Pinch Hitter

Pinch Hitter:  (Baseball) To bat in place of a player scheduled to bat, especially when a hit is badly needed.

It was a dark dreary night…

Okay.  It wasn’t.  It was a warm pleasant night, and I was totally exhausted. (cough…understatement…cough)

My inlaws are in Germany…you know, the inlaws who feed us and help me with the kids.  So for the first time ever, I’ve been completely on my own.

Cooking every night?  WHHHHHAAA?  I know.  It’s crazy talk.  But I’ve been doing it.

Folding all my own laundry?  Dishes, cleaning, yard work, birthday parties, swim lessons, camp, driving, walking.   WHHHHHAAA?  I really don’t have a choice.  I’m the only parent in these parts willing to take care of these hooligans.

Working and then entertaining the boys when I get home?  Yup.  I gots to do that too.

So I’m completely exhausted at the end of the day, and last Saturday night was no exception.

Well, except…

I was even more exhausted than usual.  My oldest who is not T1 went out to the beach with his friends and than out to a late late movie the night before.  He wasn’t home until 3:00am, and I was up waiting for him.  The next morning I was up and at at‘em at 6:30am to bring my 15 year old to work.

Needless to say, when 11:00pm rolled around my forehead was on the keyboard.  I couldn’t keep my eyes open to save my life.  Or even my children’s lives as the case may be.

One of my boys was on the low side before bed and I knew he had to be rechecked in an hour.  I knew without a shadow of a doubt: My body could not stay up for that hour.  And I also knew, once I closed my eyes, no alarm clock in the world would wake me.

So as I was locking up the house, I saw my aforementioned 18 year old out of the corner of my eye, typing away on his computer. 

I knew he’d be up for another hour, at least.

I negotiated the facts in my head…he owed me.  Sure I didn’t have to wait up for him…but….

The idea formed in my hazy, tired, swelly brain and before I could think it through I said,  “Hey, M…what would you think if I asked you to test your brothers sugars at midnight?”

“Sure!” He said enthusiastically.

“Ummm…do you even know how to do it?”

“Mom.  THREE of my brothers have diabetes.  Yes.  I can figure it out.”

“But you have to put the strip in like this…”

“I know how to do it.  Go to sleep, I’ll take care of it.”

“But here’s the important part.  You need to wake me up and report back what the numbers are.”

“Done.”

Usually, I open my ipad to facebook and tinker around until I fall asleep.  This night I collapsed face-first into my pillow and fell asleep instantaneously. 

I vaguely remember M waking me up an hour later.  His face was a blur…he was spouting numbers.  I remember trying hard to compute what he was saying to me.  The synapses in my brain were firing like crazy, just not in any way that made sense. 

He could see I wasn’t responding properly as I slurred out a request for him to repeat the numbers.  He then said in a loud, slow tone…as if I was hard of hearing and couldn’t speak English well, “They are all good numbers. You. Can. Go. Back. To…”

And that’s all I heard because I feel asleep.

The next morning when I was lucid I looked back on the monitor history and saw that all the boys numbers were, as he promised, good.

The next night I asked him to do it again.  This idea was gold…I was running with it.

And he happily did.  Except when he woke me I remember nothing he said.  NOTHING.  I only remember that he woke me and repeated what were probably numbers back to me a few times.  A few hours later, it was 4am and I woke with a start.  In my hand I was clasping a piece of paper with three undesirable numbers scratched on it in M’s handwriting.  (Dang Grandma’s chocolate cake!)

I quickly jumped out of bed and tested and treated all three boys.

I asked M about the incident today. 

“Wow mom.  You were totally out of it.  I gave you the paper and you kept mumbling, ‘I got it.  I got it.’  I knew you didn’t, but I was like, OK.  If you say so.”

“Someday I need to teach you to bolus.”

“Why wait.  Teach me now.”

I called all three boys to do their dinnertime check and each was thrilled to have M enter their numbers into their pumps.

They have since been handing their pump to M for all their bolusing needs. 

My evil “Pinch Hitting” plan just might work! 

Can you hear my exhausted maniacal laugh?  Bwa hahahhaha!  Bwa hahahaha!

Yeah.  I need more sleep.

