A Dedication

After the last of the kids started school and we were both working for someone else the money was abundant and so too was the impulse to have the things that money could buy. If you let it money can spoil a perfectly good thing, such as happiness and peace

The First Measurable Visit

The first three month endocrinologist check up started and ended with the same question from Lia: Why did my pancreas stop producing insulin? She asked it of me and her mother as we were entering the building and again later of the PA near the end of the exam. All

The Part of the Pancreas

Most people don’t think much about the pancreas. Most of them of course don’t have to think about it at all. But there are a few who, because of events that have occurred outside of their control, must spend a great deal of thought deliberating exactly what it

Lonesome du Jour

It gets very lonely when there is just one of you because there is no one to share in the worry and fatigue of what has become a daily ritual so that the headaches and sleeplessness and frayed nerves are yours and yours alone. When being apart was something you

Out of Sight, Out of Our Minds

We knew the invitation was coming, we just didn’t know when and it was like waiting the arrival of a dreaded phone call. On the day Lia brought it home from school it was mostly a green day, so the notion of letting her spend the night at another

One a.m.

The Things We Have Now The chirping alarm clock wakes her. Promptly the comforter stirs, legs skimming across the mattress. A shadow lifts out of the gloom as she pulls herself from the bed. She passes like a spirit through the room and stoops outside the door. Seconds later blue-white

The Beginnings of a Long-term, Long-distance Relationship

It is difficult for me to write about the research being done by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and others like them. This is partly because of the science involved and the fact that I have not yet fully educated myself on the terms and studies being done to cure

The White Deer

One fall evening around dusk we had gathered around the kitchen window to see out into the woods on the northern side of the yard where there was making her way down the trail toward the house a small white deer. There were ten or so other does with her

Phone Privileges

The Things We Have Now She calls at ten a.m. I want to talk about school. How she’s doing, what she’s learning. She entertains my wishes only momentarily, then gives me her meter reading. I say the number back to her and write it down. She asks

Knowing Beans

Meanwhile, we were very hungry for information. We knew very little about diabetes and what we did know consisted mostly of what we had learned from my father’s type 2, which he suffered after a long while of poorly managing his congestive heart disease. Even that, because we did