Dawn Is Me

I am a diabetic.

I didn’t know this until late last week. I’ve been quietly freaking out ever since.

It’s kind of weird. I came home and told my loving family and asked them to help me out by taking over their own cooking until I figured out my own dietary needs. They rose to the occasion and congratulated me for being so okay with it all.

And I said to them, “I am not okay. I am not at all okay.”

Only, I don’t look like I’m not okay. I don’t act like I’m not okay, either.

In some ways, I suppose that makes me a pain in the keester, doesn’t it?

Damn you, Dawn! How the hell am I supposed to comfort you when you stand there, calm and collected, instead of going to pieces?

Yeah, well, it sucks to be you.

Sometimes, I need comfort. This is not one of those times. Deal with it.

And here is how you can tell that I am absolutely not okay: even though I’m not ranting or railing or wailing, I’m also having a hard time thinking (which makes it hard to get any work done).

I am not expecting to write my newsletter with my normal brilliance this week.

Now, here’s the good news: this is Type II diabetes, which means I have a chance to get my blood sugar under control without having to resort to insulin shots. It just so happens that getting my blood sugar under control will coincide nicely with another of my immediate goals, which is to loose a bunch of weight.

I’ve already got a good start on that, as a matter of fact.

I only wasted about 15 minutes feeling like my world was coming to an end and I was dying and a bunch of other silliness like that. But it’s still there — the fear … of what, I’m not sure.

It wouldn’t be too difficult to let it settle on my shoulders and slowly crush me.

That is my fight right now.

Spouse and I spent most of the day in Ithaca, NY, where the Ithaca Bombers Men’s and Women’s Track Team won the 2008 Empire 8 championship meet.

Gina is happy.

I have my work cut out for me because I’m going to be helping her train over the summer, after she gets done with her summer courses. And, I realize, this presents a very good opportunity for me.

You know, when I first started exercising, I didn’t do it to lose weight. I didn’t even do it to tone the bod. I first started working out because I’d slipped a disc carrying baby David around and the chiropractor gave me some good advice about posture and proper support for the lower back through reasonably tight abdominal muscles and a bunch of stuff like that.

The advice appealed to me a lot more than an orthopedic surgeon telling me not to move for the next six months.

When I started working out, I discovered a lot of things about it that I liked. One of them was the fact that the exercise made it easier for me to keep up with my babies. All those times that I had to sprint across the quad at Brooklyn College, chasing baby Gina and hauling her back before baby David got a chance to make a break for freedom wouldn’t have been possible without those workouts.

So now, I find, I need to step up the pace of my workouts. This summer, I’m going to have to keep up with no-longer-baby Gina. She’s a lot faster now, so I’m going to have to train a lot harder.

It’ll be good for me.

(Just call me Haruna … )