Winning!

I want to thank everyone for their amazing efforts to raise money this year on behalf of the Spare a Rose campaign.  At last count, we've raised over $26,000 for children in need of insulin.

If that isn't winning, I don't know what is.

Dozens of people shared my post and didn't leave a comment on the original post.  In fairness, I could only pick a winner that left a comment.  As Mean Scott would say, "RULES!"

I put the numbers one through twenty four through the random generator and out came:

Hooray!

Sarah of the Ethan and Isaac Show has won!!!

Here are your spoils!  Since Medtronic sent me double of things, I thought I would have two winners.  But Sarah has two young sons, and don't they both deserve a Lenny?  Also, Sarah's son and her husband have Type 1.  Don't they both deserve a water bottle?

So Sarah gets ALL THE THINGS!

Two Medtronic Water Bottles.
Two little Lenny the Lions.
Glucolift Glucose tabs.
Glucose Bits.
Unicorn key caps. (Unicorn being one of the DOC mascots.)
Two of our family favorites, The Princess Bride and The Sandlot.
A photo album.
A "LOVE YOU MORE" sign.  'Cause yeah, I love Sarah more.
Raising Teens with Diabetes.  (One day your little guy will be a teen.  AND I wrote a sidebar in it!)
Insulin Pumps and Continuous Glucose Monitoring by the one and only Francine Kaufman.
A Medtronic tote bag.

Congratulations, Sarah!

It's a win/win for everyone.  Many lives will be touched because of the generosity of all of you and your willingness to share and get the word out!

I hope all this goodness circles back to you!  Have a wonderful week, everyone!

(Also, thank you Medtronic for your generosity!!)

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Conversations about Diabetes.

Tonight we celebrated my youngest and his milestone of eight years of living with Type 1 Diabetes.  Since the evening was all about him, I let him choose where we would go for dinner.

Despite his brothers’ persuasive arguments for Red Lobster and Chile’s, L was personally torn between Wendy’s and Chipoltle.  He wanted both.  So in an effort to make this a night to remember, we went through the Wendy’s drive-thru for one “Son of a Baconator” and carefully cut it into four pieces to serve as an appetizer to our Chipoltle.

Yeah.  He said I was the best mom ever.  (Blush)

Anyway, sitting in Chipoltle we chatted a bit, and then got to reminiscing.

“Hey L?  Do you remember life before diabetes?”  He was diagnosed at 2 years old, so I already knew the answer.  He gave me a somber, “No.”

B chimed in though.  “I do!  I remember chocolate milk before diabetes.”

He was diagnosed at 5.

“What about you, J?” 

“You’re hilarious, Mom.”  Said whilst slapping his knee and rolling his eyes at the same time.  Diagnosed at 8 months old, he’s got a fire in him that is unmatched.

Later in the car the question was asked, “If the world threw their problems in a pile, and you could throw in your Diabetes…what would you pick instead of Diabetes.”

“I would pick being allergic to cheese.”  Says the teenager.

“So, you would choose being lactose intolerant?”

“Wait.  That would mean giving up milk.  Never mind.  I’ll keep diabetes.”

Ideas were thrown around left and right.

“Would you give away your diabetes for a pinky finger that had no bones?  Like it was a rubber snake, and just flung around all the time.”

That was a no.

“But I would give my left arm for a cure.” Says B.

“It’s really hard to button your pants with one arm.”  Retorts J.

“You’re right.  Diabetes stays I guess.”

The conversation took a turn to cures.

B offered this: “If our diabetes could be cured by 50 scorpion stings, and then you had to EAT the scorpion…would you do it?”

“Could I sauté it in butter?” Asked J.

“No.  You have to eat it live.”

“Then no.  I wouldn’t do it.”

My youngest then chimed in.  “I would drink anything for a cure.  Even if it made me throw up!  Even if it made me have diarrhea for days!  Any side effect…except dying.  I wouldn’t drink it if it made me die.”

“What if there was a magic potion that cured half the people and killed the other half.  Would you drink it?”  Asked the Tween.

There was a thoughtful pause and then they all agreed, no.  They wouldn’t take it.

“Yeah, anything that could make me dead, or give me cancer…it’s not happening.” Said my baby.

Crickets.  Just a whole lot of nothing for a couple minutes.

It all ended with my oldest saying he’d trade his problems for my problems.

“Really?” I ask.  “You really want my problems??”

And he answered, “Yeah.  You’re Mom.  You don’t have problems.  You’re awesome.”

And that tells me I must be doing something right, because apparently they think I’ve got it all together.

Man.  I’ve got them fooled. 

Diabetes may be around for a while, but it seems my boys have some idea how fortunate they are despite the craptasticness of it all.

