Gone

I am going to be serving this weekend at a Lutheran Cursillo weekend. De Colores!

I'll be back late Sunday night. I am going to spend a lot of time in prayer and the DOC will be a lot of my focus.

Have a great weekend.

Peculiar Pains

My body hurts a lot. I should say, I have weird pains in weird places often and I cannot figure out when to go to the doctor for any particular one. Or all of them!

There has been a dull pain on my right side that comes and goes. I can outline the pain I keep feeling because it doesn’t move at all. It is weird and doesn’t seem to be triggered by any one thing.

Also, I keep having headaches or head pains. Usually my headaches make me feel like my head is in a vice and is being squeezed. Or the headache that is behind my eyes and makes me cringe to look too far in any one direction. Pounding, throbbing headaches are what I am used to but what I keep having is the weird head pain that feels a little like a tent spike is being rammed down into my head on the left side. It’s quick and hurts like heck but than it goes away. Again, I cannot find any trigger for it.

Imagine two people in a heated argument. On person takes their index finger and pokes the other person right in the chest. Imagine that feeling in your chest. I have that exact feeling several times a day.

When it happens I panic and my pulse increases. My heart pounds because I think something may be wrong but then it all goes away.

It seems every time I go to the doctor I bring up some new issue. It makes me wonder if my doctor thinks I am crazy. I wonder if I am crazy!

Like a moron I decided to look some of these symptoms up online. That is scary stuff but I am not one to jump to conclusions. That may be the problem. I don’t want to head to the first ER thinking it is something serious but according to Web MD I should be checking into ICU or something.

The one thing that did keep coming up online was stress. Stress can cause all kinds of weird pains and symptoms. Could that be all it is? Stress?

Every week I have doctor’s appointments it seems. Podiatrist, Dr. Awesome, CDE, and the occasional eye exam makes for missing a lot of work, paying a bunch of copayments, and spending a lot of time which I don’t have much of.

So to rush out every time I feel a weird pain seems excessive. But is that the thing to do?

It’s tough because if I was reading this about one of my friends I would tell them to get to their doctors pronto!

And yet I feel as if I am jumping the gun. Running to the doctors just to be told it’s nothing.

Do I want something to be wrong with me? Isn’t diabetes enough?

Of course I don’t want to have anything else wrong with me but I hate to hear, “we don’t know.” Not knowing is not acceptable when it comes to health in my opinion.

HA! Did you just see what I did there?

In writing this post I realize that if I think a doctor not knowing what is wrong with me is not acceptable than how can willingly avoid going to the doctor to even find out if something is wrong.

That settles it.

I am crazy.

You Tube Tuesday #241

I am not a big fan of those talent shows but this dude is incredible.

If you close your eyes you'll swear it's Eddie.

Enjoy!

My Son the Rock Star

These pictures are from the House of Blues in Anaheim. My son is the one in the middle and his band Estuarine played there last night.

They were awesome! I am so proud of all 4 of them. 

Entrepreneur

::Put on your imagination hat and follow along::

You are an entrepreneur. A new company is being created and you are the boss, chief, CEO, CFO, and it’s only employee.

This is happening but it is not of your doing. It was sort of given to you.

So as an entrepreneur you need to do some work on your new company. What is the name of your company going to be? What are you going to sell? Where are you going to set up shop? How can you market to your customers?

But wait, this new company is in an industry you have never heard of, don’t know a thing about, and did I mention that it is immediately open for business?

So now what do you do? Sure in your “You’re a new company owner” folder you received a few brochures about this and that but you have a ton of questions that these brochures don’t answer and your anxiety is kicking in. How can you do this alone? You have to hire some help!

Maybe you find a team of people to work with. A board of directors that you can see now and then to get their ideas and to help you assess your progress. That would be good right?

What about the day to day stuff? Well, that part you have to handle all by yourself. The actual work that is. So sorry if that doesn’t seem fair but it’s what you inherited.

So what do you do now? How does your company thrive?

::Hat’s off and thanks for the cooperation::

By now I am sure you have figured out that I am referring to diabetes when I talk about the “company” above. But in a lot of ways it is like a business you have to run all by yourself! Sure you have a team of doctors and professionals to help you but at the end of the day you are in charge of it all!

Now I am not a savvy businessman by any means but one thing I have learned is that others out there are a lot smarter than I am and maybe picking their brains could help me some. Networking is a smart business practice because it creates connections between businesses of different or similar nature and those connection create an two way street of advice, ideas, and knowledge.

I see the DOC this way. The more connections we make, the more people we meet, the more conversations that happen can change how we do business; I mean care for our health.  

Think back before you found this community. Do you still have the imagination hat around?

Was your diabetes life easier or harder than it is now? Have you learned anything about diabetes directly from this community or have you been able to teach others about something they may not have known? Or both?

Not all businesses are going to consider networking to be beneficial. I get that. But I think there is a huge benefit for those that do.

Same goes with PWD’s. Not all PWD’s would like the social networking we all do but I think most would. I think most people with diabetes would find it beneficial on many levels they just may not know about it.

This is my passion. To help people who feel alone find this community. No one with diabetes should ever have to feel alone.

You are not alone.