD. AVERT YOUR EYES IF SQUEAMISH), I noticed the most ovulatory cervical mucous I've seen in years. Like, honest-to-goodness egg white goop. In truckloads.

In the seven or so months that I've been charting my temperatures to see when I ovulate, I've rarely or never noticed any change in the mucous production downstairs, which is typically a key sign to figuring out when you ovulate. When I saw it a few days ago, I was like "Honey, we have to have sex right NOW!"

However, since I'd been planning to start an IVF cycle this month, we were instructed to avoid sex entirely this month and instead start taking Lupron, a drug that kicks off a two month process of drugs and egg formation and retrieval. The IVF regimen starts on day 21 of the cycle (pretty late in the game compared to ovulation and typical fucking for fertility's sake, which happen about a week before).

With the mucous truckload, I wondered if maybe this month I was actually fertile and producing an egg the way my body was supposed to. In months past, I've been told I've ovulated just fine, and for two months I took Clomid which was supposed to amp up egg production. But with this extra goop, I thought, "Maybe this is the month my body is actually behaving and producing a top quality egg. Let's not waste this opportunity."

So with many calls to my reproductive endo, we cancelled the IVF cycle and scheduled an unmedicated IUI instead. So in addition to our own canoodling this month, we tried the turkey baster method as well just for an added bonus.

And thus begins another two week wait.

But if the pregnancy test is negative, there's no more postponing the IVF stuff any more.

Yowza, who knew I had so much to say. Trees? Goop? I gotta blog more often.

Meme Answers... A Few Weeks Later

Weeks ago, I responded on Shannon's Interview meme that I wanted to be interviewed. Life got in the way, but here are my answers.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Being loved. Laughing a lot. Being respected and honored for my writing. Spending time with cherished family and friends. A day filled with lots of reading, lots of delicious food, and a good cardio/strength/Pilates workout afterwards to balance things out.

Then again, my wedding was a lot of fun and I didn't work out or read much that day.

2. What is your greatest fear?

I used to say, before I lived in New York, that I feared crime and cockroaches.

Now, thankfully having avoided one and conquered the other, I'd say dying before I've done everything I want to do. And dying in a particularly horrible way. At an age I consider 'way too young. This makes me hope that I will finish writing the books I want to write before I can't, and that if I have children, I'll see them grow up long before I die.

3. Which historical figure do you most identify with?

Hmmm. I don't have a ready-made answer, not being a strong reader of history. Certain figures I've admired, certainly, particularly for their fight for women's rights: Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, and Betty Friedan all come to mind. Particularly Friedan: I read The Feminine Mystique at 15 and thought it was brilliant.

4. Which living person do you most admire?

There are plenty of people to mention, but I'd say my mother, Lyrehca's Ma, for being a tough broad at times when necessary and a genuine softie at others. She's made me who I am today.

5. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

I procrastinate on some things, like writing the books I have thought about for years. While I think I'm ambitious and an achiever, it's taken me a long time to do something I've always dreamed of doing. I'd like to think, though, that all this time passing has helped marinate and shape some of my thoughts so that when they actually come out on paper, they'll be better than they were when I first conceived them, years before.

OK, didn't mean to end on a down note. I think this Interview meme's time may have passed, but if you're up for being interviewed, let me know and I'll think up some happier questions to ask.

On to month eight

So after my awesome New York weekend, I returned home to take a pregnancy blood test at the doc's office.

And it's negative.

Which I'm OK about. Although it would have been cool to find out I was pregnant that day; it was the Mister's and my 1.5 year wedding anniversary. The Mister was upset and quiet when I told him. But we're gearing (heck, I'm gearing) up for round two. Waiting for the period to start.

But it doesn't. Instead (and I apologize for TMI right here), I've had a few days of spotting. Which I never have. And it's not bright red-the-period's-here-spotting. Which makes me wonder what's up down there, anyway.

I'm going into the doc's office tomorrow for more blood work. While they say the blood pregnancy tests don't give false negatives, I can't explain the four days of spotting. They say Clomid doesn't cause spotting, but I've been super regular before and I don't know what this stuff is. They're also testing my estradiol and progesterone levels to figure out what day of my cycle I'm on, so I can figure out when to take Clomid for for round two. The nurse today said nothing is seriously wrong, so I shouldn't worry about anything.

Years ago, in between relationships, and tired of the countless blind dates I went on, I thought seriously that perhaps I would never get married, never meet the future Mr. Lyrehca, and that I would just be a single lady. This took me some time to think through, but I figured that perhaps that was the way life was meant to be for me. I loved my independence, loved my NY life, and thought maybe this was it.

I could accept the concept. I was OK with it.