I certainly wouldn’t give them my problems for theirs, but if there was a way for me to absorb Type 1 Diabetes away from them and into me?

Sign me up, people.  Sign.  Me.  Up.

In June B will celebrate 7 years of Type 1, and I realized that will make 30 years of diabetes combined in the Schuhmacher household.

In the meantime I’m google-ing “Eating a raw scorpion.”  Maybe it won’t be as bad as we think.

(Also, today is the day we're wrapping up the Spare A Rose Campaign.  Please read THIS post and direct as many of your friends as possible to sparearose.org.  When you're done, leave a comment  on the aforementioned post to enter to win a box of love.  HINT: Little Lenny is involved! Thank you!)

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Visible.

Diabetes is an invisible disease, right?

Yeah.  Then this happened.

 When my boys were little, they always wore their pumps in a pump pack, or a spibelt.  When they got older, they all simply put them in their pockets.

For my oldest J, that means he looks like this sometimes…

Because he needs to hold his wallet, his pump and his cell phone in his pockets.

I don’t know how it happened but my littlest L announced this morning he wanted to use a clip.

My first reaction was, “Oh honey, clips don’t work for us.  They always fall off and bungee jump off your waist.”  But then I realized that was true when they were toddlers.  No one has really been willing to wear their pancreas out in the open since they started walking around.

So of course I concurred with him that it was a GREAT idea!  Especially since he just got a new silicone skin from Medtronic for his pump. It looked super cool, and now the world could see it.

Wait.  The world could see it.

As he walked around the house this morning with the pump hanging from his hip pocket, I couldn’t help but gawk.  Gawk?  It that the right word?  I don’t know…I stared a little, that’s for sure.

And when we walked into school I half expected the entire 4^thgrade class to flock to him and ask him what the heck was hanging on his waist… 

But there was nothing.

After school I asked him what everyone thought of his pump, and he said not one person said a word.  “Everyone already knows I have a pump, Mawwm.”

Even so, when we went to the frozen yogurt shop for a small treat, I walked behind him, watching him in a thoughtful head-tilted kinda way, wondering if everyone else was wondering what was hanging off his hip.

No one looked.   No one.  And trust me, I was looking for people looking.

We’ve been pumping in this family for 10 years, and here I was emotionally verklempt about him wearing his pump all naked out there for all to see.  Before, there was just a little tubing hanging under his shirt.  Virtually undetectable and serving only as a small tell to those that belonged to the same club.  But now, he was loud and proud.  Sure, I have loads of friends that I’ve hung out with that have worn their pumps on clips…but they weren’t my children.  And even though I knew it was ok…hell yeah it was more than ok…it still moved something in me a bit.

Invisible no more. 

But, you know what?  Man, within all that conflicting emotion, more than anything I was proud.

Proud that he is so comfortable with who he is that he doesn’t question wearing his pump for all to see.

It taught me that maybe showing some of our vulnerabilities might not be a bad thing.  Especially if we are strong enough to embrace those vulnerabilities.  Turns out doing so can turn weak things strong.

Maybe his pancreas doesn’t work, but he has a bangin’ blue pump to make up for it.  And I know, like anything else, I’ll get used to it and before I know it I’ll be surprised if someone asks me about it.

And he loves it…there’s that.

And he’s happy….there’s that.

And the bottom line is, if he’s happy.  I’m happy.

The end.

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The Spare a Rose Initiative and how you can help.

Maybe I can’t change the world.  But I can change one child’s world.

Maybe I don’t have enough money to make a huge difference.  But I do have enough money to make a huge difference for a child.

Maybe I can’t fly and hold these children that are suffering.  But I can send insulin, and help ebb their suffering a bit.

Maybe I can’t do all I want to do.  But that shouldn’t stop me from doing something.

Something.

I can do something.

You can too.

At the Medtronic Advocate Forum I learned that in Haiti and Africa, newly diagnosed children with Type 1 Diabetes have an 80% mortality rate.

90% if they are a girl.

Only 10% of girls are able to get their hands on insulin when diagnosed.  And for those that do, they often have to use a different insulin every month.  Whatever is available.  Sometimes that insulin is only long acting insulin.  Sometimes, it is only fast acting.  Sometimes it is a combo insulin of the two.

Whatever it is, they want it.

These children deserve a chance to live.

And the answer is simple.

 This vial can change everything.  This vial is life.

What if I told you that only 5 dollars would keep one child alive for a full month?  Wouldn’t you have an extra 5 bucks laying around?  Wouldn’t giving that 5 dollars to a child mean more than a Grande Mocha Frappuccino?

Please, consider donating today.  As a diabetes online community, we take two weeks out of the year to spread the love, and to save lives.

Spare a Rose, Save a Child is the brainchild of the DOC.

