Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Getting Some D

I've been missing the D.

Even as I actively work to reconstruct my world into one more life-giving and less toxic - a world where healing is not only possible but the natural, sustainable way of things, a world where my full recovery from Type 1 diabetes is not just a hope but a plan, a world where the doctors and drugs don't rule my body - somehow I manage still to be deficient in vitamin D... Really?

Monday, May 9, 2011

On a Limb

"You're going to die."

In that doctorly tone of authority, my endocrinologist gave me the news, the truth of which was soon betrayed by a curl in his lips and a fatherly twinkle in his eyes. He was only jokingly answering a question I had asked a moment before - one I assume must have seemed too absurd to take seriously: "So let's just say - hypothetically speaking - what happens if I don't take these antibiotics?"

I had paid a visit to Urgent Care the previous afternoon for a pain and sudden swelling in my right elbow, which I had noticed that very morning. Within just a couple hours the swelling had gone from the size of an average mosquito bite, to halfway down my forearm and a third the way up my tricep.