IN WHICH I TURN 70 AND REALIZE
I AM A BIONIC WOMAN!
It's true! I had my 70th !!!!! birthday ( must be some mistake-somebody counted wrong) and realize I am part technology and part human. I have several bionic parts: eye lens implants, new teeth, 2 titanium knees, and 2 tiny implements to enhance my hearing. I am proud of my status as part human, part android-makes me feel very modern.
I have not posted in over three months: we have had the most terrible time that a family can have. My younger daughter Ann died May 9 in Aberdeen, Scotland where she was a PhD student. Ann died of complications of juvenile type 1 diabetes. She was 33 and beloved of her family.
In case you don't know, there are two types of diabetes-type I and type II. Type II is the one most everyone is familiar with-the usual adult onset diabetes which can be somewhat controlled by proper diet, weight, and exercise. Type I, or juvenile diabetes, strikes children or young people and is an auto immune disease. Generally, the child becomes ill with a serious virus (as Ann did) and the immune system attacks the pancreas, which is the source of insulin in the body, and destroys it. The child will the spend the rest of their lives testing the level of their blood sugars 6-8 times a day and injecting insulin several times a day. The body needs insulin in its system to survive and the person with type I diabetes can only receive insulin with injections. There are no vacations from this.
Ann was 8 when she became diabetic. I always worried about her as she was so petite-she weighed 40 pounds as an 8 year old and seem thin and delicate. Well, she was not delicate and with her scientific and mathematical mind managed her diabetes very well. She was diagnosed 25 years ago and, at that time, the endocrinologists all prescribed a regime of "tight control" which meant keeping your blood sugar levels comparable to a non diabetic. This involved frequent testing and lots of insulin. Their method for teaching "tight control" included vivid descriptions of blindness, loss of limbs, kidney disease etc if blood sugars levels where not kept within certain limits.
The scenarios of possible devastating outcomes which would strike a type I diabetic always caused Ann much anxiety. Consequently, she was always very much "in control" to the point where she sometimes took too much insulin-which happens to all type I diabetics. Too much insulin causes a person to loss consciousness, and, if not revived with some sugar, to die.
This moment is the saddest of my life. I will never be whole again but after 3 months, I am no longer lost and adrift at sea. Some wind has begun blowing in my sails and my hand is once again on the rudder. To further the devastation of Ann's death, I became infected with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever a few days before. I was quickly put on doxycycline which killed the bacteria but was forced to spend 4 weeks in my recliner with extreme fatigue.
To have some occupation, I decided to join the Scheepjes cal (crochet along) 2017. I have a blogger friend in France who is making this shawl which I long admired. I am not much of a crocheter but I loved the surface decoration of this garment.
All I wanted was a simple project where I just simply followed the directions, make a copy, and not think about how it could changed for better or worse. That did not last long-I noticed right away that the bright red criss cross sectioning between the design areas was not sympatico.
Life always asserts itself in the midst of saddness. Life in this case being the strong dislike of the color red used in this project. I began to rethink the entire design. I spent hours on pinterest (my favorite) looking for ideas especially the pinterest page of Jose Koster who has many images of what others have made using the Hygge as a begin point and lots of ideas.
https://www.pinterest.com/joko66/hygge-cal/
The image at the top of this post is my version of the center block. Next week I will show you some more.
I have been taking walks with my husband 3 times a week-we have the loveliest place to walk. It is an abandoned highway going to Truman Lake and is filled with flowers, trees, and fauna. Here is the walkway:
That's all for now. I am glad to be recovering somewhat and back to the work/play I live for.
Hygge shawl I have been working on while relegated to my recliner
based on Scheepjes Cal 2017
**************************
In case you don't know, there are two types of diabetes-type I and type II. Type II is the one most everyone is familiar with-the usual adult onset diabetes which can be somewhat controlled by proper diet, weight, and exercise. Type I, or juvenile diabetes, strikes children or young people and is an auto immune disease. Generally, the child becomes ill with a serious virus (as Ann did) and the immune system attacks the pancreas, which is the source of insulin in the body, and destroys it. The child will the spend the rest of their lives testing the level of their blood sugars 6-8 times a day and injecting insulin several times a day. The body needs insulin in its system to survive and the person with type I diabetes can only receive insulin with injections. There are no vacations from this.
Ann was 8 when she became diabetic. I always worried about her as she was so petite-she weighed 40 pounds as an 8 year old and seem thin and delicate. Well, she was not delicate and with her scientific and mathematical mind managed her diabetes very well. She was diagnosed 25 years ago and, at that time, the endocrinologists all prescribed a regime of "tight control" which meant keeping your blood sugar levels comparable to a non diabetic. This involved frequent testing and lots of insulin. Their method for teaching "tight control" included vivid descriptions of blindness, loss of limbs, kidney disease etc if blood sugars levels where not kept within certain limits.