It was also short-lived. I met Mr. Lyrehca not long after, and--look at that--actually fell in love with him, and him me. After some more soul searching, I left New York to move in with him and we ultimately got engaged and got married. And here we are. I'm not a single lady anymore, and I really love and appreciate all that I have now: the Mister, our marriage, our life together, our house, and so on.

So when I read people say they're sorry I'm not pregnant this month, or that they're waiting for me to make an announcement, I've thought, maybe this is a similar road. Maybe I won't end up having a biological baby. We could adopt. We could talk about remaining child-free. I'd probably be able to live with and accept whatever life dealt me. I certainly have with everything else so far.

But then my acupuncturist tells me that he thinks I'm healthy and he thinks I'll be able to conceive. My reproductive endocrinologist says the same thing, that I'm young and that there's plenty more assisted technology to try before I contact an adoption agency. I know several women older than me who have conceived naturally even after they did repeated and expensive rounds of IUI and IVF.

So while this infertility interlude is where we are right now, maybe change is just ahead, just as Mr. Lyrehca was when I thought I'd always be single. And maybe all this life experience will somehow let me really appreciate what I will eventually find or be down the road. Maybe I'll be a biological mom or an adoptive mom, or the coolest auntie around (heck, I already AM). Whatever happens, I want to be able to fully appreciate it, no matter where I eventually end up.

Big City Reunion Love

I was in New York these past few days for my grad school reunion and had such a fun time being back there. I will always consider myself a savvy New Yorker even after moving elsewhere.

While there, I caught up with a lot of classmates as well as other friends and former colleagues over lunches and coffees. The Mister stayed home because he doesn't have the same NYC-love I have, so I was able to run around and see friends and stay out late and have a great time.

I lived in NY for many years, and know my way around. However, this didn't matter to my mother, a longtime worrier from the best of the Jewish mothers.

"You're doing a lot while you're there," she said. "How will you get around? Will you promise me to take cabs everywhere?"

"Uh, sure, Mom."

"You're going to take the subway, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I am."

"Please be careful. Did you bring good shoes to walk in?"

"I lived here for eight years. Of course I did."

Despite all that walking, my blood sugars weren't so great. I ate fairly well and despite going to a different cocktail reception or late night party and drinking club soda every time, I still saw some weird highs. I'd thought with the extra exercise, things would have been smoother but no. I ate fairly well, as well, but the one New York bagel I allowed myself really did a job on the blood sugar.

The reunion itself was terrific: I caught up with a lot of people I'd lost touch with. My classmates on the whole are a funny, sharp, intelligent bunch, and most people are doing well today. I'm really glad I went to grad school where and when I did.

Random thoughts: Went to a blogging seminar and was one of a handful of people in the audience of more than 100 that actually blogs.

Learned that my posts are typically longer than most blog entries.

Learned about monetizing content, i.e., how to get some cash for blogging.

Talked about my book proposal about the t1 pregnancy guidebook to a few people, none diabetic but all writers. People seemed interested in the project's viability, gave some great insight, and wished me well.

Learned (not at the reunion, but while talking to some diabetic friends who still live in NY) that taking Clomid might explain why I needed to buy bigger bra sizes and that my recent weight gain might be due to hormones and not necessarily eating.

While I'm sorry my blood sugars weren't a little more predictable (as they are while I'm home and at work), it was nice to get myself out of my usual routine of thinking mostly about pregnancy and blood sugars and eating the same thing every day. For these past few days, I could talk about my career, or my recent marriage, or my move out of New York, with people and diabetes wasn't the only thing people associated me with (which is how I feel sometimes when back home in my everyday, trying-to-get-pregnant life).

One friend, over dinner, asked me how my diabetes was doing, and I was touched that he asked. I kept all the pregnancy issues out of the conversation and just said things were fine, but I was impressed he remembered. Then *I* remembered I'd once had an insulin reaction while visiting him back in the day and had gone clawing through his kitchen cabinets looking for sugar cubes (this was before my days of always carrying LifeSavers with me and testing every two hours), so I later made the connection. Still, it was nice to be asked.

And finally, when I returned home to the Mister, he told me he'd missed me terribly and was so glad I was home. It made me realize that while I love NY, and had loved my grad school and single years, they are all a chapter from my past that makes me appreciate what I have at home even more: a great husband, a thriving career, a quiet and spacious living space, and support while getting through the challenges of diabetes, infertility and hopefully pregnancy.

Cynical?

I went out with a friend last night who I don't talk to all that often, but we were roommates in college and I consider her one of my longtime pals. She's a pediatrician and a mom of two small children.

