The Snow Maiden

The past couple of weeks were challenging because I kept getting what appeared to be false lows on my CGM. The main problem was that I was over-correcting in panic mode and going too high for my liking, then having to take more insulin and I was just swinging all day. I felt out of it and was up until 3am on more than one occasion. The alarms seemed to be going off relentlessly and my nerves were getting shot. I was meeting up with people over the holidays, rushing to coffee shops with two glucose shots in my purse and trying to cover up how frazzled and sleep-deprived I was feeling. I try very hard to keep my A1C under 6, and so it was very frustrating until I realized to just breathe and even if it says it's 54 and dropping on the app to just quickly test on my manual meter before doing a glucose shot or taking glucose tablets because at the time I was testing manually at 88 or even 112 — I’ve had it be a 70 point difference.

I was just speaking with a woman at the dog park who has been type 1 for 50 years and there wasn’t any means of home testing when she was first diagnosed. This same (very nice) woman advised me to go on various Facebook pages for type 1 diabetics, which I did join, but I have to literally do the sign of the cross and take a deep breath before going on to some of these pages because so many people on there are killing themselves. Their blood sugar (or their child’s blood sugar) is in the 400’s and they want advice. Any advice at all except following a healthier diet. Reading these types of posts reminds me of one time I watched my dad on a fire call (racing like a rocket to the scene), administering Narcan and doing some pretty intense CPR on a man who had overdosed. He was in cardiac arrest and completely unresponsive, but luckily he was brought back to life. With this disease exogenous insulin will allow you the gift of life, but you have to do the work from there to achieve longevity. You have to take the journey into balance. God helps those that help themselves. But often I browse through these pages and can relate to the posts because being dependent on insulin does feel like the worst at times. It’s a full time job. Socially it can be difficult. I’d say the majority of posts are comments and questions regarding insurance issues, insulin shortages, CGM or pump troubleshooting, problems at the pharmacy - some of which I have also experienced in the five and a half years I’ve had this illness. I never comment or post, I just browse through, even though I do think I desire support and camaraderie from other diabetics. Yet I still can’t bring myself to be a super social type 1 cheerleader. I think because deep down possibly I’m still angry and bitter that I have this disease. That I have to be associated with it and all of its chaos. What interests me more is preventing others from getting full blown diabetes, being the person I wish I had found a decade ago, mainly by illuminating how ailments originating from blood sugar imbalance and insulin resistance are ubiquitous and expand far wider than diabetes. My wish is to convince even one person that reads this blog to get their blood sugar thoroughly tested, HOMA-IR, the works. 

So anyway back to one difficult night around Christmas at 2am when I was still struggling with the sugar swings and it just wouldn't stabilize. Sometimes when it's a bad night or day even I light this flame-less Holy Spirit candle I have just to have something to look at in my room and relax by. Well I was looking at it from across the room that night and I thought "I just can't take this anymore" and oddly right at that moment it turned off, the timer was done. The room went dark and it gave me an eerie feeling, like I was unprotected, so I got up and turned it right back on. It was cold out, there was snow outside my window, and my mind drifted to thinking about this book I really enjoyed called The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. I know it's based off of the Russian fairy tale character The Snow Maiden or Snegurochka. The merging of my lingering unprotected feeling with the thoughts of the book made me realize that possibly I never actually understood it.

The synopsis, if I can remember it right, is about a couple of families living on Alaskan homesteads in the 1920s who discover a mysterious girl named Faina who is living by herself in the woods. Her father died, her sole guardian, and she survives on her own. There's a lot more to the book, but one of the families is childless and wants her to live in their cabin so that they can love and take care of her like the child they never had. But she never stays long, just visits occasionally. The other family has boys and one of the boys, Garrett, is trapping in the woods and sees her and observes her and eventually over time falls in love with her. When they get older, they evolve into friends and she becomes pregnant. She has the child at his family's home, but then leaves soon after to go back to living in the woods. I remember reading this book and being like why? Please just go live with these people who desperately want you. You make no sense to me. Garrett seems to be pretty gorgeous, why don't you both watch the alpenglow and aurora borealis from the warm cabin he will assuredly build for you and enjoy each other's company? I actually read this book twice over the years and felt this way both times when I was finished. But on this recent bad blood sugar night I was laying there with this kind of unprotected feeling as I mentioned (which is always permeating for me in the background anyways because my pancreas shut down) and I thought this world really is about survival, and comfort is an illusion. And possibly that's what Faina represented. She refused to live in comfort, no matter how enticing, and was prepared and able to survive in the elements, however drastic, at all times. As dire as that may seem, particularly in Alaska, it is a telling fable for our present times about the reality of the world that we live in. How diminutive comfort, if stretched too far into its shadow element, can make a population as we now face an unprecedented global diabetes epidemic. Damage control is not particularly easy. But I feel that the more you strive to live in harmony with nature, the more life lines appear to you. A passage from Walt Whitman's Song of the Open Road signifies this for me: "The earth never tires, the earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd, I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. Allons! we must not stop here, However sweet these laid up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here, However shelter'd this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here, However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while."