Making Lemonade…

 …because, for some reason, Mother Nature keeps sending us Lemons!

…and I have enough sugar to sweeten it, too!  Too bad it’s in my blood and not something that will make lemons more tolerable.  

Well, I’m slowly learning what foods like me and what don’t.  Or should I say "what foods my body likes and what it doesn’t?"  It doesn’t seem to matter how many charts, menus, or lists they give you, when you’re trying to maintain your glucose levels, it all boils down to trial and error and experience.  I’ve found that if I eat raw foods ALL DAY LONG, eat healthy carbs like brown rice, whole wheat bread, yams, etc., I seem to manage my sugar fairly well.  Problem is, I run out of food way too soon and am left with stuff I can only "taste" when it comes to portion sizes.  One day I’ll eat something and my sugar will skyrocket, the next day I can eat the same thing and everything stays normal.  It’s weird, but I think it has something to do with when I take my meds and how active I’ve been.  

I made my "Awesome Turkey Soup" (let me know if you want the recipe) on Saturday and thought, "Okay, I can have one bowl of soup with one cornbread muffin."  It was our dinner and I was feeling fairly well that day.  Two hours after eating TWO bowls of soup with one cornbread muffin, I was feeling icky and shaky.  I thought, "goodness, did it raise my sugar too high?  I shouldn’t have eaten "two" bowls – I’m such a piggy."  I checked my sugar and it was only 89.  Too low!!  I couldn’t believe it!!  How the heck could it be so low after eating all that??  I ate one more cornbread muffin and it brought my sugar back up in the normal range.  

Oh, but have ONE piece of pizza with a salad and I could sweeten 40 gallons of lemonade!!!

It sucks.

I woke up yesterday morning feeling sick.  My blood sugar was only 82.  Not dangerously low but too low to think about driving a car 30 minutes away.  I ate one banana and a piece of whole wheat toast.  Two hours later it was all the way up to 190.  I REALLY felt sick then.  So, needless to say, I didn’t make it to Mass and ended up drinking a few glasses of water and went back to bed.  

This is a lot harder than it was when I had Gestational Diabetes while pregnant with Liz.  I’ve made diet changes but I’m still tweaking it to find what works and what doesn’t.  

I better get moving here.  I have to run up to the Health Dept. to purchase a copy of Wesley’s Birth Certificate now that we finally have a few extra dollars.  Holiday pay is such a nice thing.  🙂

I sat down to talk with Hubby last night to find out what he was thinking about doing about the Disability.  He looked so depressed it made me want to bite my tongue off for even mentioning it.  After he let out a long, slow sigh, he said, "Well, I can’t keep going on the way I have.  I’m going to try to hold out until the end of January or early part of February.  Hopefully we’ll get a decent tax return and we’ll be able to live off of that for a while if we’re very careful."  Then he looked at me with that look that always says, "I’m sorry.  I feel like a fool."  

I told him he was a very good man and that he’s done remarkably well at providing for his family in spite of being paid an unfair wage.  I reminded him of how many people in our situation would be living in the streets because they didn’t know how to manage their money right.  I reminded him of all the years of hard work, putting in 45 to 50 hours a week, he did for a business that he loved and for people who didn’t have a clue what it was like to struggle from day to day.  I told him, "perhaps this is God’s way of giving you rest.  Most people in your condition would have boo-hooed their heart out long ago seeking Disability when they were still perfectly able to work.  You held out as long as you could and now you have to accept the cross that’ s been handed you and be thankful for everything you’ve accomplished and all that you have.  God willing, it will be my turn, now."

Then he said, "Well, all that keeps me going is knowing that somewhere, somehow, there are people in the world who have it worse than us and it makes me thankful."  Then, to lighten the mood he said, "Now get cracking woman, the world doesn’t revolve around you!" 

I smiled, kissed him goodnight and went down stairs to get the kids ready for bed.

When I dropped him off at work this morning he said, "I dread trying to work until 4:30 today."  He usually will work all day on Monday’s since those are his best days.  For him to say he might not be able to, really identifies to me how bad it’s getting for him.  I told him to call me if he needs me to pick him up early, then headed back home.

It’s days like this that just make me want to scream.  The temptation to question God is so strong that I have to use every force of my will not to.  At times I just want to cry an ocean of tears and yell at the Universe for being so unfair and so mean.  Fear wants to dominate me, make me doubt and despair.  Worry wants to put me under a rock to hide from everything and everyone.  Anger makes me want to destroy and tear something up!!  Sometimes I just want to be able to run and run so hard that I collapse in a heap of flesh.  

There’s no walking away from this…

Then, Wesley or one of the girls will walk up to me and say or do something really silly and I’m reminded of what I have.  It’s really so much more than what a lot of people have.  There are families right now that really are homeless.  Dysfunctional families who fight, argue and hate eat other.  People in the world who are dying of famine, starvation and disease.  Children and Elderly people being abused, tortured and even killed.  Wars, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, murderers, the list goes on and on and never ends.  

Who am I to complain of hardship?  What makes us any better than those who are suffering intolerable atrocities?  As depressed and broken as my husband is often times tempted to feel, he knows this and thinks of it often and he reminds me of it when I need to hear it.