I was a bit surprised by something she said. She told me this story about a six-year old in her medical practice who came in after starting Zyrtec, an allergy drug. The mom noticed the kid was drinking more, and said the kid's mouth was always dry. But the kid wasn't peeing more and my friend had thought the dry mouth was a side effect of the new medication. (She was not the doctor on call when this kid came in.)

Instead, the kid had to provide a urine sample and couldn't do it in the doctor's office, so the mother went home and brought a sample back to the office. It was four-plus, which I remember as bright orange from my urine testing days. That afternoon, the mom was called and the kid brought to the hospital. The kid's blood sugar was 450.

"Can you imagine?" my friend asked. "The poor mother. She was out running errands. And she had to turn around and go straight to the hospital."

"Of course I can imagine," I replied. "I lived it. My mother lived it." Perhaps I was surprised by her surprise.

My friend talked about her older son, who's three and a handful. "I really hope nothing like that ever happens to (my oldest)," she said. "I can't even get him to brush his teeth."

"If it happens, you'd learn to deal with it," I responded. "And frankly, it might not be diabetes. There's all sorts of things that can happen. Cancer. Asthma. Epilepsy."

I continued.

"Maybe this sounds cynical, but personal illness doesn't really faze me anymore," I said. "What I've learned over the years is that something happens to everyone."

"Do you feel like you're diabetic, so your thing has happened to you," she asked.

"Oh no," I said. "I was treated for cancer a few years ago."

"Wasn't that benign?" she asked.

"Mostly, but it didn't matter. I still have follow-up CT scans to make sure nothing's returned." And I still have to deal with infertility issues that have nothing to do with either the diabetes or the cancer thing.

But dealing with constant doctor's appointments (saw the eye doc last week, the endo yesterday, and the infertility doc today. It's a wonder I get any work done!) has made me accept that I will always have a lot of medical intervention. My endo and I talked more about laser eye treatment yesterday and I was much calmer.

"The benefits of laser eye treatment far outweigh the risks of not ever having it done if your eyes need it," was her sound-bite, takeaway message.

Medical intervention doesn't scare me. For years, I was surprised when I went to say, the regular gynecologist for a Pap smear, and my results were normal. "Are you sure?" I once asked. "I'm just not used to hearing "normal" when I go to a doctor's office."

And sure, one could argue that most people don't get chronic conditions or freak tumors growing in their stomachs. The majority of people have children when they want to.

But, to paraphrase REM, everybody hurts sometimes. Maybe it's bad parenting or unsupportive relatives or a crap job that sucks you dry. Maybe it's a car accident or alcohol or jealousy or bad self esteem or poverty or the death of a loved one. Or whatever. Fill in your own blank.

The thing is not to get dragged down by these circumstances and live your best life (to steal from another pop culture reference, Cheryl Richardson) in spite of all the challenges you are dealt.

I'd like to think that doesn't come across as cynical, but more wise.

And even my pediatrician mommy friend has her challenges: besides the fact that her oldest is a handful and some of her relatives drive her crazy, my friend has no sense of direction. She gets lost easily and doesn't trust GPS systems in cars. I may have to prick my finger every two hours, but I can get from Boston to New York blindfolded. And back again.

We all have our strengths, too.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

I'm super excited that Jenni from
Chronic Babe has featured me and my site in her Lady Bloggers column.

Jenni does a terrific job writing upbeat, snappy columns and comments on news about all kinds of chronic illness, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

What is Normal?

Sometimes I never really think much about what I'm doing, because I figure it's normal for me. But I forget that my normal is different from a lot of other people's normal.

In the past two days, three different people at work have asked if I had a nifty beeper as they saw me bolusing. And three times, I've explained, "no, I'm diabetic, and this is my insulin pump."

These three people (the top boss at work, my immediate boss, and an acquaintance) all seemed to think the pump was cool. "Do you write down all the math for when you're figuring out what to eat?" the big boss asked. "Nah, I do it all in my head," I said.

Another coworker, who has heard me explain the details of diabetes, said once that it was hard to fathom how someone she worked with, who is dealing with the same work issues as she is, is also dealing with a whole other set of concerns all the time.

"Diabetes is like the full-time job that never goes away," I said. "Weekends, 24-7. It's always there."

But while diabetes may be the job, I am clearly the boss. The key, I've found, is to streamline as much about the condition as I can, particularly in trying to maintain very tight control while trying to get pregnant. This is why I eat pretty healthily, and try to sneak exercise into my day when I can (I take a lot of stairs), and why I carry my meter with me always and test often.

(Heck, it's 9am on Saturday and I've already tested three times today and bolused twice. The blood sugars have been all in range so far. And I haven't even eaten breakfast yet.)

