Val: Crane #2

Here is the crane I made for Val:

Val has been one of my closest friends for many years.  We met in college while I was crazy and she was...well, crazy, in a much better way than I was crazy.  The "have a very good time in original yet somehow legal ways" crazy.  She's been with me through my illness and it means the world that she's stuck around while times have been tough.  You couldn't ask for a better friend.  You hear that?  I love you!

She's not into religion like I am, so I thought it would be weird to put a prayer for her.  But Val does like Star Trek: she even has costumes for Kirk and Spock!  So I thought a much more appropriate quote would be this:

"Live long and prosper." - Vulcan Proverb

Val also has Type 1 Diabetes.  I never realized  how hard that was for her until I myself became ill.  I didn't think about it that much when I was able-bodied, besides occasionally when it would come up. I remember once she was showing me how she checks her blood sugar and everything she has to take to keep her body well.  It kind of bounced off of me and I feel very bad for that.  Now that the doctors figured out she has Type 1 and not Type 2, she needs insulin, which is awful because needles are one of her least favorite things.  That's got to be the worst!

Val told me to talk about letting go of fear, or moving past fear.  Ahah, that's a hard one for me, but I'm going to try my best.  Basically, Val is a good example of letting go fear.  She's about to graduate with a hard-won electrical engineering degree, and doesn't know where she's going to go from there.  She wants to work for NASA, and somebody told her, "Nobody's told you no yet."  ;)  I think she'll do it one day.  I think we can all be afraid of uncertainties in our lives, but one thing I've found that helps is looking back and remembering all those countless times "it will never work out" situations worked out fine.

I really can be a grumpy miserable person sometimes.  I sound so WOO HOOO on this blog for some reason. ^^;

What anyone reading this can do is realize how many people are affected by Diabetes, and how it is going to be one of the major health problems of our time.  It already is: 1.6 million people in the US will be diagnosed with Diabetes each year, and Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.  By 2050 one in three people in the United States will have Diabetes.  That's one in three people living with a chronic illness which requires lots of medical care.  Let's hope we find the cure before then!  Just in my family, my father grandmother, and aunts have the condition.

Learn More about Diabetes

As many Lyme patients know, often the first diagnosis you get is: "Why, you must just be crazy!" or some variation of that.  It's invalidating to be told "it's in your head"  when you know your body and you know there is something seriously wrong.  Val sent me  a card recently that read: "YOU MAY THINK YOU'RE GOING CRAZY.  BUT YOU'RE NOT."  It brightened my whole day.  She also counseled me on sugar free and low carb diets, which was great, because otherwise, I'd be lost.