THANK YOU!!!

Seriously? I don't even know what to say except thank you so much for your support.

For those of you who helped me to reach my goal I want to thank you for lifting my spirits when I was feeling pretty down at the beginning of the week. Thank you so much for that.

And for those of you who donated to my ride back when I first announced it, I apologize for not doing what I set out to do, what I told you was going to do. I hope you can forgive me. I promise to be more realistic in the future so I don't let anyone down.

For those of you would like to donate to my ride, there is still time! Click on the link below.

I cannot wait to ride and represent Team Ninjabetic once again! 

Much love to you all!

Diabetes Court - Ninjabetic TV

My good friend Brad and I made a new short for Ninjabetic TV called "Diabetes Court." Imagine taking your pancreas to court and suing it for pain and suffering. Well that is exactly what Brad does and I wonder what Brad's pancreas has to say for itself?

I hope you like it! It was a ton of fun making it.

Check out other episodes of Ninjabetic TV by visiting NinjabeticTV.com

Help Needed!

I really wanted to do it. There was nothing that was going to stop me, nothing to stand in my way. And I can’t do it. I know I can’t.

The Tour de Cure is this coming Sunday and with life being crazy and my motivation non-existent I am not prepared to do the 32 mile ride I signed up for.

Like I said yesterday it makes me feel like a failure. But a comment from Karen made a lot of sense to me. If I only do the 8 mile ride, that will be 8 more miles I will ride than if I didn’t do it at all. And that is a distance I know I can do although still going to be hard in my state.

Maybe it would be better to take a little slower? Maybe not trying to push myself too hard in a hurry is a good idea? Maybe not hurting myself should be part of the plan? Now I sound like an idiot for feeling the way I did!

Still, there is a level of embarrassment for me. Physically I look like I should not even get on a bike but deep inside this bulky skin suit is someone with the desire to be active. I know it. I can feel it.

So now I have 5 days to hit my donation goal or I don’t get to ride. I had a goal of $2000 I wanted to reach but now, I have to reach $200 or I cannot ride. A whole zero has been removed. Yikes!

So if you are willing and able, would you please consider donating to my ride? Team Ninjabetic will be there riding to raise awareness and raising money towards a cure.

Please pass this on too if you know someone else who be willing to help a ninja out.

Thanks and GO RED RIDER!

Cave Dweller

I don’t want to be that blogger. You know the one who has lots of stuff going on in his personal life and sort of abandons all interactions only to pop in one day, apologize for being absent, and then vowing to stay put online so his friends don’t think he disappeared off the face of the earth.

I don’t want to be that blogger BUT I do feel like I owe a lot of people a lot of apologies. Life has been… well, life I guess and with it comes some things that seem so overwhelming I would rather not have to let them out or let go of them just yet.

It’s like when you hear horrible news and you feel awful about it but when you have to tell someone that same news you heard it hits you in a way you never expect. That act makes things more real and unavoidable. Maybe I was taking my time to do that? I don’t know.

The fact is that I was hiding out and I am sorry to anyone I may of caused worry or upset.

That being said I am not going to vow to some schedule or swear I will never take some time away. That is something I just cannot promise. But I hope this wave of openness sticks for a while. I am optimistic.

So, the update:

1. Diabetes wise, I am doing pretty darn good actually. Not sure what my A1C is but if I have had a fasting bg over 100 in the last 2 months it has been under 115 so that is kind of epic, for me at least.
2. Since January I have lost about 25-30 pounds depending on which scale I stand on and if I am in my Business or Birthday suit.
3. My daughter had an awesome 16^th birthday that I had the pleasure of helping throw. And the day after I became a year older but without much fuss.
4. We lost a family member to cancer but I like to think she won the battle since she is whole again in Heaven. This is something I need to write more about and will soon.
5. The Tour de Cure I signed up for is this Sunday and I am not ready, at all. I have not been able to carve out time to ride and have been on the fence about even doing it. 6 days away and I feel like just throwing in the towel. I will never be able to ride for 32 miles. I don’t think I could even make the 11 since the last 4 miles are crazy steep. Do I do the 8 mile? I feel like a failure, no I recognize that I am a failure. I hate feeling like this and have no clue what to do. One minute I think I should just go for it and in the next moment I think not.
6. I had to deal with some big changes with Dr. Awesome that I am excited and worried about. More on that too.
7. Holy week at church was awesome. In fact, I was blessed to be a part of our entire Lenten season. I lead a few songs every Wednesday night in Lent and also directed a drama series each week. Then of course we had Palm Sunday which was beautiful, our Maundy Thursday service (which I was not part of but attended), Good Friday which the band played a song and I was part of a dramatic reading of the Gospel, and two services on Easter morning! As powerful as it all was I am exhausted, physically and mentally.
8. I worked a retreat weekend a few weeks ago and I keep trying to harbor that spirit to get me through each day. It has been getting better since, slowly but surely.