An open letter to Meri Schuhmacher

Dear Meri,

Hello.  For many months I have lived in your diabetes supply cupboard.  Trust me when I say, I’m intimate with your life.  I know diabetes is a big deal, even though you tell yourself it isn’t.  I know you spend a lot of time calculating, and I know you don’t spend a lot of time sleeping.  I also know that I am part of an army of cannulas that save your boys’ lives daily.  I have been dutifully waiting my turn to lay down my life for one of your boys.  It was an especially proud moment for me yesterday when you choose me.  Surely my Medtronic box glowed a little brighter than the others when your hand reached into the cupboard.  My heart was racing so fast…I was born for that moment!

As you readied me into the rocket for insertion, my mind raced back to the conversation you were having with the boys’ minutes before.  The littlest one had told you his blood sugar was 490.  I heard the buttons beeping as you gave him a giant bolus.  In my guestimation, you retested about 30 minutes later to find him at 103.  A swear word indicated you were not happy with this.  I heard his feet run off to the kitchen when you decided to change his set, and as the fates allowed…you chose me.

It took a lot of guts, but I knew what I needed to do.  If I did what I was made for, I would be providing your son with insulin…yet I had gleaned enough information to know insulin LOWERS blood sugars.  I was shocked.  My duty was to protect your son, and surely more insulin would have made things worse.

So I did what I was born to do...I laid down my life for him.  When you were inserting me into his stomach, I tucked and rolled at the last minute as only my natural cannula instincts dictated.  Being bent in half, I took one for the team…thus resulting in a rise in blood sugars, rather than a deadly drop.

I heard you test him a half hour later, and I heard your sigh of relief.

You’re welcome.

I heard you test him an hour after that, and then again an hour after that.  Both numbers were pleasing, and both numbers caused you to smile widely.

Again, that was all me.

You slept for 5 hours last night and it was all thanks to my quick thinking, and the bravery I had putting my thoughts into action.

So imagine my surprise this morning when you checked your son’s sugar right before running out the door to work, and you muttered that ungrateful swearword under your breath, instead of the thank you I’d been waiting all night for.

No…”Thank you.”

No…”You are the most wonderful cannula ever for letting me sleep!”

No…”You kept my boy from having to eat a mountain of sugar!”

None of that!  You were angry at a stupid 496.

My brothers were at the ready to fix that 496.  I’m just seriously confused as to why you were so upset.  When you pulled off the sticker to find me in a perfect “V” you looked at me in disgust.  Woman, my form was perfect!

And this after I sacrificed everything just for you.

I feel as though my life was wasted. 

If I wasn’t raised with better manners, I might just have a few swear words in reciprocation for you Madam!  Instead I’ll just leave you with my disgust.

Sincerely, and with great nobleness,

The bent cannula you ripped off your youngest son this morning

Guilt, yo.

Hey.  You have something on your chin.

Oh, no worries, it’s just a little guilt.  Here’s a tissue.

Guilt: feelings of culpability especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy.

These days it seems like I’m bleeding guilt.  Hemorrhaging guilt?  I don’t think there is a band-aid big enough to cover my guilt wound.  I’m working, (Oh, did you hear I was working??,)  which means I’m leaving the boys alone for the first time in forever.  Although my oldest is 18…this is still a completely novel concept in the Schuhmacher house. 

I leave a list of things that need to be done whilst I’m gone, and then I go.

I text and call to keep in touch, “Did you bolus for breakfast?  Did you check your sugar?  Did you brush your teeth?”  (Side note: Apparently teeth brushing doesn’t happen during the summer unless I ask.)

But even though I have the power of the iPhone and its ultra convenient communication methods on my side…things happen while I’m gone.  A hypothetical example might be that I asked a child to put Clorox toilet cleaner in the toilet bowl and let it sit for a half hour and then flush.  A child may have hypothetically taken one of those Clorox toilet-cleaning pucks that are supposed to be put in the BACK of the tank, and thrown that into the toilet bowl, which lodged itself in the crick of the toilet bowl and now won’t let anything through.

Hypothetically.  (My ass.)

Also, when I ask, “Did you bolus for breakfast.”  50% of the time the answer is no.

When did diabetes become no big deal?

