Red and green, the colors of Yule: the poinsettia and the evergreen, the holly berry and the ivy, the winter coats and cycling helmets...

Winter coats and cycling helmets????

In early on the 11th for my shift, I walked over to the supermarket at the other end of the strip mall to pick up a few things. On the checkout line next to me, I noticed a woman shorter and older than me, wearing a bright red cycling helmet.

"I'm glad to see I'm not the only person who cycles to my errands," I said.

"It's new," she said, referring to her helmet. "It's red, so I hope they can see me." 

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One of the challenges of dealing with diabetes is our tendency to ascribe a number of aches, pains, and other medical troubles to our elevated (or wildly-swinging) blood glucose levels. Whether it be unexpected fatigue or snippiness, blurred vision, a perceived increase in thirst or change in urinary frequency, and we start thinking "highs, lows, and complications".

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For me, the desire to live to 100 is all about quality of life. Frankly, living to any age is about quality of life.

I don't know that I considered my mortality much until I was diagnosed with diabetes. I was 30 when I was diagnosed. Which means that at the traditional retirement age, I will have lived with diabetes for 35 years. That's a pretty long time. Live 20 years past retirement, and diabetes will have been part of my life for more than half a century.

One of the toughest parts of living with diabetes for me are the intangibles--I feel fine now, but that doesn't mean that my internal organs or my eyes aren't feeling the strain of high blood sugars and extended periods of time living with a chronic disease. (READ MORE)

A funny thing happened this week. I turned forty.

Okay, perhaps it wasn't so funny.

The morning of my birthday, I took a long moment in front of my bathroom mirror. My apartment complex management was kind enough to replace the subtle lighting over the mirror that we'd had for two years with new, direct lights that look fancy but which might be more appropriate for an interrogation than the gentle transition from being asleep to facing the reality of my new life as a forty-something. Looking in the mirror, I swear I could hear the faint creaking sound of my bones as they calcified. (READ MORE)