Necessary break from the blog break

In case there’s anyone who stops by who hasn’t seen this.

The visual is a simulation of the flight that landed in the Hudson, the audio is the actual conversation with the tower, with a transcription in the corner of the internal communications.

I can’t find Summa Minutiae in my thank you post

If he is there, he deserves to be thanked twice, anyway.  Came to my own page to find the link to his blog (which has changed but there’s a jump) so I could find the post he had about Detroit to send to a friend, and can’t find him in my dreary paragraph below.  So, thanks to Summa for propping up my idea that people who know stuff are as handy to have around as a solid root cellar (it’s o.k., it makes sense in my head).

Thank you all very much

Folks reading here, and folks that I have read.

There’s some beautiful stuff out there.  I’ve love being part of this blogging thing.

Time to move on to other projects.  I think I’ll be unplugging the computer for a little while, and then come back and read around a bunch.  I’ll be out there watching all of you,  I’ll be the one clicking to see if your blog has been updated since I don’t understand how subscribing works.

I want to give extra thanks to Enbretheliel for being so interesting, Betty Duffy for writing so beautifully, Enanoslivo for making me feel good about families, the “other” Anna for having bad knees and calling me a mum (which is infinitely better than calling me a ma’am), She Laughs at the Days for raising the bar, Hope Echoes for putting up with it all, Exultet for having a two blogs and one very funny, Apologia for taking folks to task, The Quiet Life for getting me outside, Poor Nurse Clare for coming back, Merry’s Cloister for the metaphors, Back Bay View for the kind words, Two Square Meals for helping me get life a little better, Cherished Hearts for the pictures, BlessedAtheist for pointing out that there are many ways to do business, Conversion Diary for walking us all around, Daniel for giving me a good start, Living Apologetics for giving me a good tussle, Bill White for letting me play, too, Alexandrea for word counts, Video meliora for a good blog, Oops and Smoochagator, Annalogue for almost never agreeing with me about anything I’ve said here, and Blind Pig for what she has given to me and to my children.

And Chris, of course.

Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee;
All things are passing;
God never changeth;
Patient endurance
Attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth
In nothing is wanting;
Alone God sufficeth.

St. Teresa of Avila

Nanowrimo27to30

My Christmas present to you — the end of Nanowrimo2009.  With the end part being the present.

Last update here.

It wound up at 2901 words, by the way.  Nowhere near the nano 50,000. . . . .but I’m still glad I finished it.

Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord

Poetry Wednesday

W.B. Yeats

(here for my friend, who does not read the internet)

To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing

NOW all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one	5
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours’ eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away	10
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known	15
That is most difficult. Thanks and go see enanoslivo.

Stories of undiagnosed type 1 diabetes

Here’s a few.  Not trying to be morbid, and if anyone wandered here from diabetes sites I’m sorry to seem salacious.  But if you skim these stories you’ll see a common thread — the person with diabetes felt sick, asked for help, was told to go home and rest or some such thing, and assumptions about them led people away from making a very easy diagnosis of a not uncommon illness, a diagnosis that would have meant nearly certain healthy continued life while a continued wrong diagnosis meant certain death.  You never survive type 1 diabetes without insulin.

Stories here, here, here, and here.

Now, let me quickly disclaim that sometimes people go into DKA and really, no one could have reasonably been expected to see it coming.  And kids and adults who go into even serious DKA usually have their diabetes recognized at that point, because at that point they are usually hospitalized in grave condition, and doctors take care of them and bring them back to good health.

I guess my only point in harping on this obsessive point is to throw out there that type 1 is around, it could show up in your family, and you need to watch for it and insist upon tests for it if you suspect it.

Nanowrimo25

Update here. Almost there.

Martha and Mary

This Next Step post got me remembering something that hit me while driving around the other day.  You know, one of those thoughts I think is original to me and that everyone else had when they were, like, three years old.*  I think about the Martha and Mary story a lot, and always do so with the obvious connections — the mom ones.  Clean the house vs. cuddle the kid sort of things.  So hard to figure out what it means, there, since Martha was doing right, too, in fulfilling her role as a hostess.  I finally settled in mostly reading it with St. Therese’s words in mind, that what Martha did wrong was make such a big fuss over it all.

But the other day I realized that my girliness was blocking something from me.  This is its own story, but it’s also another of the stories Christ tells us over and over and over — it’s about the law.  You know, all those stories that say the law must still be followed, nothing has been added to or taken from the law, but now there’s a fulfillment of the law?

*I read a Scott Hahn passage about the stoning of the woman taken in  adultery, explaining all the ins and outs of the pharasees and etc., and went running to my Bible Christian friend to tell her all about how fascinating it was.  She just smiled and nodded.  Old news for her. . . .

Brittany Murphy — hysterical post below

So, in interviews in the  months before her death she talks about how she is thinner than she’d like to be, and she was disoriented enough that SNL did a sketch of her spaciness that has now been yanked.

Here’s what happens when you have type 1 diabetes — your body kills the cells in your pancreas that make insulin.  You need insulin to get the glucose (energy) from your bloodstream into your cells.  If you can’t get energy to your cells (and I imagine this means muscle cells like your  heart) you die.

But when you have no insulin and you eat carbohydrates, your blood fills up with glucose you can’t get into your cells, and the only way you can get rid of it is to urinate it out.  Sometimes, often, people think they have a “flu” so they drink lots of juices and gatorades, etc. — putting tons more carbs into the blood.

Now, nature has worked it so that “essential” systems do not depend upon insulin to get their energy.  Your eyes, your nervous system, and your brain do not need insulin to get sugar.  So, when the sugar in the blood is sky high, the sugar in your eyes and nervous system and brain is way, way too high and it causes damage.  This is why diabetics can go blind, from the damage done over time from high blood sugar.

So, losing weight, feeling “spacey”, and then flu-like symptoms followed by a heart attack and death.

So here’s the deal — Brittany Murphy, if she died of type 1 diabetes, did so in front of everybody.  It is a disease that is still very misunderstood and very, very often missed until the person is in deep, deep trouble.  Over and over I hear stories of moms who knew “something was wrong” but wound up with kids with blood sugars over 700 in DKA because their doctor sent them home with antibiotics.

There is more type 1 out there now than ever before, and people are being diagnosed as toddlers and as fifty year olds.  Type 1 diabetes has absolutely nothing to do with fitness.  It is an autoimmune disease like MS or arthritis.  Thin, young, healthy, fit people develop it.  Often, when a doctor looks at someone like Brittany Murphy, the last thing they think of is diabetes because diabetes is an old, fat person’s disease, right?  But it’s sure the first thing I think of .

If someone in your life, anyone, begins to feel under the weather,  loses weight without explanation,  is thirsty all the time, check it with the doctor.  (If it’s getting advanced, you’ll also see rapid breathing and the breath will smell fruity and the urine will smell like fingernail polish remover — believe it or not — your body is trying expell dangerous ketones, which are acidic)  Pharmacies sell, without prescription, sticks to test urine with.  They test for glucose in the urine (which should not normally be there in a nondiabetic) and they test for ketones (which is a byproduct of burning other sources of energy in the body, like fat, if the body has no or can’t get to its sugar).  If your loved one feels bad and has glucose and ketones in his or her urine, and the doctor won’t listen, take her to another doctor.  Take her to the ER.  People live for 100 years with type 1 diabetes — as long as they know they have it.

Update:  Severe abdominal pains and shortness of breath is being reported for the week before her death.  Textbook ketones.