Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

The last normal Saturday of our lives began as usual.  I got up at about 3:40 am-ish, got Gary up at 3:45 am, served breakfast, saw him out the door, went back to bed for a bit over an  hour, went out did chores for a bit while Ellen slept in.  Her last peaceful sleep in...for awhile yet at least. I told Gary out in the barn during chores that I reckoned I'd take Ellen in to the walk-in clinic in Buffalo and have them do a blood sugar test on her, that way I wouldn't have to pick her up from school on Tues and be late for supper and all.  He agreed that would be better. I naively made a shopping list and figured we'd stop by the library as well, so she could pick out her own books.  I think I had a couple of other errands to run, but I forget. Oh, weep for the best laid plans of mice and men which never come to fruition. There weren't many people at the clinic so we got in pretty quickly.  Ellen wasn't nervous about a finger prick, she was worried a...

In December 2016 Ellen developed her annual seasonal allergies.  On Dec 28th I took her in to the clinic and they prescribed allergy meds for her.  She weighed in at 98 lbs, I forget how tall, but she's taller than my chin and I am about 5'4" or so.  A week or so before this; late December, Ellen started developing a powerful thirst.  As time went on into January 2016 it worsened.  She began drinking unusual amounts of juice and water and spent quite a bit of time going back and forth to the restroom.  Even more unusual she began getting up at night to go pee; sometimes twice.  This concerned me, but not overly at first.  I just figured it was the allergy meds that was making her thirstier than usual. But then I noticed that she seemed to be losing weight.  And at the same time she was eating more.  In the evening, not an hour after eating a full meal she began to complain of being hungry.  She'd eat a pbj and some fruit, alon...

Ellen finally asked me that this evening.  I'd wondered when or if she would ask it.  A very natural question any intelligent person of age would ask.  I didn't have a good answer. I broke down.  The whole scene only lasted 3-4 minutes, but it still it breaks my heart. Yes, I know.  There are all the usual answers that can be trotted out.  Good answers.  Answers that are uplifting and enlightening.  But those can only be understood and accepted by the mind after the heart has grieved.  How do you tell a child that she should be glad she isn't the little girl in town with cancerous brain tumors?  At age nine empathy is not an easy thing when you are undergoing injections of your own.  At age nine you don't want to hear how you can still go on to do great things, live a long and healthy life with type one diabetes hounding your every step.  A needle is a needle.  Daily injections are a dreaded looming monster. ...

Last Saturday, January 14, 2017,  Ellen was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. In the jargon I have recently learned she is T1D, a type one diabetic.  I fully intend on writing the story all down in here and I rehearse the words and ideas in my mind while I am putt-putting up and down the road on the 4-wheeler in the mornings, graining the animals.  While I am doing dishes, elbow-deep in suds and comforting warm water, the phrases flow through my mind effortlessly. But when I sit down here at the computer it is all a jumble.  My emotions are still right under the surface and trying to put the story into words is painful.  For now I only wish to urge you, whatever your age, if you have children in your life or not, please read up on the signs of both type on and type two diabetes.  Diabetes can rear its ugly head in any child of any age, and on any adult of any age, regardless of family history.  There is no history of type one diabetes on either sid...

Often when I am out on my walks I encounter sights that steer my thoughts toward deeper subjects.  Here is one that I encountered last winter.  I have various paths I take the dog(s) walking on depending upon where the milking herd is quartered.  Both coming and going I pass by this old grapevine: You can see one little dead vine tendril clinging to a dead twig. The main vine stretches from one tree to the next, so the twig is hanging between the trees.  There is no way to tell how long the vine has held the twig prisoner; swaying in the breeze, for years maybe.   Once upon a time when the grapevine was small it sent out a tendril and caught onto the small limb of a tree.  It needed the support while its central stem climbed higher. But at some point the vine tore away from the tree, or perhaps it was a small tree that died.  Who knows?  But the main trunk of the vine continued reaching upward into the canopy of the forest, leav...

Ever have a bad day?  What's a person to do? Get out from under What's crapping on you.  (Thankful for the little lessons in life that God shares with me.  Also thankful that bovines tend to have oily fur which sheds stuff like this fairly rapidly.  By next morning she was pretty much cleaned off.  haha)

Not that my story is all that terribly dramatic.  However I did get on here and on Facebook and talk a bit about it, so I thought I'd wrap up the first 30 days. Yes.  I did write the FIRST thirty days. Today is Day 30 of my Whole30.  Here are my results: *  This morning the scale advised me that I'd lost 10 pounds!  Yay!  This is really a pretty dramatic weight loss for four weeks of not half trying.  I did 30 minute to 1 hour walks 4-5 times per week.  But no major workouts.  And, with the exception of about 3-4 oopsies, I followed the program to the letter. *  I can honestly say I went a WHOLE month without sugar!  This is a biggee for me.  My sugar dragon used to wake up roaring every morning, and roared loudly most of the day.  I will not say I do not have the occasional desire for chocolate; but the craving to consume everything and anything sugary is now pretty much quenched.  *  I know th...