Day: September 3, 2013

I see a lot of Karen Bruce this days, because of the Hippa laws she can’t discuss her patients, but she says her husband thinks she is having an affair with somebody. He’s right in a couple of ways, we are seeing a lot of each and having about as  much fun as you can have managing diabetes. Karen is a seasoned Nurse-Practitioner at the Hoosick Falls Family Health Center in Hoosick Falls, N.Y. It was her misfortune to draw me when I came down with Lyme Disease and when I got my blood tested she called me in and said my blood was no good and I had to do something about it. We are.

I trusted her right away she sliced right through my dithering and told me my situation was not acceptable, we had to fix it. I have been very wedded to holistic care – still am – but slow to grasp it wasn’t working for me in this context. The results have been swift and dramatic, and there are somethings modern – they call it Western – medicine knows how to do well.

Tuesday, Karen and I agreed that I would take four shots of insulin a day, one in the morning, one before each meal. My numbers are coming down, but they need to come down further. I’m on it. Diabetes is a lot like playing chess with your internal organs, you make a move, it makes a move. I am proficient with my needle. Diabetes is confusing at first, until you figure out what works for you and I am learning what works for me, and have filled a kitchen cabinet up with prescriptions, meters, strips, alcohol wipes, lancets and notebooks. The medical people and pharmacists navigate a swamp of insurance restrictions and government requirements and regulations. At the pharmacy, I see diabetes sufferers who are poor with little or no health insurance and they do not have access to some of the medicines and equipment I get. It is not right, it will never be right, we are becoming a hard country in so many ways.

Karen and I are very comfortable with one another. She is direct and she listens, she and I talked for nearly an hour today about what the next step was in my diabetes treatment, she threw out a couple of medications, we went back and forth about whether I should do more insulin or another kind of medication and injection. We each convinced each other, then took the other side and then I said it’s up to you, you’re the nurse. No, she said, we are partners, we do it together. We went with more insulin. Back to the pharmacy for more stuff.

Karen is funny, and she gave me a Winnie-The-Pooh sticker today for being a fairly good patient. If I have any questions or problems – I have had several – I can e-mail her and she responds quickly. We seem to be suffering few of the plagues that afflect modern medicine, and I’m getting a grip on the disease that afflicted my grandfather and was headed straight for me. The nurse-practitioner option is a very good one for me, Karen is usually available on relatively short notice, she is patient and clear and I never feel rushed or pushed along. She is savvy and experienced and she has a great sense of humor. This round of my diabetes care is a challenge, there are a lot of things to remember and my body, which has been free of medications for years, is adjusting to a lot of it. I feel stronger and better since I started taking insulin, I feel it’s the right direction for me. I feel it will help me become healthier. Karen is a big part of that, I am so fortunate to have a partner helping me figure this out.

Today four different injections, let’s take care of it, I said. Good for you, she said. I love my life and have much to live for and I will do what is necessary for me to stay healthy. Karen is helping me get there, and you can’t ask for much more than that. I have to say I much appreciate Bridget, my pharmacist at O’Hearn’s, she has helped me navigate all of this new stuff with patience and warmth. Diabetes is a gift for me, a way to get healthier.

Most days we walk on Macmillan Road. Sometimes we take the path there off into the woods, sometimes we stay on the road if the bugs are too bad in the woods. It’s been a wicked summer for bugs, it is beginning to ease up, the clouds of gnats and mosquitoes seem to be thinning.

Halfway up the road, a mutt named Buster comes charging out of his yard and down to the edge of the path. He pops his head through the bushes barking furiously and then he sees Frieda, staring at him in her let’s-do-it-what-are-you-waiting-for-posture that has frozen many a human and animal, and then Buster turns and vanishes back into the woods.

Every day is training day for me, every activity is a training experience, so we sit in the road and stay for three minutes while I walk up the road and into the shade and take my photo. Frieda does not move, she watches me closely, she is a working dog, every day she does things she has never done before, we are in our sixth year of training, it will never be over.

Red and Lenore know the photo drill, they sit and pose and wait until I give them the all clear, “you are free.”

Someone will steal you,

if you keep your eyes closed,

if you won’t come near,

if you are blind to the sun

behind the meadow grass.

Someone will steal you if you

stay asleep,

more light is shimmering,

stewing, fermenting,

open your eyes,

or someone will steal you.

It is easy to romanticize life with animals, I do it all the time, often inadvertently. There are photos of appealing creatures with their wide eyes being affectionate and loved and it is easy to forget how gross, smelly and messy life is with almost all of them. In the morning, we do what I call “picks and ticks,” we come out, give the donkeys some apple cores or bits of carrot, say good morning and first we pick the ticks off of their noses and foreheads – they lower their heads into the grass to graze – and then we brush the manure off them that they have rolled in all night and then we go shovel the fly and maggot infested piles of manure out of the barn.

These are not the things I generally take photos of and they are not what people want to see in the morning. I don’t write about this as a complaint or lament – we love our lives, we chose it, we have no reason to complain about it – but it interesting to me how much we take tick-pulling and manure scraping for granted. It is a part of it, the perfect life is not about being idyllic, it is about dealing with the crap as well as the golden moments. As one who puts up many cute animal photos, I feel obliged to remind people what farm people already know, animals are as disgusting as they are wonderful and fascinating. Always a good thing to know before you get one.

Sometimes when you are in the middle of something, you don’t really see it. Reading the scores of posts on blogs, Facebook and elsewhere and seeing the photos other people took and reading the words other people wrote, I get a clearer idea of something quite remarkable that occurred on Sunday, something powerful and affirming.

We are already at work on next  year’s Open Houses – the first in mid-June, the second on or before Labor Day. I’ve invited George Forss to come and take portraits of people (I think he charges $30) and what an opportunity that will be for people, to be photographed by one of the world’s great photographers, a great friend of mine. (Hint. Do not mention aliens.) Maria will have her own ideas about her own work and that of some other artists.

When I think of Sunday, some scenes recur:

– I think of our friend Mary Kellogg, now in her 83rd year, looking so beautiful and reading her wonderful poems, living her life so richly and meaningfully and independently. Mary is an inspiration to everyone she meets, a radiant spirit who lights up every space she is in.

– I think of seeing Jennifer Bowman, a gifted writer I have been following for some years, watching as she emerges and finds her voice, the wonderful feeling of hugging her and of telling her boyfriend Travis right to his face that I had a literary crush on his girl friend. A family therapist, he barely blinked.

– I was privileged to see the moment when Tess Wynn and Celinda Chambers called out one another’s name and hugged, two friends who had met only online, on the Open Group At Bedlam Farm.