It is our opportunity to say, “I’m blessed to have insulin in my fridge.  I’m going to keep someone alive today as a token of my gratefulness.”

It’s our opportunity to spread the love on a day that is meant for love, Valentines Day.

To light your fire, I’m going to offer you this:  A Box of Love.

If you share this post, or heck, ANY post about the Spare a Rose campaign or even simply link to the Spare a Rose webpage, leave a message for me in the comments. Tell me whom you shared it with, or how.  You can share on your blog.  You can share on Twitter, on Tumblr, on Instagram, on Facebook…with your next-door neighbor, with your extended family by email…any share…that all it takes to enter you to win my Box of Love. 

Inside my Box of Love is a smattering of prizes, to show you that even a small gesture like sharing, can make all the difference, and reap great rewards.  There is only one box, and only one winner, and everyone can enter only one time. 

So share.  The official website is HERE.

And donate.  You can use the widget at the top of this blogpost, or you can go directly to the Spare A Rose website.

And leave a comment, on this post.  Tell me what you did to spread the word.

Here is your opportunity to make a real difference in the life of a child. 

If YOU don’t.  Who will?  Do you think what you can offer is too small?  I think a month of life can never be too small.

We have less than two weeks.  Get the word out. 

And let’s change some lives.

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Mess

My house is clean.

In the last week I’ve had a few people make comments…

“How many hours do you clean every day?”

“Where is all your clutter?”

“Man, your house is so clean!”

In full disclosure, my house really isn’t THAT clean.  I keep the front of the house clutter free and looking good, but the bedrooms are a crapshoot, and the bathrooms?  Well.  I have four boys.  Don’t breathe in too deeply.

I was remembering back today when the boys were little. 

My house was always a mess.  Mess doesn’t even give it the credit it deserves.  It was a disaster, all the time.

ALL.  THE.  TIME.

Dishes in the sink from one or two days before.  Piles of laundry overtaking the couches waiting to be put away.  Floors begging to be scrubbed, bathrooms you needed HAZMAT suits to enter. (To be fair, I had four little boys, three growing boys with T1 who peed a lot at night and didn’t always do it whilst wide-awake.)

My life was chaos.  Beautiful chaos.  Feeding the baby was more important than laundry.  Taking a walk was more important than dishes.  Date night trumped a clean house any day of the week. 

Even as close as few years ago, cleaning was never a priority…because there were a thousand more important things in the cue.

My husband being number one.

Sitting on the couch cuddling with Ryan was my number one priority.  On Saturdays we spent our time out with the boys rather than home doing chores.

Oh how I miss that mess.

Oh how I wish my house were a mess again.

Now it seems, I have so much time.  Sometimes I clean up after the boys just to kill the monotony of my day.

I wish I wasn’t bored.  I wish I had Ryan to distract me.

Now the boys aren’t little anymore.  They spend most their time on the computer.  Legos and hotwheels have all been transferred to the garage.  Laundry is their only big culprit, and my sister in law does most of that now.

She spends the night and does dishes and laundry three nights a week.

I love her company.  I need it.  But I yearn for the days of watching scary shows with Ryan.  I can still see him clearly, turning off the TV.  Checking the doors.  Turning off lights, closing blinds and turning off my computer and taking my hand so he could tuck me into bed.

I miss having a husband to obsess over.  I miss leaving the vacuuming behind to have lunch with him.  I miss movies and dinners and walks, and waiting for his texts every morning.

This quiet is maddening.  This clean is not my choice.

I miss my beautiful mess.

I envy your messy houses. 

It means you are LIVING. 

Right now I feel less like I’m living and more like I’m surviving.

And part of surviving is controlling the things I can.  Clutter is one of them.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m no neat freak.  I’m woefully behind on my own laundry, and I have a box I just throw in every paper that may or may not be important.

The other night my son had a friend over.  They had Nerf gun wars for hours.  I spent my time cleaning up behind them, when minutes later a new spray of Nerf ammo lay in its place.  Part of me loved the mess.  The other part of me couldn’t spend one more minute on the computer or I would pop.  What’s left to do?

I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.  I am blessed.  My boys are fun and sweet, but they are busy with their own priorities.  Haven't you ever noticed with one child missing the entire family dynamic is changed?  I'm down from 6 to 4 in the house in less than 18 months.  Everything has changed.

I know I won’t be working part time forever.  In fact I’m sure that will be ending before I know it, and I'll be so busy going to school I probably won't be able to keep up on it all like I do.  But I believe even busyness won’t change things much.

My sister in law will still help keep things in order.  And I’ll still be looking for distractions from the quiet.  And when my house is messy?  It will just be clutter.  It won’t be meaningful or joyful.  Or maybe it will be...I don't know what tomorrow holds.

