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I’ve been using the CGM for a year now, and I’ve achieved truly excellent control of my diabetes. So why am I still feeling sick all the time? I went to the doctor Friday to find out. The constant hair loss, never-ending, crushing fatigue, frequent and debilitating headaches, inexplicable weight changes, and just overall feeling ill all the time was supposed to go away or at least improve with better control.
They took some blood to run some tests, but while there my doctor (really a nurse - apparently we don’t have an actual doctor) told me that even with great control I’m still a diabetic and can expect to feel ill at least most of the time.
EXCUSE ME???
Do you have any idea how much time I spend researching and implementing new strategies for improving my health? Or how good I am at it? I think equally with both sides of my brain. Only a very small percentage of people do this, most are biased toward the right or left, and the big benefit of using both to equal advantage is that you are essentially a problem-solving machine. I focus all of this problem-solving power on managing my disease all the time. All. The. Time. ALL THE TIME. And yes, I do expect to see some benefit. Because if I’ll just live longer, well then forget it. Who wants to live 80 years feeling sick as a dog all. the. time?
I wear an instrument of death every single second of every single blessed day. I do not do this for kicks, and I am not ignorant of my options. Insulin is a choice. It is not a necessity. Not all lives are better than none at all. And I have four choices:
I think that a physician who ignores the existence of these options, no matter how well-meaning she may be, is stupid. Just plain stupid. I am not wearing out my brilliance on this disease because I must. And I can stop any time I damn well please.
I am not going to kill myself. But I think I may need to find a new doctor.
I am frequently astounded at the differences that education can make, specifically, the difference between an education that imparts what to think and an education that imparts how to think. A child who is drilled in dogma or a similarly narrow point of view, who is informed about the world by being presented lists of facts, who is taught to read without questioning, becomes an adult without the ability to think, to challenge himself or others, to grow. On the other hand, a child exposed to differences (if only, at first, the difference between what is said and what is done), who is informed about the world by absorbing it, who is taught to read with a critical eye, becomes an adult able to think for himself, to challenge himself and others, to grow.
How much of this is a difference in education or environment, and how much a difference in the fundamental makeup of a child? Independent of environment, a dull or complacent child who is presented a list of facts will try to memorize them. A bright child will compare them. Once you introduce environment, the distinctions become less clear. An anguished, intelligent child might consume a book like fire. A happy, intelligent child might let that book do no more than touch the surface of his mind, and so grasp it only at the level of a less intelligent child.
Anyway, whether it is a function of nature or nurture, a child who is taught or learns what to think rather than how becomes an excessively dull adult.
Written by Angela at 7:36 am - Filed under Musings - No Comments
Jeremy is downstairs with a friend right now, and I don’t have much to do except the homework I don’t want to do, so I’ve started doing some research on the presidential candidates, focusing on McCain and Obama as the most likely contenders. I started with Obama’s website, (note: I’m not picking only on him because I’m absolutely positive McCain is doing it too) and of course he’s making a bunch of promises without mentioning about how he’s going to accomplish them. Two that really stood out because they were right next to each other are “Provide a tax cut for working families” (essentially eliminating the income tax for about 10 million people) and “Simplify tax filings for middle class Americans” (by requiring the IRS to offer pre-filled forms based on the documents they receive from your lenders and employers.) Noble goals. Helpful to millions, I’m sure. But reading the little blurbs describing these goals, all I can think is:
WHERE IS THE MONEY COMING FROM?? WHERE IS THE MONEY COMING FROM??! Simultaneously cut taxes and make it more expensive for the IRS to process them? Huh? Basic math folks. If it takes ten dollars to run the government and you’re only bringing in nine from taxes, then you cut the taxes by 2 dollars and raise the cost of processing them by 2 dollars…. 9 - 2 - 2 = 5, and that’s only half of what you need to run the government.
You know what I think? I think we need an economist slash accountant for president. When I listen to the airy promises of the candidates, all I can hear is what isn’t said about the details. What I really want to do is sit each of them down in my kitchen one at a time over some lavender pound cake and tea, and make them give me real numbers in lieu of their hollow promises.
Is there even any point in researching this? I’m only going to find what they think I want to hear. How on earth am I supposed to place an educated vote?
