I am sitting here crying. Reliving or more to the point feeling the deep, soulful loss of my sister. My heart aches, my brain feels like it in a vice and I feel like I want to jump out of my skin to get away from myself. I feel a desperate need to have my sister hold me. Protect me. Take care of me. Tell me everything will be alright. She was and will always be my —– I cannot find the words to describe what she means to me and how deep I feel the loss.

It has been more than 8 years and I feel the loss as severely now as I did then.

When I was six my father died. It was not a tragic loss to me than or now, as I did not know him well. He had been sick with lung cancer since I was two. In and out of hospitals, requiring my mother to go to work. Thus, I lost many of my years with my mother.

While my grandmother had administrative responsibility for taking care of me and my younger sister. My older sister, Kathy, raised me. Gave me love, tenderness and a presence in my life that gave me —– again the words will not come. But, let me try.

• balance

• center

• stabilizing force

• shield from myself

• physical closeness with emotional solidarity

• reflection of the deepest part of myself

• my soul

I know I am missing some part of me. I am missing something from my life. More so, as I know in my logical mind, that part I am missing I will never fill again.

Losing my dad was like missing a meal. I was hungry, but too young to understand how starving I would become. Losing my sister, was like having a physical part of me riped out and reliving it several times a year. Than with my mom’s illness I was able to get close to her after so many years and than she passes. The small part of the missing part that seemed to be filled with connecting my mom, gone in a flash of a heart attack.

Than I was alone. Still alone now. In a way if feels like I am falling with nothing to grab hold of and knowing there is no one to catch me. The fall is slow, constant. The darkness below deepens as my fear and loneliness increases.

I am deep into this fall, but not quite at the bottom. I will not go splat, but be absorbed by the darkness. I fear that the most.

One of my favorite shows is House.  The writing it great and so is the acting, but the character House has something that I just don’t have, but desperately want.  It is not the intelect or the scuffy beard.  It is the ability to dismiss his mistakes, screw ups.  While it is never stated, he just doesn’t walk the talk of the only way to succeed is to make mistakes, he lives it.  Well, acts it.

The character demonstrates how the only way to successfully solve difficult problems is to not be afraid of making mistakes and to have a level of persistance walking the edge of insanity.  For most of us, we need a strong level of persistance, but to greatly control that fear of the MISTAKE.

I screwed up today.  Not just once, several times.  But, the last one will keep me up for several hours.  It was a mistake that could have been prevented, should have, but was not.  Now the mistake did yes provide an opportunity.  One, it allowed me to recontact someone I am desperate to get in touch with and two, perhaps, just perhaps it allowed me to demonstrate that I am willing to admit my mistakes openly and not just say I am sorry, but offer a way to make it better.

Like the 3 step apology.  State what you did wrong.  Sincerely (and you need to learn to fake it sometimes) apologize and take full responsibility.  Lastly, as how you can make it up to the person, group or in George Bush’s case a country. Well, several actually.

I am beating myself up mentally for the mistake and now instead of getting somewhat near 8 hours of sleep, it will be more like 4.  Considering the topic of this blog, my T2 will not benefit.

I wish I did not have diabetes, but more than that I wish I could convince 12 year old instead of me that it is not only okay to make mistakes, but it is necessary.  I know that, you know that, but  that 12 year old is a stubborn and was brought up by a untolerant Grandmother who did not admit to mistakes and fully instilled that thought process in her grandson.

I hate screwing up and worse screwing up in front of people.  I fear I have passed this along to my children.  Before I die, I will correct that in them.  I hope it is not too late for me, but I fear that it is.

Lead us not into temptation, but deilver us from evil.  Forgive us of our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned upon us.  While a mistake, screw up is not a sin (oh it can be), but forgiving yourself or better thinking that you don’t have to forgive yourself because the mistake was/is necessary.

I had to make this mistake, I did.  For one it is now giving me the incentive to write this entry.  Two it will give me more evidence of the contacts manner in how they handle someone making a mistake.

It is not just that in the end IT could be a good thing, it is that most mistakes we make (that don’t do harm to us or others) are GOOD things, necessary things.  Let me replace my old behaviour with this desired one.

