Diabetes, must you intrude EVERYWHERE?

In the last 2 weeks, Miss M tried out for the school cheer team.  Yes, indeed, my dark and twisty girl who would be goth in a heartbeat if I would let her (well, her sanitized version, anyhow) wanted to join the school jump-up-and-down-and-be-perky squad.  She worked really hard after not making it last year, practicing her dance, her moves, and smiling on cue. 

Monday night, she was dancing in the kitchen, her lovely brother harassing her, when she turned and said, "Mom, I'm going to make it this year. I'm going to smile a lot more.  I think I didn't make it last year because I didn't smile enough. Oh, and because I have diabetes."

'Scuse me?  Did I REALLY just hear that?

I think I swallowed my tongue.  When I regained the power of speech, I asked her to clarify that last statement. Calmly, I hope....she said, "S (a girl on the squad) told me she heard Ms A. talking to someone and she said that C and I didn't make the squad last year because of us having diabetes. We were way better than some of the people who made it." 

OhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhKay.  Start breathing again.  Calm down before responding.  Engage brain.

I told her that I hoped that S was mistaken, and that I would hope that Ms A wouldn't have kept her and/or C off the squad due to diabetes, since she KNOWS that I am always there and she KNOWS that would be highly illegal, not to mention just flat-out WRONG. I tried to remind her that she was only a 6th grader last year, that nearly 40 people tried out for 12 spots, and that mostly 7th and 8th graders made it....sigh. I encouraged her to do her best, to keep practicing and to smile, and see what happens.  She said she was pretty sure it was the diabetes.  I really thought it might have been the crabby attitude and lack of practice, but I kept that to myself.....

Ack.


Tuesday, I mentioned it to the coworker who was helping to judge tryouts.  After her head stopped exploding, she said she would make sure that there was nothing of the sort taking place this year.  :)
I asked her what she thought I should do, and she said go talk to Ms A.....which I *so* did not want to do.  As much as I talk and shoot off my mouth without thinking (KPF, you stop laughing right now) I really do NOT enjoy conflict. Turned out that I had to leave for a doctor's appointment before I could find her - how sad is it that I'd rather have a shot of cortisone directly injected into my shoulder than go have an unpleasant conversation? Tryouts commenced, and when I returned from the doctor to pick up Miss M, she said she thought it had gone well. Coworker M came through my room and told her she had done well - M excitedly asked, "HOW well?" and Coworker M said, "well, the decision is being made now so I don't know, but you were good!"  That made Miss M feel better.

Wednesday morning - nope. No cheer squad for M.
Wednesday mid-day, in the staff lounge, Miss A comes in to the copy machine. I decided to bite the bullet, so to speak, and tell her that a little birdie had informed my daughter that she didn't make cheer because of diabetes.  She was shocked, appalled, angry that someone would say such a thing, and told me she thought M was very close and should try out again next year. I asked her to please, then, TELL Miss M that she did well and that diabetes was NOT the reason she did not make the squad.   She agreed, and on the way out of school at the end of the day, stopped Miss M and said, "Hey! Come talk to me tomorrow. I want to talk to you."  M thought she was in trouble. :)

I don't know the gist of the conversation, but I do know it took place, and M seems to be okay with everything.....I don't know if I'm more annoyed that someone who has been a friend to M since kindergarten would tell her that, or annoyed that she didn't make the squad, or annoyed at diabetes having to stick its stinking nose into every little thing all the dang time.

And in the grand scheme of things, with people losing loved ones this week and mass shootings taking place, this isn't really a major issue - except to one twelve-year-old girl and her heart.

Sigh.

BOO! This year's Walk is in the books

Saturday was our fifth JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes, with the awesome Halloween theme of "Say BOO! to Diabetes!"  I love that.  I'm trying to find "Boobert", this year's walk logo - he's the cutest little ghostie wearing JDRF snakers. :) This year, I served as a "staff" person, since next year I will be one of the co-Family Walk Chairpeople.  (Chairpersons?)  Holy guacamole, I knew it was a giant undertaking, putting on the world's largest JDRF walk, but really? I had *no* idea exactly how hard it really would be.  I finally cashed it in after being at the park for a 11.5 hours; I think the real staffers were there at least another couple of hours, and they were there all day Friday setting up as well.  Missy Miss and I went over for a couple of hours on Friday, too, but really, it was nothing compared to the total number of hours required.

The good news is that the weather was the best it's been in the 5 years we've been going, and despite the crummy economy there was a great turnout.  No idea on the money yet; I do hope that enough came in to at least meet last year's walk, though I won't be terribly shocked if it doesn't happen.  Many, many of the families I know said that they did not raise as much as they did last year.

The bad news? Once again, no pictures. I had no camera with me; I was so focused on getting there before sunrise and trying to learn all I could that I spaced out taking a camera with me. I am not a good scrapbooker! My membership in Scrappers Anonymous is going to be revoked....again.
Visit Wendy's blog or Kelly's blog for a few lovely pictures of the event - Wendy even snapped one of Missy Miss eating a donut with her own Miss Addy!  (Funny, I never heard anything about her having a donut....)

I look so forward to the day when we don't have to have a walk, but instead we have a "remember when the cure was discovered" party.  Then we will really be able to say BOO! to diabetes.

GOING BLUE! HOW ABOUT YOU?

We are GOING BLUE!!!



Wendy did such a good job with her post about this, I swiped it from her.  Is it stealing if I say she wrote it and give her all the credit? Probably....oh well.  Hopefully, she will forgive me this time. :)

World Diabetes Day is November 14th. In honor of this occasion, Joanne got the ball rolling to create some Tshirts for us to wear....imagine it: TYPE 1 DIABETES being represented all over BlogLand in matching shirts!

