Another Shower Epiphany

I was in my thinking spot, more commonly referred to as the shower, the only place I can get a period of time long enough to complete a thought in my head, reflecting on my last piece of writing and more over the tone of the last four months of my writing, when I realized that I had once again fallen into the depressing part of my emotional tide chart.

Just like the tides come in and out with some predictable regularity, so too I tend to fluctuate between the heights of optimism, a I-can-conquer all attitude, and the depths of my dark humor and despair. I rode the tide of the dark side for long enough and decided it was time to see the moon pull on my side of the earth for a while.

The last thing I wrote was a simple exercise in letting the mind wander as I inspected me, twenty-five random things about myself. I realized how easy that was and thought I might be up for a bigger challenge: twenty-five good things Diabetes has brought into my life.

I am sure I could rattle of a good five or six typical responses, but to get to twenty-five I would actually have to think. I thought it might be interesting to see how many would be up for the challenge to look at their own tragedy or trial and try to see how many they could come up with. Maybe it’s just what the doctor ordered.

And so it is, 25 good things diabetes has brought…

1. It wasn’t cancer or Leukemia. Those were the other options my doc proposed that my symptoms would match.

2. It has brought great discipline to my life. I have always been an undisciplined sort and had been praying that God would give me more discipline for about two years before he obliged. Little did I know…

3. It gave me a greater appreciation for what an amazing body God has designed in that it can balance the amount of insulin released from the pancreas, the amount of glucose released from the liver, the signals of fullness after a meal, the amount of stress hormones flowing around and the ever changing needs of muscle tissue for sugar. And it only allows the amount of sugar running around in my blood to vary less than 40 milligrams in every liter of blood. When I am left to the task I sometimes can’t get it to stay within hundreds of milligrams.

4. It has allowed me to team up with some pretty amazing people who are charging and changing the face of diabetes. People who challenge the notion that diabetics need to be mellow when it comes to pushing their bodies to the limit. People crazy enough to do the Ironman Triathlon, to climb mountains and to run a 200-mile relay over 24 hours. They inspire me to push myself harder every day I am out training. Without diabetes I would never have pushed myself to join a group (I was never much of a joiner)

5. It has made my life hard enough that I often get to the point where things are so bad that all I can do is resort to laughing at how ridiculously hard all of this is. What else can I do when my blood sugar is so low that I can barely control my impulses and have come within seconds of pouring an entire box of cereal over my head because it seemed like it might feel nice.

6. Without Diabetes, I would not have found out so quickly how great my husband, Tony, would be at taking care of me and forcing me to talk about all that I was feeling.

7. Diabetes gave me the ability to take off an extra 6 months during my pregnancy with Eli. That was time that I got to be a stay-at-home-mom for my eldest, Shea, time I treasure. It also gave me nine months off when Shea was born.

8. Diabetes gave me a reason to write a book, or maybe I should say, be in the process of writing a book.

9. 25 is going to be hard…

10. Diabetes really drove home the divide between spirit and body. I can remember in the early days walking out of my doctor’s office in Los Alamitos and realizing my body was now broken. My pancreas just didn’t work like it was supposed to. But my spirit still remained as it was. It forever divided the two in my mind.

11. If Diabetes is the worst thing that has happened in my life, I have led a charmed life. There are many worse things that can happen.

12. I get to bring my own candy anywhere I want-- movies, meetings, etc.

13. It has humbled me in a way that I needed big time. Being an arrogant, pompous fool never benefited anyone. I figured out real quickly that I was just as susceptible to harm and tragedy as the next guy. The invincible teen years ended before their time.

14. Diabetes started my running, swimming and triathlon career. When I was diagnosed my doc said I had to exercise everyday. I was in college so I couldn’t really join any teams, wasn’t quite good enough for college ball. So I did what I could do alone and with no equipment, I ran. One of my friends got me into swimming at the pool at UCSD between classes and I already rode my bike daily (the result of personal budgetary restraints and expensive parking permits on campus.) My competitive spirit put all three together and I started tri’s.

15. My daughter is well trained in calling 911?

16. I think it turned the balances in my favor in getting sponsorship with the Power Puff Girls/Cartoon Network for surfing. I wrote some cheesy paragraph in how I am just like the Power Puff Girls because I fight my own monsters. Yeah, I know, I played the D card. But every now and then you have to.

17. I have a great relationship with my doctor because I see him so often. He is so comfortable that he’ll sit down and rap with me for a while about the good ol’ college days. So when I do have a problem he always takes the time to hear me out.

18. I can always look back and say the reason I got a C in O-Chem is because my sugars were in the 7 or 800’s when I took my final (even though when I took O-Chem C I got a C too but I was fine.)

19. I never have to pony up a doctor’s note for an absence if my employer asks because I have a chronic condition. (Anyone up for a Tuesday morning surf when the Santa Ana’s are blowing and everyone else is at school or work?)

20. It has on many occasions forced me to face my own mortality.

21. I have met a few good-looking firemen and paramedics when I have had to call 911 because my sugars had gotten too low.

22. Diabetes makes sailing solo through the Florida Keys for four days more than a self-indulgent pleasure cruise and turns it into a chance to inspire others to do what people have told them they couldn’t because they are supposed to be good little diabetics and not push themselves to find new ways to conquer what in their Pre-D lives would have been commonplace and so easy.

23. It gives me a cause to raise money for. Insulindependence.com has this same mindset of helping Diabetics push themselves and inspire other diabetics to do the same. Check them out. (And if you want to help me, check out http://www.firstgiving.com/erinspineto.) Yeah I know it’s a shameless plug, but what can I say? It is an advertisers world.