This blog has become less about my T2 and more about my general unhappiness with being out of work, unable to get my business going, unhappy marriage and pile T2 on top of that and I am one whiny SOB. Today is one of those oh poor me days. Home alone, listening to depressing music (City of Angels soundtrack) and mindlessly surfing the web. Seeking something to inspire me out of this doldrum. Yes, ending it all has been thought, but like everything else lately I don’t have the compunction to carry it out. I would think it through too much and have to consider all the options and consequences of those options. By than I would like, fuck it.

Poor economy, crime rising, me unable to make a deep connection with another human being, no income, living on unemployment, feeling worthless and embarassed to get the help that is widely available to me. I am a superior hyprocrite, am I.

I feel like crawling back into bed and hiding for the entire day, week, month or year. But, I have practically been doing that for a year already. A year, dear god.

Well, this has helped just enough to get me to do something. Tune in for more drivel in the future.

I have for the last couple of years struggled with energy levels. I have a combination of T2 and hypothyroidism and take that lovely combo of synthroids and glucophage pills to manage. While the BG has stopped flucuating and I am experimenting to see how to drive them down. My energy is still low overall. So I am on the bad cycle of needing more energy to have higher activity, but I have low energy which drives me to sleep or sit and focus on a A D D like thinking (whereas I cannot concentrate on one subject for more than 60 seconds).

So, here I am in this merry go round and I continue to struggle to get off this ride.

I continue to use this blog to vent, spout of and general put into words my limited thoughts on my disease and my management of my disease.

If you have read this thank you, if you comment, I will be beyond thankful.

As I work my way through my T2 diet plans, medications and BG testings I have found that my confidence in myself is completely shaken. Can I put the blame on my T2. No, of course not. But, along with a depressed economy, my body letting me down has me now become a stagnant. I cannot make a decision, even the simplest of decisions. With my BG all over the map at present regardless of my cardio activity, eating those hmmm tasty high fiber, high protein and low carb cereals for breakfast and broiled chicken and fish. I feel a strong loss of control over my life and that my decisions do not matter.

This has left me indecisive. Really, really indecisive. I cannot decide what to eat, what type of exercise to do and it is seriously impacting my work. I am paid for my opinion and I struggle to decide what to recommend. I develop new business by strong networking and I struggle to decide what company to target and so on and so on.

I feel emotionally weak and find that I spend an inordinate amount of time starting and stopping working on things and delaying completing things due to the fear I have of trusting my decisions on what and how I do those things.

I track my meals, my exercise, I average my calories at 2,000 a day with the main calories coming from proteins (I really hate broiled chicken, just hate it), drink 8 glasses of water a day, sleep 7-8 hours a night and than take a BG and get a 130 in the morning and have breakfast and it zooms to 207. WTF. Why do all this discipline when it does nothing. Ok, let’s drop to 1,800 cals, do 90 minutes cardio and oh boy it only flies up to 198.

I fight each day to get past it, but for now I am pretty much coasting. I do not like to coast, I like pedal on the floor.

I have been experiencing there midday headaches, migraine like in nature.  The occur around 3pm and I cannot seem to track their occurrence.  The only pattern is those are the days I miss out on my morning snack due to work related schedules.  I do have a afternoon snack, but it does not help and the headaches are debilitating.  Also, three times after my dinner meal I have being extremely sleepy and seem forced to go to bed.  I go to sleep around 7 or 8pm and sleep all night until 6pm the next morning.

I have checked support sites and got nothing.  My doctor’s appointment is in a few weeks, so I will continue to track to provide her with a pattern.

Okay, so I am monitoring my blood sugar and exercising, plus working my diet.  But, two days this week I got taken out and I cannot figure it out.  The first day I skipped breakfast (okay, I know) and had lunch late.  It was lunch out, a salad, too big of a ribeye and green beans. I stuck to the water and skipped the dessert.  My sugar seemed fine when I took it in the car, but by the time I got home I had a headache that was disabilitating.  I ate a banana, no help.  A salad, nada.  Obviously, the tylenol had no effect.  I could not read, sleep, sit still or anything.  Finally, I was able to drift off to sleep around 11, and I woke the next day just fine.