Hopefully vacuuming won’t always be on the top of my list of things to do.

Hopefully there lay beautiful distractions in my future.

Will I find that in a new career?  Will I find that in someone new?  I don’t know.

But I hope that I live again.  Even if living means being blissfully happy with what I have now: Me and four amazing boys. Which I know sounds slightly ungrateful…but I promise it is not.  You see, I’m completely blessed.  I can’t complain when I pray at night, as I know how good I have it. 

I really have it good.

It’s just quiet.  Still lonely.  Maybe still a bit melancholy?  Just different than it was.

Cleaner than it was.  Calmer than it was.  Almost like our life has docked and is waiting at the pier for us to begin our next big adventure.  We're swaying back and forth, not really going anywhere.

Embrace your mess. 

You’ll miss it one day.  I promise.

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Messing up

I did it.  I swore I wasn't that mom.

But I did it anyway.


 

Oh yeah, Conan.  Yes I did.

My youngest called me at snack time from school last week and said, "You're not going to like this mom.  I'm 404."

And yes he was right.  I did not like that.  Usually I would say, "Ok.  Just correct it and we'll see where you fall at lunch."

Not that day.  Not last week.

Instead I said, "What happened?  What did you do?"

I know what your face just did.  Reading what I said.  You're face did this...



Told you I said it.

He sat silent for a minute and then said, "I know!  I don't know what happened."

"Did you bolus for breakfa..."

"Yes." he interrupted.

"Ok. Just correct and we'll see if it takes."

When I hung up I knew what I did.

I could feel it broiling my conscience.

I kept shuddering and shaking my head thinking about what I'd done.



It bugged me all day, until I picked him up from school.  When we had a minute alone in the kitchen I  spoke with him about how awful I felt.  I told him I knew that the number wasn't his fault.  I knew that diabetes throws us numbers like that, if it didn't he would have diabetes in the first place.  I told him I felt awful for making it seem like it was his fault, that even if he didn't bolus for breakfast it would have been ok, because things like that happen sometimes.  No one is perfect, right?

And he hugged me and immediately forgave me.  Even though I'm pretty sure it completely rolled off his back when it happened in the first place.

But I'm glad I said something regardless.

Because I made a mistake.  And I owned up to it.

Even those of us with the best of intentions...those of us who know the harm words have...those of us who fully understand, or TRY to fully understand the mental toll of Diabetes...even we can mess up.

And that's ok, I think.

As long as we're honest about our mistakes.  And sincere.

Kids can smell sincerity a mile away, just as well as they can smell insincerity.

I often wish I were the perfect mom who knew all the perfect things to say to make it all better all the time.  I know such a mom probably doesn't exist, so in the mean time...

I'll keep apologizing.

And hope in the process of raising him I don't completely screw him up.

~MERI

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Stuff I've seen on the Internet: Vol. 2

I've got to think of a better name for this.  I like to think I'm creative, but alas, It's the best my faculties can produce at the moment.

I thought I'd wait another week before producing this post, but the last two days have produced articles aplenty!

I've used some form of the word produce three times already.  I'm going to shut up now and start linking.

Here's some stuff I saw on the internet this week:

If you or someone you love uses test strips to check their blood sugar, you need to read this.  The Diabetic Online Community, (see also, mostly Bennet Dunlap,) has been lobbying the FDA to produce, (crap, that word again,) higher standards on those producing (CRAP!)  test strips, thus increasing the percentage of must needed accuracy. The FDA have heeded our calls.  This article HERE lays it all out for you.  A great read!

A watch that will track blood glucose levels?  And Apple is spearheading the project?  I'll take three.

Though this sounds pretty good too.  Checking blood glucose levels using saliva.  No more pricks of the finger?  Just for good measure...I'll take three of these too.

This next link is awesome:  Cross Country Skier Kris Freeman, (who just happens to be Type 1,) has made the Olympic Team!  Congrats Kris!

The title of this post, "Is a T1 Vaccine coming soon?" is misleading.  Because it makes you hopeful they are going to say yes, even though you know the answer is no.  But here is the info on it nonetheless.

This is exciting, and may happen in our lifetime.  Novo Nordisk is testing a new, faster  insulin.  Can I get a WOOT WOOT?!  Read up on its progress, HERE.

An implantable device that delivers insulin will be in the beginning stages of testing in 2016.  Although, I know Medtronic has been doing something similar to this in Europe for years.  I've got the pic here, somewhere...

Oh here:

Yeah.  This is happening.  For reals.

Lastly, if you are having a hard day, or a hard week, or a hard whatever...or if you are having a great day and want to make it better...watch this.   It's ok if you don't know what they are saying, just feel it.

You're welcome.

Find some joy in your weekend!  Go on...do it!

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