Written by Angela at 3:28 pm - Filed under Our Little World, Musings - 1 Comment
I had a difficult conversation with a relative last night. I know why she thinks the way she does, because I know the environment she was raised in, but the way she acts is still hurtful; she did say she’d try to be more aware of what she’s doing, and that’s all I was looking for. The conversation went fairly well, considering.
It got me thinking about that environment we were raised in, though. I grew up in a family that claimed all the privileges and prerogatives of love in the name of “family,” without actually doing any loving. I’ve personally heard and seen all kinds of things explained as “love”: obsessive smothering worry, sarcasm, mocking, narcissism, mean-spirited teasing, frigidity, outright and unabashed nastiness, stark cruelty. As a child I could never understand why this seemed wrong to me, but it did terrible things to me, and I can see many of these same things in my siblings as well. It makes me sad, because it seems that for the most part they accept this as the way things must be.
Growing up as a Catholic, you learn not only the fruits of the Holy Spirit as they are listed in the Bible, but also the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are mystically granted at confirmation much as they were granted to the disciples with tongues of flame. There are seven, and though I can never remember all seven at the same time, there are four I always manage to remember as a chunk: knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and right judgment. I can’t even tell you how often I thank God for the gifts of a very good education (even without a degree…), a sharp mind, and the opportunity and ability to gain perspective by moving away from the hell I grew up in. Because even though I am aware that everyone involved in my early life has their own story that made them who they are and dictates how they behave, it was hell. It will always be hell to me.
All this to say that, in trying to explain myself to my sister last night, it really hit home with me that, though there are as many dialects in love as there are people on earth, there is only one definition of a love that actually works. If you’re not religious, then just manage to forget that it comes from the Bible - because if you live to be a hundred and fifty, you’ll never learn of another kind of love. And if you are religious you’ve heard this a million times before, but take a moment to really read it:
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
Written by Angela at 8:31 am - Filed under Musings - No Comments
We watched a movie on Netflix Watch Instantly tonight, “One Last Thing.” It was actually pretty good, approaching the subject of death with respect, but humor, but not to much humor, a nod toward the afterlife without being overly religious, some crazy teenager antics, well-written and acted. The mother of the dying kid is Miranda from Sex and the City, and I enjoyed the way she played her role.
Anyway, the song played during the final credits talked about not crying for me when I’m gone because I’ll be in heaven where the blind will see, the lame walk, the mute speak, and I suddenly realized:
I am not going to be a diabetic in heaven.
Written by Angela at 9:21 pm - Filed under Musings, Diabetes - 2 Comments
What does the word “nice” mean? What constitutes a “nice” person? Is it enough that you don’t hit someone? Or are there things that can outweigh that? If in every piece of good news or trouble that someone tells you, you hear only a small thing that you don’t like and zero in on that, are you nice? If you give someone whatever they want simply because they demand it, are you nice? If you swallow rage and use it to poison someone else’s life, are you nice because you never let it out all the way, or not-nice because you let it leak in such a perfidious fashion?
Does “nice” even mean anything? If it does, is “nice” ever enough? If so, at what point does it stop being enough?
Love does not always mean peace. It often means war. War is not “nice”.
That’s okay with me.
Written by Angela at 10:45 pm - Filed under Musings - No Comments
First things first: Jeremy spent a few days writing an enormous blog just below. I have nothing to do because he’s working on homework, so I thought I’d blog, but I feel bad about pushing him away from the top of the page: so please go visit him. This is just an educational entry. Go play with him if you want fun!
This is something I’ve been tossing around lately, and I thought I’d share just for the heck of it. Conventional wisdom maintains that the best way to pay off debt is to start with your highest-interest balances and pay down from there. This makes absolute sense from the long-term investment perspective. This is what rich people would do if they were trying to pay down debt. But you know what? Rich people don’t pay down debt. They live leveraged lives. They spend other people’s money, for heaven’s sake, that’s why they’re rich! So perhaps this isn’t the best or most advantageous way for everyday people to accomplish their goals, eh?