But not everything runs so smoothly all the time. Earlier this week, while talking to my therapist, I mentioned that when I get to the gym, I like to do 60 minutes of cardio, but that I've had to stop mid-workout because my blood sugar was--look at that!--37.

She seemed impressed that I could maintain an hour on the elliptical trainer, and of course was concerned about the low (She's diabetic herself). Sure, sure, I was low, and great, I'm glad 60 minutes impresses someone. I'm usually more annoyed that I have to stop the workout and eat some Lifesavers (that day, it was the Butter Rum flavor, which I despise, but it was the only pack I had brought to the gym with me). I'm also annoyed that I don't have the time to do the 60-minute elliptical drill every day. These extra 25 pounds would be history if I could.

I'm reminded of something I learned years ago, with a different therapist (God, I sound like a mess, don't I? But I think all this therapy has given me a lot of insight and self-acceptance): The definition of what one can handle changes all the time, and with insight, a person can learn to live with a lot of things that she might have originally thought impossible.

That concept gets me through a lot in life.

Even the nasty taste of Butter Rum Lifesavers while treating a 37.

Been Tagged Again

Four jobs I've had:

--ghostwriter for an advice column on a website for teen girls. (Loved this job.)
--police reporter for a suburban newspaper. (Fires and car crashes, yes. Murders and tangled love triangles gone awry, not so much.)
--fact checker for Cosmopolitan magazine. (I've talked to J.Lo's hairdresser and renowned sex therapists all in the same day.)
--research editor for a magazine (no more details; I'm not ready to out myself just yet.)

Three movies I've loved:

--Heathers
--Exotica
--The Truman Show

Four books I love:

--anything by Jennifer Weiner, but Good In Bed and Little Earthquakes in particular
--Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
--The Outsiders, by SE Hinton
--The Outside World, by Tova Mirvis

(Weird theme going on there. It's a coincidence, I swear. I know I fit in somewhere...)

Some places I've lived:

--New York (the Big Apple and beyond)
--Massachusetts (the Hub and the 'burbs)

Some places I've visited:

--Hawaii (Oahu, Maui, Kauai)
--London
--Shorter, Alabama (really, it's essentially a truck stop and a Motel 6 off the highway. But cool name, huh?)
--Mexican Hat, Utah (another blink-and-you'll-miss-it place with a nifty name. But why didn't they call it Sombrero?)

TV I like:

--What Not To Wear
--Grey's Anatomy
--Six Feet Under
--Sex and the City

Four cuisines I love (why limit it to just four foods?)

--Vietnamese
--Cambodian
--Sushi
--Really salty Jewish deli with half sour pickles.

Four sites I check out daily

--My own blog (yeah, I admit it.)
--Mediabistro
--The Diabetes OC
--Springmail and Gmail

Who's up next? Go 'head, Art-Sweet!

Tagged!

I've been tagged by Kassie over at Noncompliant (such a terrific title for a D-Blog, by the way.) Since I'm new to this whole blogging scene, as you may be too, I understand that people within the diabetes blogging community randomly tag one another to spout out five random facts.

On that note, here's my five, plus one.

1. I am a magazine whore. I read because my life depends on it. My favorite thing about where I live is the proximity to my local library. Free books and periodicals...mmmm. Sweeter than candy.

2. I'm in the middle of writing a novel with a diabetic protagonist. Sort of a diabetichick lit. Bridget Jones with a pump. You'd buy this if you saw it on Amazon or at your local bookstore, wouldn't you? Would you buy a ticket to see it adapted to film?

3. I love to eat. Cambodian, Vietnamese, Thai, Greek, deli. Pickles. Peanut butter. Cheese. Cucumbers. Fish sauce. Noodles. Mussels and frites (well done). Ginger. Garlic. Dark chocolate. So much to eat. So little time.

4. I'd work out at the gym every day if I won the lottery and didn't have to instead schlep to my office regularly. While you wouldn't guess it from looking at me, I love Spinning, pushing weights around (though what's the link between retinopathy and weight training? Anyone?), biking, walking, and the elliptical trainer.

5. I'm a New Englander by birth and now by marriage, but I lived in New York while going to grad school and then for another seven years and I loved it. Walking the streets of Manhattan was great for keeping blood sugars under control. There's always something happening and you never know what you might find when you stroll down an avenue or turn a corner. The place is expensive and everything about living there is a hassle, but the energy and possiblity of the place thrilled me.

6. (By popular demand) Mr. Lyrehca just yelled from the other room that he's handy and want me to shout it from the desktop. The man knows his way around a toolbox and our house (and I) thank him for it.

Hmmmm.... I'm not sure who to tag next, since I haven't been reading everyone's blogs all that long. Anyone want to volunteer?