Than two days later, sugar seemed high all day and right after dinner I could not keep my eyes open.  It ws barely 7 and I was drifting off to sleep.  For dinner I had homemade pizza, with meatballs and pasta with meat sauce.  It knocked me out.  I went to sleep at 8am and woke up the next morning at 7am.  Again, felt fine.  Today, no problems whatsoever.

Is this normal?

The life of a diabetic involves the daily multiple testing of your blood sugar.  Wake up in the morning, poke a tiny hole in your finger and drip a drop of blood on a test strip.  Than record the number and go eat.  After you eat, stick yourself again and test.    Repeat this 2 or 3 more times a day.  The direct benefit is you get a detailed picture of your up and downs of blood sugar through the day.  I myself am high in the morning and progressively lower through the day.

The indirect benefit is that the routine focuses your attention on when you eat and what you eat.  I don’t enjoy the pinprick six times a day nor the cost (even with good insurance coverage).  I offer up to those who have lived with diabetes for years and even more so as they are required to inject themselves my admiration. My whinning about diabetes and what I have to do each day surely would seem to a fellow diabetic as protesting too much.

Back to my routine and I wish all diabetics luck with keeping the discipline in maintaining their routines.

I am a Capital Blue Cross customer. I use the word customer specifically, because Capital Blue Cross labels me a ‘member’. You know, like it is a health insurance club. Like I would have some say or vote in how they manage their business. But, I pay some $900 a month as a customer. Not a member. As a customer I get shuttled around from place to place.

I was assigned a nurse to help me create a diabetes management plan. She informs me to call the main insurance number to get a new glucometer, that she cannot help me. I call the main number who tells me I need to call Express Scripts as a glucometer is a perscription. I call Express Scripts and ask if I can email them the perscription and the form for it to expedite the process. They say no, they can only accept a fax or mail. “Don’t dream about squashing them like a bug, don’t don’t don’t”

I ask what glucometers will my benefit pay for, their response was oh so priceless. ‘Well, I cannot really tell you that as our system does not provide a list of them that I can access. If you tell me a specific model, I can look it up one at at time to see if it is available. However, you can go to our website, login and be able to find a complete list on the website”.

So, I call the doctor and ask them to fax over the perscription and the nurse taking a bit of a tone with me wonders if that is something they should do. Again, I am my doctor’s, CUSTOMER. Not a patient, a CUSTOMER. Gees, this is putting me into a level of pissed off that I cannot believe.

Screw the diabetes, this bloody healthcare culture is going to create so much frustration my arteries will harden with each phone call.

I know I am not alone with with my frustration at my insurance company, nor this crappy body of mine that decided to let me down by having me deal with diabetes. So, I will along with my brethren of bloggers out their tilt and shout at windmills.

I denied for years that my ’sugar’ issue would get worse. I treated it like my seasonal allergies. I would gain some weight, than sugar would become an issue and I would focus on losing it. I never really was angry, so those stages of dealing with grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance) that can be said for most any change in your life, sometimes can be skipped. However, I find myself feeling low, depressed or just generally shitty and unable to break this pattern.

If I look at the past week since my doctor and I had that discussion about this was going to be with me foreverrrrrr. I have not sleep more than 3-4 hours a night, mop around and general avoid all activity outside of watching some TV and eating (though as good a diabetic diet as possible). I am very A.D.D. too with my attention span even shorter than usual. My work, I work from home and have my share of down time, does not interest me either. I don’t read, a sanctuary that I would normally crawl into when feeling low. I pitter around my home.

I keep thinking I should exercise (I have not run for a week), get my writing done, or just go out for a drive. Nothing. I think about it and than it is like the thought goes away. I don’t feel bad about it. By bad, I mean guilty over doing nothing. I just don’t care. I get enough umph up each day to head to my office, but that is it. My routines are mostly shot to hell.

I wake at all times of the night, I brush my teeth, I head downstairs to take my morning medicine and than just let the day slide away until I am tired at night. I than hope that when I get in bed that I will fall asleep. Last night I took an over the counter sleep aid and I drifted rather quickly, but than work up at 3am feeling like I was hung over and still drunk.

Is it the diabetes? My reaction to knowing about my diabetes? I don’t know.

I small part of me does want this to end, nothing it cannot last forever. But, the rest of me does not care how long this feeling goes on.

I will focus on posting something new this weekend.