Last week, I told you about an event where I sold ten books in thirty minutes -- a very unusual experience in my process to interest people in the book I published a year ago, Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun.
This week, my story is vastly different. I stood (or perched on a stool) for three hours while literally hundreds of people strolled by at a huge downtown event and sold...wait for it...none. I was just outside the door of a popular bookstore, had a snappy double poster on an easel to catch the attention of passers-by, and tried to make sure I wore an inviting smile. But no dice.
Since writing Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun!, I will pretty much talk to anybody about diabetes management any time anywhere. I don't claim to be an "expert." I'm no kind of medical professional. And there are lots of folks who have been managing diabetes quite successfully for far longer than I have.
But I have learned a few things through the years since I was diagnosed in February of 2008. And the process of spending an entire summer wading through my memories and writing it all down helped me to organize what I've learned into areas I think are the most obvious (like weight loss) or easiest to implement (like taking the stairs instead of the elevator) or even more crucial to saving one's life (like not giving up as if there is no hope when your life isn't over ~ it may have just begun).
There was a time in my life -- sometimes it feels like a million years ago and sometimes it feels like yesterday -- when I would make a decision and run with it into a fire. Nothing could stop me or even necessarily slow me down.
It wasn't that I thought I was always right. It was that I didn't think period. Each day was a millennium and I was the sun at the middle of it all. It made for some rough going on occasion. But I wasn't looking back. I was going to live forever. Or die young. And neither gave me great pause.
I try to be upbeat as much as I can. It isn't always easy, but I've been around long enough to have already tried many of the possible responses to life. At one point or another, I've used rage, whining, and liquor; eating until I was stupefied; buying things nobody needs; working until I just couldn't anymore; and throwing myself headfirst off the cliff of a highly questionable romance. None of those methods ever fixed anything for more than a minute. And all of them left me with some kind of negative fallout to deal with. So whether I feel like it or not, I try hard to take the road less traveled: seeing the glass half full (or whatever platitude comes to mind at the time).
But that doesn't change the fact that there are just some things I don't like -- or even hate -- no matter how positive I try to keep my attitude. Today, just to prove I'm not really made of sugar and spice and everything unrealistic, I'm going to admit to five of them.
Silly me. I thought when I wrote the last line of Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun! and put it on Amazon.com that at least a few of the 21 million diagnosed diabetics in the United States would jump right out there and pick up a copy. Eight years ago, when I was diagnosed, I would have. The options I found helped, but did not give me the kind of tips and hints and inside information I so sorely needed at that juncture in language couched to lessen my anxiety instead of increase it. So the fact that my book is probably one of the best kept secrets in America right now would be frustrating if I hadn't gotten a pretty clear signal early on as to why.
On page 32 of my new book on managing diabetes, I tell my favorite anecdote about the things I've learned along the way.
It was fourteen months ago. I had been diagnosed as diabetic for about six years already and had been doing a fine job of managing my disease until sometime the year before, when my best efforts and the advice of my primary physician fell flat and I needed new input. I had finally gotten an appointment with the nearest endocrinologist and it took him less than ten minutes to determine that I needed to be on insulin.
Not only was I shocked and horrified by the news, which I had feared from the moment I was first diagnosed. But additionally, I thought it meant that I was dying.
