Today is the 6th Annual D-Blog Day and in some ways, I'm stymied by the topic: Gina has proposed we all do a 12" x 12" scrapbook page. Growing up, a scrapbook was a shoelace-tied book of heavy vellum-colored Manilla paper to which one pasted telegrams, newspaper clippings, greeting cards, and the like. In theory, one scrapbook could last a lifetime; in reality, the pages started falling out about five years in, and we always had to be careful not to lose either the pages or the stuff glued on to them. My mother's scrapbook has telegrams of congratulations from relatives who couldn't make her wedding and a guest-card with the lyrics to "Bei Mir Bist Du Shane", telegrams of congratulations when my sister and I were born, and newspaper clippings from every time one or another of us was mentioned in the local newspaper. (READ MORE)

The second annual "No-D Day" was Friday, 7 October. I missed it in preparation for Yom Kippur.

This is the second year that the diabetes online community has dedicated a day specifically to writing about things other than, um, diabetes. Let's face it: most of the time our posts are so full of highs, lows, food diaries, d-meetups, medication schedules, glucose tests, and so on that we tend to lose site that behind those walls of figures sit real people. People with parents, spouses or partners, sometimes children, sometimes furkids, jobs, homes (we hope!), and a whole range of interests beyond the latest FDA letter drive for an iPhone-mounted glucometer or a low-suspend pump.

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Between the High Holy Days, my upcoming JDRF walk, and online friends who are mourning recent losses, the deceased have been on my mind lately.

More specifically, those who have been lost to diabetes -- whether as a patient or as a victim of someone Driving While Low -- as well as those with diabetes who have died, but not from diabetes.

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There's a reason I don't watch 9/11 memorials and retrospectives. I spent too many months breathing in the remains of the never-identified mixed with burning concrete, steel, and asbestos. For too many months, my previously-direct route into work was disrupted and made roundabout. For too many months, the scaffolding, National Guardsmen, barricaded streets, and ubiquitous grey dust left us worried of another attack that might complete the destruction that the attacks on the World Trade Center left half-done. I spent too many months wondering about what my religious responsibilities were to the families of those I never knew, whose loved ones' remains would remain as a body burden in my lungs, and too many months worrying about latent effects that might not show up until ten, twenty, or even thirty years after my exposure to that environment.

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Sometimes, the weirdest things can set us off. Earlier today, Sara tweeted that she'd written a letter in rhyme, saying she was "#outofcontrol". I asked whether it was Alexandrine, Limerick, iambic pentameter, or something else, and that set my mind to composing "random diabetes limericks"...

Starting with...

A woman who had diabetes
Says her doc told her, "Never eat Wheaties.
The starches and fructose
Will spike up your glucose
And violate national treaties."

After coming up with the starting couplet of

A man who had lived with Type 1
For more years than the Earth saw the sun

it took me a while to finish it with (READ MORE)

LP

When I tell my "real-life" friends stories about my friends from the Diabetes Online Community (DOC), I'm often told that my stories make these people sound real.

"Well," I say, "They are real. In many ways more real than some people I've met face to face."

I usually get the look then. The one that says: Nicole has been spending too much time online. Nicole's friends all live in the box.

That's the furthest thing from the truth. I mean - really - who can spend too much time online? And my friends don't live in the box, they just talk to me through it. Right?

I'm getting to the point. Patience. (READ MORE)