Oh, my bad.  That’s my fault, as I try hard to make it no big deal every day.

But am I doing a disservice to the boys?  Should I make it a “bigger” deal?  Obviously bolusing for the food that is going to go into their mouth is important.  One would think that doing the same thing a dozen times a day, every day, would…I don’t know…maybe become a habit?

Excuse me; I just throw up a little guilt in my mouth.

I do see the good side of it all.  My boys need independence.  I was probably smothering them or something with all my love, so it’s for the best, right?

That’s what I told myself until this conversation happened…

“Hi Mom, sorry to call you at work.  Do you know when you’ll be home?”

“In about an hour, I think.  Is everything ok?  Are your brothers being mean to you?”

“No, nothing like that.  Everything is just better when you’re here.”

Crap. 

Also, I wake them up every morning on my way out.  They are so peaceful and sweet laying in their beds, but I can’t fathom leaving without knowing that everyone’s blood sugars are ok, so I prick all three of their fingers and inevitably wake them.  What if one of them was in a coma and I just…went to work??

Be nice.  It could happen.

Oh wait; I think guilt juice is coming out of my eye.

I know that one day we'll look back at this and marvel how we survived this new time in our life.  And see…just the fact that I can say "we’ll look back on this" is proof I know we will survive this.  (See what I did there?)

It’s going to be ok.  (When I type those words out, I believe them.  That's why I type them a lot.)

Until then, we’re having guilt for dinner.  With a little courage on the side.

Rough draft

I’m working hard on accepting all my flaws.  I see friends out there with what seem like perfect bodies, perfect careers…perfect partnerships, and I get down on myself. 

I look in the mirror and I say, “Meri, what the hell happened?”

But thankfully the epiphany came last night as I was applying night cream under my eyes…

I’m a rough draft.

I’m so hard on myself in every aspect of my life, and it seems to me that I’m expecting to one day look in the mirror and see the final draft.  I don’t think that at 40 years old one can achieve final draft status.

Final drafts are only achieved after years and years of edits, of starting over, of correcting, siting, creating new paragraphs, crossing out redundant sentences, adding content…years of trying.

I think my problem is that every day I wake up thinking I’ve started on that final draft, and every day I make mistakes and I get super frustrated with myself.  What I’m really doing is trying to bump up a bunch of drafts…endeavoring to skip to the end.

And life isn’t about skipping to the end.  Life is about creating new stories to share.  New, messy, scratched out stories with eraser shavings scattered about the surface.  Evidence that we tried, and failed, and tried again.

Life is all about moving things around and adjusting our own storyline.  The ending we’re hoping for today changes to new hopes tomorrow.  The quality of our stories are enriched as the years pass.

I don’t think it is possible to write the final draft today.  So why is it I get upset when I attempt and fail at the perfect story, or even more than that, the perfect character within the story?

My story is far from perfect.  But it is rich with edited text and epiphanies that are just for me.  My imperfections tell the fullness of my story…my beautiful, imperfect story that doesn’t fit neatly into any final draft guideline the world has come to expect. 

Moreover, my character development is in full swing.  I just need to let it happen, and not worry what will happen many chapters down the road.  I need to forgive myself for not being the svelte heroine I wish to be, but rather the rounder, more down to earth mother that I am.

I want to rise up from this scribbled up text and appreciate my rough draft.

I am not perfect.

That’s ok.  I’m not meant to be.

The final draft comes when we reach the end. 

And me?  I have just begun.

He's still around.

He kissed me awake.

I don’t know how to explain how I know this occurred.  But when my eyes fluttered open Saturday morning a big smile spread across my face and I knew.

Ryan kissed me.

It’s all part of a string of events too miraculous not to chronicle.  The night before I was knelling by my bed praying for peace and for strength to get through the next day.  M would be graduating High School and his father wouldn’t be there to hug him, and to celebrate this huge milestone he worked so hard for.

“Please.  I pray that we will feel Ryan near us.  That we will KNOW that he is there, sharing the day.  I pray that there will be no doubt of his presence.  I just need to know he’s there.  Tomorrow…I can’t…I don’t want to…do it without him.”

It was 11:30 pm, so I got up to check the boys’ blood sugars and then slid into my cool sheets ready for a good nights sleep.