I could go on and on but I don’t want to bore you much more than I am afraid I have already.

My appreciation for this place and the DOC is immeasurable. All of you are so important to me and I just want to thank you for being there for me when I finally come out of my cave. 

The Dragon and the Cliff

When people ask me about living with diabetes one question that always comes up is, "what number should you blood sugar be?" I usually tell them 70-110 is considered normal but explain that with diabetes it can fluctuate a lot.

The next set of questions always seem to be, "What is too low?" What is too high?" What happens when you go too low or too high?"

This is the story I tell to explain it and my DSMA Live co-hosts have encouraged me to share it today.

The Dragon and the Cliff

Imagine there is a cliff, a very scary cliff and when you look down over the edge you see a steep slope that suddenly drops off into a pit of total darkness. 

Now imagine far off in the distance, on a firey mountaintop lives a dragon. A fire breathing evil dragon.

Pit = Low    Dragon = High   ::moving on::

The climb up the mountain to the dragon is a constant gradual slope after only a few yards from the cliff. It's a long way up that mountain but the walk is easy. You can even run it no problem, not that you would want to. The problem is, every step closer to that dragon and his firey mountain means you are inhaling terrible fumes that are so slight you may not even notice them at first. But each breath is bad for you. Each breath is causing harm to your body. You may not know it but it is happening and it gets worse the closer you get!

The cliff is no better. In fact it is tricky too because you can walk down the beginning of the slope for a little ways but soon it gets steeper and eventually drops off to certain death! The lower you are on the slope the thinner the air gets which makes it hard to think straight. And not being able to think straight makes it hard to remember what to do to get back up the slope! 

The best place to live are those few yards between the cliff and the beginning of that giant mountain. In that space grows all the best food, the air is perfect, the grass is green, and there is even a clear stream of water running through it! It is perfect and where you want to be.

So how do you get to stay in the most perfect place in this imaginary world and avoid the pit or dragon? Well this is the tricky part. You blood glucose level determines where you are between the dragon and the cliff.

When my sugar gets high I start up the mountain and although I can walk for quite some distance before I notice all the damage being done by the toxic air I am breathing. A lot of people think since they cannot feel the burn in their lungs that it's okay, but it's not! Sneaky dragon indeed.

When my sugar gets low I start down the mountain towards that cliff. Sometimes I can be running down that mountain so fast I keep going all way to the cliff and start to slide down into the darkness. So scary and so very steep!

So that is the challenge of diabetes. With every meal, every dose of medicine, every activity, every sickness, everything that can change your blood sugar can move you up or down that mountain. And sure there may be a long way to get to that dragon, but along the way you are already being hurt. And even though that cliff is nearby and you are probably familiar with how close you are to it, something could happen to make you take a spill down it quickly which is why you have to have lots of tools with you all the time just in case!

The thing to remember is, you can do this. You can live a few feet from a scary cliff and a few yards from the beginning of a dangerous mountain. It takes having the right tools, the right information, the right support, and the right frame of mind. 

The End.

Does this make any sense to you? I find people get it and especially get how scary a low is. Also how invisible and sneaky the damage from highs can be. I tell people I lived with an A1C of 12.5 which is like 325 average for a long time and I didn't feel anything. When you are young I guess you can breath those toxic dragon mountain fumes without knowing it but all the while it was doing damage to my body. 

I feel like this needs a picture. I cannot draw so if someone can come up with something cool please email it to me and I will post them all next week. george@ninjabetic.com