Hurricanes
Will began struggling with worries in kindergarten. His throat hurt and he worried that he wouldn't be able to swallow at school. I tried to explain to him that his throat was tight because he was...
View ArticleBirth Story
My children's birth stories are different. I did not experience the surprise of my water breaking naturally, or the surge of nervous excitement that follows. I did not count contractions. With our...
View ArticleAsking for Help
The closer I got to home, the worse I felt. It was becoming hard to pick my feet up off the ground; they shuffled and dragged along the pavement like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz when the...
View ArticleLegacy
Unable to fall asleep, I wonder what having a child with diabetes was like from Mom's point of view. I wonder how my diagnosis changed the way she'd mothered me over the years. Here she was in bed...
View ArticleTeam Mercer
For 25 years I avoided diabetes support groups. When I was a kid I refused to go to any kind of diabetes camp because I didn't want anyone to see me prick my finger, to smell the alcohol swipe as I...
View ArticleHappy Endings
I gasped loudly in the silence of our sleeping house. She wouldn't trade it for the world? Angry and offended, I sat upright in the chair, startling Reid. How could she say that? She, who because her...
View ArticleSwimming With My Clothes On
Since I became a mother, my husband hasn't reached over in the middle of the night to feel my sweaty back, to wake from the heaviness of sleep and rush to the kitchen for a glass of juice. Since I...
View ArticleA Nutritional Low
I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes sixteen years ago when my vision deteriorated from 20/20 to nearly-blind in three days. Since then, I've been very fortunate: not only am I still free of...
View ArticleInheritance
Miles was drinking the bathwater again. I saw him as I walked by the open door of the bathroom, on my way to get the boy's pajamas from their bedroom. My feet dragged. The end of our long day would...
View ArticleWork Matters
I was 29 years old and had been married for two months when I lost vision in one eye and was bedridden. The diagnosis was multiple sclerosis (MS). At first I didn't have a clue what that meant. I spent...
View ArticleCravings
Going to McDonald's was a special treat when I was growing up. It was the seventies and my parents were hippies. Mom baked her own bread and canned her own jelly. We lived on 100 acres of woods in...
View Article(No Longer) an Invisible Illness
Jane told me wearing the pump would be like wearing a beeper, but the pump was nothing like a beeper; it was big and black and stuck out under my sweater, making an obvious square on my side where no...
View ArticleDouble High Risk?
Something wasn't right. My morning runs had been sluggish for weeks; my feet dragged as if I were running through quicksand. Concerned, I went through a range of questions: was I getting sick? was my...
View ArticleLucky
My mother-in-law called to ask when we were having the amniocentesis. I told her, in as level a voice as I could muster, that we weren't doing any testing. She was silent. I took a deep breath. She...
View ArticleBitter Heart
As a writer I know you can't create an all-bad character. I write non-fiction and my characters are real people, so I know I have to show both sides of the mean girls who bullied me in sixth grade. I...
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