But as I did, my eyes caught sight of a book that was lying open on Ryan’s nightstand.  The words came clearly to my mind.  “Meri.  That book is there for a reason.  Read.”

I have learned to listen to that voice, as it has always steered me somewhere wonderful.  I grabbed the book, "Proof of Heaven," and sleepily began reading where I had left off months ago.  It was good.  It was interesting.  But I wasn’t getting any specific messages that I felt were just for me.  After an hour of reading I laid it down on the bed and closed my eyes.

“Keep reading.”

My shoulders slouched.  Dang!

I opened it up and scanned the next couple chapters.  More of the same.  But I felt inclined to skip to the end, so I did.

I read the last chapter…nothing.  I read the second to last chapter.  Nothing.  Again I set the book down and closed my eyes.

“Keep reading.”

Really????

So I opened it to Chapter 35, and in an instant I found out why I needed to read that book in that very moment.

There was a poem by a man named David M. Romano.  Here it is in its entirety.

When tomorrow starts without me,

And I’m not there to see,

If the sun should rise and find your eyes

All filled with tears for me;

I wish so much you wouldn’t cry

The way you did today,

While thinking of the many things,

We didn’t get to say.

I know how much you love me,

As much as I love you,

And each time you think of me,

I know you’ll miss me too;

But when tomorrow starts without me,

Please try to understand,

That an angel came and called my name,

And took me by the hand,

And said my place was ready,

In heaven far above

And that I’d have to leave behind

All those I dearly love.

But as I turned to walk away,

A tear fell from my eye

For all my life, I’d always thought,

I didn’t want to die.

I had so much to live for,

So much left yet to do,

It seemed almost impossible,

That I was leaving you.

I thought of all the yesterdays,

The good ones and the bad,

The thought of all the love we shared,

And all the fun we had.

If I could relive yesterday

Just even for a while,

I’d say good-bye and kiss you

And maybe see you smile.

But then I fully realized

That this could never be,

For emptiness and memories,

Would take the place of me.

And when I thought of worldly things

I might miss come tomorrow,

I thought of you, and when I did

My heart was filled with sorrow.

But when I walked through heaven’s gates

I felt so much at home

When God looked down and smiled at me,

From His great golden throne,

He said, “This is eternity,

And all I’ve promised you.

Today your life on earth is past

But here it starts anew.

I promise no tomorrow,

But today will always last,

And since each day’s the same way,

There’s no longing for the past.

You have been so faithful,

So trusting and so true.

Though there were times

You did some things

You knew you shouldn’t do.

But you have been forgiven

And now at last you’re free.

So won’t you come and take my hand

And share my life with me?”

So when tomorrow starts without me,

Don’t think we’re far apart,

For every time you think of me,

I’m right here, in your heart.

The tears came fiercely, and freely.  I had to read it twice because the first time I could barely see as I read.  I turned the light off, held the book to my chest and fell asleep.

The next morning Ryan kissed me awake.

As with any morning, the first thing I do is check my emails and Facebook.  I received an email from Costco stating my photo order was ready.  A few weeks ago I turned in some old videotapes and VHS tapes to be converted to CD’s.  The ones that were ready were our wedding video, and the tapes of M’s and J’s first years.  My heart skipped a beat when I read the words, “View your videos online now.”

I clicked the link and there in front of me was Ryan smiling widely.  These videos that I haven’t seen for over 10 years were ready for me to view instantly. 

I hurried to the living room and called the boys.  We spent the entire morning watching our family.  Watching Ryan kiss and love his babies.  Watching our babies’ first steps.  Watching us all together.

Needless to say, we were late getting ready for M’s graduation.  We all showered and rushed to get dressed.  M had to leave early, so I walked him out to the car and gave him a big hug.  As M got into his car, J came running out of the house with my laptop in his hands.

“M!  Listen!”

Ryan’s face flashed onto the screen, and looking directly into the camera he said, “Hi M!  I love you!!”

I don’t know why Heavenly Father keeps sending me miracles.  I always find a way to doubt them…to convince myself that it’s all just coincidences.  But Saturday, I knew. 

I KNEW that Ryan was with us.

I will not question it anymore.

He’s still around.