The scenarios of possible devastating outcomes which would strike a type I diabetic always caused Ann much anxiety. Consequently, she was always very much "in control" to the point where she sometimes took too much insulin-which happens to all type I diabetics. Too much insulin causes a person to loss consciousness, and, if not revived with some sugar, to die.
This moment is the saddest of my life. I will never be whole again but after 3 months, I am no longer lost and adrift at sea. Some wind has begun blowing in my sails and my hand is once again on the rudder. To further the devastation of Ann's death, I became infected with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever a few days before. I was quickly put on doxycycline which killed the bacteria but was forced to spend 4 weeks in my recliner with extreme fatigue.
To have some occupation, I decided to join the Scheepjes cal (crochet along) 2017. I have a blogger friend in France who is making this shawl which I long admired. I am not much of a crocheter but I loved the surface decoration of this garment.
All I wanted was a simple project where I just simply followed the directions, make a copy, and not think about how it could changed for better or worse. That did not last long-I noticed right away that the bright red criss cross sectioning between the design areas was not sympatico.
Life always asserts itself in the midst of saddness. Life in this case being the strong dislike of the color red used in this project. I began to rethink the entire design. I spent hours on pinterest (my favorite) looking for ideas especially the pinterest page of Jose Koster who has many images of what others have made using the Hygge as a begin point and lots of ideas.
https://www.pinterest.com/joko66/hygge-cal/
The image at the top of this post is my version of the center block. Next week I will show you some more.
I have been taking walks with my husband 3 times a week-we have the loveliest place to walk. It is an abandoned highway going to Truman Lake and is filled with flowers, trees, and fauna. Here is the walkway:
That's all for now. I am glad to be recovering somewhat and back to the work/play I live for.
I am linking up with:
Slow Stitching Sunday, Bambi's Blog, Making Monday, Em's Scrapbag, Esther's Wow,
Let's Bee Social,Whoop Whoop, and Off the Wall Friday, and Finish or Not!
Let's Bee Social,Whoop Whoop, and Off the Wall Friday, and Finish or Not!
Ann's Obituary
With
great sadness I announce the death of
Ann Marbourg May 9, 2017 of complications
following her 25 year battle with Type 1 diabetes. Ann died in
Aberdeen, Scotland where
she was studying for a
Ph.D. specializing in developing programs to assist people in
underdeveloped and disadvantaged parts of the world.
Ann
was a lifelong student. At five, she knew the names of all of the
dinosaurs then known, their taxonomy and ecology. At seven, she
studied Greek mythology and knew the stories and actions of the gods.
At ten, she was carrying around a book of Shakespeare's plays and
laughing at all of Puck’s adventures. In
the pre electronic age, she was always up and to the encyclopedia to
check on a fact to get it right. Later
in the smartphone era she prided herself on finding and checking
facts quicker on the draw than any gunslinger.
At
16, Ann was enrolled in a large Midwestern University for her two
final years of high school making straight A's. Her course work
included physics, chemistry, biology and English, but she excelled in
mathematics completing all three of the foundation courses in the
infinitesimal calculus followed by courses in differential equations.
It was quite a jolt to see a petite young girl with flowing red hair
writing out long equations of 2 and 3 lines across the page like a
person doing a quick shopping list.
In
Ann’s senior high school year she took the SAT test and achieved a
near perfect score missing only one question. She had not studied,
nor received tutoring, nor did any special preparation for the SAT.
She simply showed up, took a pencil, and went through the questions.
Other
activities in high school included being the student director of
several plays, a docent
at the Wornall House civil war museum, a student
assistant
at a local museum where she computerized their data,
and participation
in several archaeological digs, among others.
Ann
was a recipient of a National Merit Scholarship. Due to her many
activities and achievements, Ann was invited to attend many
universities throughout the U.S. including the University of Chicago,
the California Institute of Technology, Cornell, and Rice University
as well as others. She received a full scholarship to Caltech being
one of very few women admitted there at that time. She later
transferred to Cornell in New York finding the rigid science at
Caltech too constricting.
Ann
had a wonderful sense of humor laughing heartily at various comedic
groups including the Capitol Steps, Prairie Home Companion, and
Shakespeare comedies. But most of all Ann was wonderfully kind,
retiring, never one to aggrandize herself. Her favorite novel was
Crime
and Punishment
by Dostoevsky because she loved the angelic Sonja who waited 20
years for R to be released from prison. She loved simple quiet,
modest figures, but always championed women as equal in every way to
the males of the world.
Ann
loved to go to new places. She was an exchange student to France for
her high school sophomore semester and became fluent in that
language. Later, at 22 she traveled further to China to teach
English there, learn Chinese, and to see for herself the nature and
substance of that country. But Ann loved cold and snowy climes most.
She lived and worked in Alaska as a researcher for several years. She
was teaching herself Norwegian in the hopes of residing in
Scandinavia. Her last address was in rainy cool Aberdeen Scotland
which she found to be particularly enjoyable and compatible.
She
is survived by her sister Mary, who has been residing in Northern
India for several years, and by her mother and father who live in
Missouri, U.S.A. We
will always miss her.
