If At First You Don't Succeed ~ Try, Try Again

This time last year, I had about 7 years of managing diabetes under my belt. I had gotten over the panic of adding insulin to the mix 6 months before. My daughter had come for our annual holiday visit. And I was enjoying myself.

I had no idea that in the year to come, I would write an entire book on managing diabetes (Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun!), learn a mind-bending number of things related to the process of marketing said book, and generate and spend $2500 to publish and put it out there -- only to discover that's not all it takes to make it a household word. That's a lot to jam into one year on top of a full-time job, a healthy handful of other demanding projects, and the not-so-minor matter of managing my own diabetes on a daily basis. It's not like I can push it to the bottom of the list till I get around to it.

Happy Holidays to You, With Love

Christmas week. From what I can gather, it's one of the most stressful weeks of the year. Families under pressure to produce just the right presents for children and the costs going up by the minute. Decorations demanding to be dug out, repaired, augmented, and put up. Extended family and friends with expectations that contradict each other. A hundred details vying for attention besides what's already normally on your plate. And, of course, you're supposed to be smiling radiantly through it all.

And the alternative, of course, is sitting alone in your living room without funds, trying to figure out how you wound up isolated while the rest of the world is dancing all around you. With these two options, no wonder people get depressed -- and even suicidal -- during "the holidays."

Then, on top of it all, we have our diabetes to think about. (Sigh.) Glazed ham and candied sweet potatoes. Green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup and fried onion rings. Buttered rolls and fruit cake and all the family favorites piled and stacked and eaten until everyone else is lying stupefied on sofas or recliners. And we're crying into a napkin somewhere, either feeling sorry for ourselves or beating ourselves up for shooting our glucose through the roof. Right?

It doesn't have to be this way.

Better Late Than Never

I'm remembering a song this morning with words that say something like, "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again!" It has an upbeat tempo and was introduced in a movie decades ago, but the sentiment is classic. None of us is perfect and life can run amok on occasion. But as I am quick to tell my students: it's not what happens; it's what happens after that.

YDMV (Your Diabetes May Vary)

When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, my diabetes nurse educator, in the process of throwing a thousand seemingly unrelated bits of information at my cowering psyche, said brightly at one point, "But, then, always remember: YDMV!"

"YDMV?" I repeated, lost.

"Yes. Your diabetes may vary!"

"My diabetes?" my brain said in a crabby voice. (I most certainly had not claimed this condition as "mine" yet.) But she continued, as if we were just two buddies chatting about our plans for the weekend.

"Each body is different. What works for one person may not work for another. Even medication may affect different people differently."

"Oh, great," I thought, feeling like a new kid in town walking up the steps to a middle school full of students I'd never seen before. What if I couldn't find my classes? What if the other students didn't like me? What if the teachers thought I was stupid? I was trying to pay attention, but there was so much to learn and now this: "Your diabetes may vary."

Diabetes Technology and You

Aside from the panic of being told you're diabetic (when that first occurs), one of the other things that sends most of us into a tizzy at that point is all the new technology with which we're suddenly presented. Some of us can't figure out how to stop activating the mute button on the cell phone we've had for more than a year. And here we are, neck deep in glucometers and test strips and lances and, for some of us, needles or pumps. Overwhelming? It's mind-blowing. Especially since we're already scared we're going to do something wrong and die. Any minute.

But we didn't even have insulin until the 1920's (despite having identified diabetes 3500 years ago). And people who needed insulin as recently as 1970 were still boiling syringes on the stove. (Ugh!) So while diabetic technology may be daunting to us at first, being without it -- it seems to me -- would be much, much tougher.

I discuss my own struggles with embracing and mastering the technology related to my condition in my book, Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun! And actor/comedian Jim Turner, who's been managing his diabetes for nearly fifty years, gives us his take on diabetes technology in this short and helpful dLife tv video. If you haven't visited the dLife website yet, now might be a great time!

Audio Book Endnotes

A funny thing can happen if you don't stay up to date on your emails. You can miss important information that you really want to know. A couple of days ago, for example, I discovered that I've sold ten copies of my audio book produced by Audible...when I thought I had sold none. Oops! The reason it's an oops is that I included end notes (sort of like footnotes, but at the end of each part of the book) in the paperback and Kindle editions of Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun! and I couldn't imagine how to include them in the audio edition so I didn't.

I was reminded of a clever option yesterday when I listened to an audio book while running and the author just said the word "asterisk" and then went on to read the extra information. Maybe I'll go back and include those some day. And certainly, I'll use it for the next book I record. But for now, I'm feeling guilty because my audio book purchasers are missing some information I intended for them to have. And to further complicate the matter, I have no idea, of course, who they might be.

Hopefully, at some point, they'll seek out my website and find this blog with the missing information, as I intend to include it all right here right now. It will make for a longer than usual post, but at least an effort will have been made.

Some of you may not appreciate this if you already read the paperback or Kindle edition and so are being handed old news. Others of you who haven't read -- or listened to -- the book as yet may find the information oddly out of context. But I would say to both groups that the information is worth having or at least considering, so I make no apologies. And I'm presenting a lot of good stuff to know in one little package.