There’s another school of thought about debt repayment, I think it’s something like the “snowball method”. The concept behind this is that you start with your smallest balance first, then when you pay that off you use the exhilaration and newfound extra cash to work on your next highest balance. This is the method Jeremy and I employed (although we decided to do it this way and then learned it was a legitimate “strategy” later!), and we found it worked very well for us, not just because we got something accomplished quickly, but because that extra cash from paying off one loan gave us some breathing room. We did everything we could to make sure that money became part of the repayment of the next loan, but when the Ford broke down again and again (and again!), the extra cash helped cushion blow after blow after blow so that we didn’t have to give up on paying off loan #2.
And thinking about this in terms of cash flow, I have developed my own take on the whole debt-repayment thing. (Too late for us, but oh well!) What if you start by paying off the balance with the highest monthly payment? Most everyday-type people who are paying off debt are doing it because the debt is creating a cash crunch, so doesn’t that make sense? When you pay off that loan, not only do you gain the highest possible amount of money to throw at the next one, thus enabling yourself to pay it off at the fastest possible rate, but you also gain the highest possible level of relief from your cash crisis. I am excluding a mortgage payment from this method. Although I know many people don’t agree, I do see a difference between good debt and bad debt. A mortgage is the only way most everyday people experience the power of the leveraged rich, and done correctly, taking out a mortgage to purchase a house can be an excellent decision.
Perhaps really the best way to pay off debt is a combination of the Snowball Effect and the Angela Approach. Line up your debts, listing the total balance and monthly payment for each. Find a happy medium between the debt you’ll be able to pay down most quickly and the debt that would give you the most relief potential, and start there. Don’t forget to take into account your personal goals and your feelings about money. (Note: the highest-interest method doesn’t take either into account.) For example, I absolutely hated the experience of our wedding (everything except the ceremony itself anyway), and hated the money we borrowed to pay for it, so that was a really important piece of debt to get rid of for me. It wasn’t the highest monthly payment, but happily for me it did happen to be the smallest loan balance, so it was the first to go. =)
I call it the Snow-Angela Approach to decimating debt. (Oh so happily alliterative are we at the Biggs Picture!)
Written by Angela at 9:52 pm - Filed under Musings - No Comments
When I was in grade school and high school, I used to make sure I always sat at the front of the class, always volunteered a right answer to a question within the first week, and always made sure the teacher knew my name on the first day. I sat in the front row so that I would be watched all the time and I couldn’t let me attention wander. I gave a right answer right off the bat so that the teacher would expect right answers from me. I made sure the teacher knew my name so that he or she would call on me more and keep me accountable. I did all those things intentionally, and specifically for those reasons, but it wasn’t until after high school that I understood what I was doing by deliberately putting myself in a position where laziness and failure were not even options: I was setting myself up for success.
I realized the other day that in the area of NH where we live, everybody we work with, everybody we interact with at the supermarket, everyone we wander by in Home Depot, is making the same kinds of choices we do every day. Do we replace the counter so that the main level will be finished, or do we get a “dining” table so that we can have people over to visit? Do we save our extra paychecks so Jeremy can build a media center to replace the seven-year-old computer in our basement, or do we do everything to the house that we want to do, all at once instead of waiting? Do we keep me stocked in continuous glucose sensors, or do we go out for a real dinner (not pizza) a couple of times a month? We trade something we want for something we want more. And everyone around us does the same.
I can remember a time not too many years ago when I longed to have those kinds of choices, instead of choices like whether to replace the worn brakes on my car or eat. And to make it worse, at that time I was living on Cape Cod, constantly surrounded by people who literally had it all - the houses, the cars, the clothes, the dinners out, the private beaches, etc. It was excruciating. The Joneses were everywhere.
One of the things I really, really like about living in this neck of the woods is that there are no Joneses. There’s nobody to keep up with. Unintentional though it was, by moving here we have managed to set ourselves up for success. And I can say with certainty that we don’t miss the Joneses at all!
Written by Angela at 7:38 pm - Filed under Our Little World, Musings - No Comments
I got this off my brother’s website.
Your Superhero Profile |
 Your Superpower is Spiritual Your Weakness is Crosses Your Weapon is Your Golden Saber Your Mode of Transportation is Giraffe |
Written by Angela at 6:44 am - Filed under Musings - No Comments
The world is God’s subwoofer.
Written by Jeremy at 7:16 pm - Filed under Jeremyisms, Musings - No Comments
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