24. Maybe diabetes has just allowed me to give you a reason to see the bright side?

25. Diabetes gives me a reason to come up with twenty-five reasons that diabetes has been good to me and spend the last hour practicing some writing skills.

25 Random Facts

So I was asked to write 25 random things about myself. what follows is the answer...

1. i am a procrastinator. look how long it took me to do this. I am so behind on the trend.

2. i am a diabetic, type 1, who runs triathlons and sails to prove that i am in control, not my broken pancreas.

3. i am writing my memoirs on doing #2.

4. i hate capitalizing stuff when i type.

5. i want to sail single handed around the florida, keys. alone. by myself. without any one else (starting to get the point of the trip?)

6. i am not actually a writer

7. biochem degree from UCSD and a minor in visual arts just to give my brain a rest ( and because secretly I am an artist- just don't look to my work for confirmation of that fact.)

8. i married my best friend after telling him that, even though he was getting the word from God that we were going to get married, i too had been praying and getting the opposite answer. One of us was wrong and it certainly wasn't me. (not the last time i was wrong, or "mistaken" if we are using p.c. speak)

9. married an artist, an oil painter to be more precise. so i guess i put that art degree to work after all. i try not to sound too stupid at all the gallery openings we have to get all gussied up for.

10. kind of random, but i guess that's the point... hadn't kissed a boy in 8 years when i first kissed tony after he proposed

11. want to do lots of traveling but mostly with in the 30's. (that's latitude for the geographically disinclined). no need for the rolling forties or roaring fifties near where its way too cold for people to actually exist without 42 layers of clothing.

12. live in encinitas, ca because its a community where on saturday morning most of the kids at the coolest donut shop on earth are only in their trunks and never have their hair combed and are only making a quick stop before they hit the beach until sundown and sometimes after. Their parents, most of the time, match.

13. wow... really... 25?

14. i have 28 teeth?

15. lived with a different group of six girls for the last three years of college with at least one each year with an eating disorder.

16. think that the only acceptable source of caffeine input should be Diet Dr. Pepper. no coffee, tea only if i think i am writing while sitting on the floor at a barnes and nobles after the kids have gone to bed for the night

17. had a birthday party when i was ten that no one showed up to. i would like to think it was because it was the same weekend as halloween parties (dumb planning) but really it probably wasn't. too much grrr in my early days. didnt learn to fake the bubbly perky until later in life and still dont do it well

18. just had to get up and test my blood sugar because it often drops when i write. probably from all the energy i have to expend to come up with all this super "deep" stuff :) <---that is the silly little symbol people type to show that they are making a joke? right? i think id rather go with a "ha" from deep within the belly, kind of like one santa would do if he got drunk and forgot his lines, "ha, ha, ha" "isnt that the stupid line they always give me in all those sappy, crappy movies aired just before i get my break in jamaica?"

22. Yeah is kipped a couple.. what of it?

23. i just learned to spell piece when i was twenty-five when my 6th graders got sick of my misspelling on the overhead and leant me the silly little saying i still repeat in my head each time i spell it. "piece of pie." translation piece starts just like the word pie p-i-e

24. i still can only tell my left from my right when i picture myself taking off on a wave. i instinctly know my right is front side and my left is backside. the whole put your pointer and thumb out to make an L doesn't work for me because they both look like L's to me . sorry I had a hard time flipping my letters as a kid. think they should have put me in special ed and medicated me for that one. (insert another lame symbol or maybe we should dod the LOL thingy here)

25. i have just finished this thing

Socially Retarded- Who Me?

It has been so long since I have felt so socially retarded. For those of you who knew me in high school and college you know how socially inept I can be. Get me in small groups or in a card game or around any sport and I am on my game.

But when that group grows to fifteen or twenty or it becomes a party carried only by conversation and I freak out. I go someplace in my mind and can't seem to come back out. And the worst part, I think, is that I get this look on my face as if I were going to kill somebody. Don't really know why. I guess that's just the way my face kinks up when I go to that place.

So, today my social ineptitude hit again without any warning. But I think I found at least one of the many triggers. I am trying to make my way into a new group of people. Trying to befriend a couple people. I went to a party with about twenty-five to thirty people. First mistake.

And its a post-marathon party. Mistake number two. The conversation naturally went from did you race today to how did you do? So I am getting stories of P.R.'s and beating personal goals. And I start doing a little math on their numbers and am realizing just how fast they are and how slow I am.

Now running has never been my strength, I am really more of a swimmer, but in the last year I made some huge improvements in my running. I could dismiss a few people as being faster than me, (my dad told me long ago, there will always be someone smarter, someone faster, someone more talented), but every one of them was far and away way faster than I could ever dream to be.

The slowest person ran 13.1 miles at a faster pace than I can even run one. And so I am all of a sudden thoroughly intimidated and feeling like crap.

Not to mention that I am already completely intimidated by a few of the Ironman triathletes in the group. You know those insane people who swim 2.4 MILES, then get on a bike and ride 112 MILES and then, because that couldn't be enough, they run a marathon, 26.2 MILES.

Some of these guys I am so intimidated by that I can't seem to carry on a normal conversation without either stumbling over my words or resorting to my old standby, sarcasm, and not the kind-hearted type.

So after thirty-four years on this planet and finally, post-high school, learning to fake it pretty well, I am back in that 6th grade dance paralyzed with the fear of a huge group of people and no idea of how to navigate it. I guess I can get over it, just need a good-nights sleep and a fast run tomorrow. I just hope people had enough to drink to overlook that stupid girl in the corner not saying a word and looking like someone just drank her last beer.