In one of my high school English classes, we had to read Samuel Beckett's play of this name. Thirty-some-odd years later, I don't remember the details, only that it centered around two men who seemed to be relatively old, penniless, and alone. They met at a particular spot each day, left each evening, and could only remember one day past and think towards one day forward. They awaited a third character, the eponymously named "Godot", who never arrived. The style was considered existentialist in that there wasn't all that much character development: what you saw was what you got. While I never read the French original, in English, "Godot" seemed a thinly-veiled metaphor for "G-d" — and since old, penniless (and possibly homeless) folk have always had the shortest from-this-point life expectancy, it made sense — at least on one level — that these two characters were waiting to die.

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Earlier this week, it was announced that the focus of national anger for most of this century had met his Maker, courtesy of the United States military. The TV news showed people reacting by dancing in the streets.

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The weather outside has been relatively mild the past couple of weeks -- but you'd hardly know it from looking at me. I've been fairly consistently wearing base layers underneath my short-sleeved workshirts, multiple layers of polar fleece indoors, consuming more commercially-made soup than is good for me, drinking copious amounts of coffee, and still feeling chilled and unable to warm up.

Lest you think it's all in my head, my hands have been turning blackish from my fingernails to my knuckles -- and my toes, likewise. It's not the first autumn that I've had to deal with these issues, but it seems ridiculous that I should have to wear base layers designed to be worn for outdoor winter sports (these garments actually come with warnings to not wear them in conditions over 55 degrees Fahrenheit!) indoors just to keep from constantly shivering, yawning, and doing everything else that suggests I'm running borderline hypothermic. (READ MORE)

In observance of D-Blog Day, diabetes bloggers all over the world have been asked to identify six things they'd like people to know about diabetes. The following are mine: (READ MORE)

Last month, a friend of mine had to build a website for a class project, and the site focused on people with diabetes who had multiple health problems.  I was really struck by the title and slogan that she came up with for the project; it was "Diabetes Plus: because it's rarely just diabetes."

Those words rang true for me, as I know they do for many people, because I'm a person with type 2 diabetes, and I have several other health problems, too.

On top of diabetes, I live with congestive heart failure and related issues, obstructive sleep apnea, asthma, acid reflux, a hiatal hernia and other gastrointestinal issues, migraines, and sinus/allergy problems.  There may be something I'm forgetting, but you get the idea.

And there's an equally crazy list of medications that accompanies that list of health problems.  They are as follows: (READ MORE)

From time to time, a heated discussion will erupt around the terms and phrases "prediabetes", "borderline diabetes", and "beating diabetes". The basic gist of the debate goes like this:

Someone will post that he was told he has "borderline diabetes" or "prediabetes", or that he had type 2 diabetes, but since he changed his diet, got off his diabetes medications, and has normal lab results, he has reversed or cured his diabetes.

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