We're Not Alone

I went to a local Health Fest yesterday. It really covered the waterfront. The hundreds of community residents (like me) who were milling around from table to table could pick up information on nutrition; health care programs; medicaid, medicare, and insurance options; and all manner of possible ailments. I saw welcoming faces behind table after table willing and able to discuss all kinds of complicated and delicate matters. Are you at risk for a stroke? What are the early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease? Just how germ-y are your hands? And on and on and on.

Folks were having their blood pressure, pulse, respiration rate, and eye sight checked. They were getting flu shots. They were having mammograms done. They were being tested for HIV. And yes, they were were being tested for diabetes.

Cue The Trumpets!

This is a big week for me and my new book on managing diabetes. Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun! will be officially launched Tuesday evening (accompanied by diabetic-friendly snacks, of course). I will be selling and signing copies of the book at that time and again at separate events on Friday night and Saturday during the day. To advertise all those events, I'll be featured on the local PBS radio station morning talk show all week, as well as appearing on public access television, too (see above). Marketing is a lot of work, folks. But it's so, so worth it, if it helps others save their own lives.

If you've bought a copy of the book and found it helpful, please consider reviewing it on Amazon.com, so others will know. Thanks. 

Don't Ask/Don't Tell

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.

Trips Are Trippy

By the time you read this post, I will be in another city, having spent five days at the annual conference of an academic organization I belong to. I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure I will learn a lot and make some new connections. I'll get to stay in a nice hotel and see some folks I really, really like. And I'll have some fun, which -- depending on how I do it -- is good for my mind and body.

But trips can be trippy (1960's speak for "complicated"). I'll never forget last year's conference. I had only been on insulin for four months, after having my diagnosis changed from Type 2 to Type 1.5 (the nickname my endocrinologist uses for Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults or LADA for short). I had a clue by that time, but I was still definitely working out the kinks.

How To Get Rid Of Bad Habits

One thing I've learned after living for 69 years is that much of life seems to driven by routines. When I first started having the local daily newspaper delivered in the morning, for example, I didn't even know if I'd read it. I hit the ground running in the morning and I'm usually on the computer before I've digested my breakfast. But it didn't take long before reading the paper while I sipped my morning tea became a routine and that was two years ago. I wake up, make the bed, do some stretches, and open the door to pick up the paper. We're creatures of habit. Which can be a bad thing, but doesn't have to be.

Problem-solving 101

Not long after my diagnosis in 2008, when I told my Diabetes Educator how I had dealt with a particular issue that week, she beamed at me brightly and said, "See there? You're already doing a great job of problem-solving!" For a minute, I felt like a four-year-old learning to tie her shoe. But I'd never heard the term before, so I asked her what it meant related to my new condition.

"Well, you know," she explained patiently. "A lot of different situations can come up on any given day when you have diabetes and you won't always have somebody right there to help you figure it out. So it's important for you to learn how to identify and respond to things yourself when you can. Problem-solving is the process of deciding how to address a particular situation to resolve it and maybe keep it from happening again."

Taking Life In Bite-Sized Chunks

There are a couple of things you should probably know about me before reading this week's post. For starters, I never had a five-year plan or even a thirty-day commitment to much of anything. None of my marriages lasted. Before I took my current position, I had only had one job for more than two years. So my style has never been the old "plan your work and work your plan" mode. Yet somehow, I have stayed busy and productive and have achieved enough to impress myself and a few selected others.

Additionally, with the help of a couple of 12-step programs, I gave up mood- and mind-altering substances more than two decades ago and with the exception of a shot of Jack Daniels on one unfortunate occasion, that's been a successful process from the beginning. So what's my point?

When I was diagnosed with diabetes, I didn't set any goals. For good or ill, it's not the way I work. I just woke up the next morning and did what they suggested -- one day at a time.

Twenty-one Million People...Plus?

Last weekend, I set up a table at the local Farmers' Market. There were booths with vegetables and plants, of course. And booths with crafts of all kinds and tasty morsels to be eaten or taken home. And, in the middle of it all, I stood behind a table with my stack of books and a big sign to draw attention. It worked. I was pretty much busy from 8 a.m. to noon and I dragged home tired, exhausted from the heat, and with a head full of thoughts.

I sold one paperback and gave out a bunch of flyers so that folks could go home to download the Kindle edition of Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun! for free. But what really wore me out was the conversations. There were only a couple of people who told me they've been diagnosed "pre-diabetic." And there was one, I think, who said she was managing her disease. But the bulk of those I spoke with were folks who stopped to talk about their loved ones who have diabetes and are making no attempt to control it.

To Be Or Not To Be...?

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.

Greetings and Good Wishes!

Seven and a half years ago, I was told out of the blue that I have diabetes. I thought it meant I was going to die any minute. And needless to say, that's not a very happy state of mind to be walking around with. Ultimately, of course, I didn't -- die, that is. At least I haven't yet. And in the meantime, I've learned a few things about diabetes, life, and myself.

The result is a book I just published and wished had existed when I needed it myself. If you're curious, check it out on Amazon.com.  It's already available in paperback and Kindle editions and will be available shortly in an audio edition, as well.

Besides the book, I've decided to start writing this blog, too.  Originally, I only intended to write the book, but these things have a way of taking on a life of their own. And after the book was finished, I kept thinking of things I really ought to have included. Ha!

So I'm stuck, I guess, until I don't have anything left to say (which as my friends will tell you, won't come any time soon). Welcome to my world. And just to prove how serious I am about this, I'll tack on a little commercial. Here it comes!