The First Measurable Visit
The first three month endocrinologist check up started and ended with the same question from Lia: Why did my pancreas stop producing insulin? She asked it of me and her mother as we were entering the building and again later of the PA near the end of the exam. All
The Part of the Pancreas
Most people don’t think much about the pancreas. Most of them of course don’t have to think about it at all. But there are a few who, because of events that have occurred outside of their control, must spend a great deal of thought deliberating exactly what it
Lonesome du Jour
It gets very lonely when there is just one of you because there is no one to share in the worry and fatigue of what has become a daily ritual so that the headaches and sleeplessness and frayed nerves are yours and yours alone. When being apart was something you
Out of Sight, Out of Our Minds
We knew the invitation was coming, we just didn’t know when and it was like waiting the arrival of a dreaded phone call. On the day Lia brought it home from school it was mostly a green day, so the notion of letting her spend the night at another
One a.m.
The Things We Have Now The chirping alarm clock wakes her. Promptly the comforter stirs, legs skimming across the mattress. A shadow lifts out of the gloom as she pulls herself from the bed. She passes like a spirit through the room and stoops outside the door. Seconds later blue-white
The Beginnings of a Long-term, Long-distance Relationship
It is difficult for me to write about the research being done by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and others like them. This is partly because of the science involved and the fact that I have not yet fully educated myself on the terms and studies being done to cure
The White Deer
One fall evening around dusk we had gathered around the kitchen window to see out into the woods on the northern side of the yard where there was making her way down the trail toward the house a small white deer. There were ten or so other does with her
Phone Privileges
The Things We Have Now She calls at ten a.m. I want to talk about school. How she’s doing, what she’s learning. She entertains my wishes only momentarily, then gives me her meter reading. I say the number back to her and write it down. She asks
Knowing Beans
Meanwhile, we were very hungry for information. We knew very little about diabetes and what we did know consisted mostly of what we had learned from my father’s type 2, which he suffered after a long while of poorly managing his congestive heart disease. Even that, because we did
Logbooks, Lows and Larry
Before, much earlier, a year or two prior to Lia’s diagnosis when all of our children still lived at home, including our now-collegian son, one of the kids would be given the task of setting the table for dinner. Then if they lingered too long afterward we would ask
A Lattice Work Community
When I first worked with Les B. we were both Lieutenants serving under the same Brigade Commander in Operation Desert Shield on the Saudi Arabian peninsula of the Persian Gulf. It was a strange and difficult time for both of us and though our paths in the war never crossed,
Pilgrimage
Shortly after our eight year old daughter Lia had been moved to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit late in the evening of December 23, the same day of her diagnosis for type 1 diabetes, the nurse working nightshift came in to check her vitals and IVs and she asked how