Amidst the candles, the dreidels, the latkes (potato pancakes), gifts, and gelt (either real money or foil-covered chocolate coins), there is the maggid (story). The story of a people, oppressed by a new king who wishes them to assimilate into a different religion and culture (or to assimilate more fully into that culture), a king who defiles the holiest of holy sites, families of resistance fighters who perish -- completely -- in the quest to keep one's lifestyle and beliefs alive, and a small, hermetically-sealed bottle of oil which -- miraculously -- burned for eight days, a full week longer than it should have, enough time for its replacement to be made. Ness gadol haya sham -- a great miracle happened there.

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A box within a box within a box within a box.

Sometimes, that's the best description of my, your, or anyone else's diabetes.

The big box is Diabetes itself.

The next box is the "Type" box. Usually only two of them fit into the large case, but some folk will cram in two or more smaller boxes ("Gestational", "LADA", "MODY", and others) as well.

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"...every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main..."

While Donne's meditation has been somewhat trivialized by the parlor game, "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", the more people we meet, and the more experiences we have, the more connections to others we develop, and the more we become part of the "continent" of human life. Each group of people we encounter, and allow to enter our lives, gives us a different perspective from which to view the other groups and connections and degrees of connection of which we are part. We are woven further and more deeply into the network of human existence, and it, into us.

"...each man's joy is joy to me; each man's grief is my own..."

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www.digital.cg.yu

I absolutely love helping people understand the details of diabetes. I like to know that now there is one more person in the world who knows that carbs are more important than sugar, that it's often quite complicated, and that insulin is not a cure. Part of me wants to spread the wealth of knowledge. Part of me wants to have more join the diabetes "organization" (like the mafia).

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