It's a beautiful thing. But we have to ACT FAST. In order to get the shirts printed and delivered by 11/14, we need to get the orders rolling. STAT!!!!  (Tired Mom interjects: Wendy is a nurse. She gets to use cool medical terms like STAT.)

So here's the scoop:

We are happy to announce that the price for the shirts will be $15... and that's including taxes and shipping! For any Canadian peeps, it will be $20. Sorry to do that to you, but it's the shipping that kills you. This is the design we're going with:



So, here's what I need from you; if you want to order a shirt (or shirts!), please send an email to: shirts@helpmefred.com with the number of shirts you want, and the sizes you need, plus the address you want it shipped to. You can order unisex(S - XXL), woman's sizes (S - XL), as well as kid's (2/4 - 14/16).

You will then need to send us the money for the shirts via Paypal (very easy and totally secure, I use it all the time). To send money, all you have to do is go to http://www.paypal.com/, click on send money, and enter the email address above in the "To" line.

And that's it, folks. So get those orders in and let's TURN THE WORLD BLUE!!!!!!!!!

Once again, thanks Wendy for the blog entry, and thanks Joanne for getting the BLUE ball rolling!

Got sneakers?

I have about 40 of the JDRF sneaker car magnets in green that I volunteered to sell for our local JDRF chapter.  These are the green magnets that say "Help Find A Cure for Type 1 Diabetes". 

If you are interested in purchasing one, or a dozen :), let me know.  Magnets are $3 each, 2 for $5 plus 50 cents shipping/handling each. Sorry for the crummy picture; I had to use my cell phone camera.
ALL money goes to the Desert Southwest Chapter of JDRF

Awareness, anyone?

World Diabetes Day is coming up soon - November 14th.  Think about the people you know. How many people really understand the difference between type 1 and Type 2?  Well, from personal experience I can say NOT VERY DANG MANY.  (disclaimer:  before Type 1 came to live in our house, I knew a little - now I know far more than I ever wanted to know.)  We have been fairly fortunate with not getting the "She can grow out of it" or "She just ate too much sugar; if she exercises it will go away" types of comments.  There have been some but not too many. 

However, there are FAR too many PoCWDs who have absolutely AWFUL, TERRIBLE things said to them about (and to) their children.  I mean, really - would you walk up to a child who was bald due to chemotherapy and ask her what she ate that gave her cancer, or tell her she just needs a special juice supplement to make it all better? 


Parents of children with Type 1 want to turn the world blue, just like those who support breast cancer research have turned the world pink.  (Please note - we are NOT saying that breast cancer is an unworthy cause by any means....we just want to raise diabetes awareness to the same kind of level.)  Thanks to Joanne, the idea of a tshirt like the one pictured above may just help us spread the message!!  As soon as the details are finalized,  these will be made up and the education campaign will begin!!


If you are in to help spread the T1 awareness message, blog it, post it on FB, tweet about it - whatever you need to do to get the word out.   We're out to turn the world BLUE!

Happy fall (break) , y'all ...sniff, sneeze

It's finally cooling off here in the 7th circle of Hell, aka central Arizona.   Mid October, and the temps are finally in the double digits rather than triple....bringing with them the cool mornings and hot afternoons that require jackets over shorts and tshirts.  I'll take that over 115 any day.  We're sitting with the doors and windows open tonight, a nice cool breeze coming through to take away the "heat" of the day.  It was about 85 indoors at one point, but I was steadfast and did NOT turn the a/c back on.  We have about 6 months of electric bills that are enormously inflated by a/c use, so I try to really keep it off once we shut it down. Generally speaking we are the opposite of the majority of the nation - our heating bills are not the huge ones.  It's the "summer", which generally begins somewhere around April Fool's Day and lasts until the end of September.  

The temperature changes have brought allergy/flu junk along with them.  It seems that Missy Miss has some version of the flu, or some other ugly, nasty virus.   We came home from  the Children With Diabetes conference in La Jolla and she promptly developed a sore throat....two days later, fever and a deep chest cough. She's been sleeping like mad and her blood sugars, well, SUCK.  I've been running a temp rate of 130% to 150% to keep her semi-down to normal....Otherwise it's nothing but 250s and up.   So far the rest of us haven't had much, just slight sore throats and sniffles.  I'm hoping we all can stave off the germs.  Vitamins and LOTS of hand-washing...

The hubs is having more stomach issues.  He went for an ultrasound last week, and this week I get to take him for an endoscopy.  The GI doc thinks it's his gallbladder....which wouldn't be too shocking considering his diet and lifestyle. :)  He doesn't have stomach pain so much as chest pain, which is a little (lot) scary.  He's had enough cardiac exams and tests to know that it's not actually his heart now, which led to trying stomach meds and finally going to the GI.   No one in my family can have normal symptoms; we all have to have freakishly strange things that make figuring out the problem more challenging, and stressful.

More on the CWD conference later this week; since it's Fall Break (woo hoo!) I have some time to try to update the blog more than once a month.  :)

Ever have one of those....

days, weeks, months?

Sigh.

It's been one of them and THEN some lately.

Here's hoping that things will be turning around and the silver linings will become more apparent to me - because right now, I'm having a hard time seeing past the gray clouds.

I know I'm not the only one who feels like this, and I know I have plenty of things to be happy about - the blessings really do abound in my life.  I have to refocus on those.  

Sometimes I just need a reminder.

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