I know I am still in the middle of so many other stories but this one kicked me in the can after being so badly stuck that I had to go back to my Gus saga to try and "unstuck" the muse. I'll continue with the others. Gus 5 is all written just badly in need of editing. The others are perking, I just want to get this one out as well.
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Survival of the Not So Fittest
Part One
“… And she lived happily ever after.”
Yeah, I’d give a lot to be through this and be able to write those words and just be done with it all and rest. Yeah, I would really like to rest, but I can’t sleep right now; and to be honest I’m not sure that I’ll get a happily ever after in this life, but rest would really be good for now but that’s not happening even though I know I should. It isn’t just that there is too much to do. There is, I just can’t do it right now, at least the outside chores. It is still light out and I really can’t move around outside until it is dark. I can’t say for sure that the drones will be back, but I can’t say they won’t either. Some of those things are really small so even setting a watch might not help. We only saw the ones we did on accident because the boys were looking for something else.
It was stupid just to leave everything in the metal barn and plan on moving it into the house only as I found a place for each item. So much for my inherited streak of neat-freakitude. Mom and Dad both were fond of saying “everything has a place and everything in its place.” While that saying has helped me, it has now also created a problem.
I’m grateful that we have what we have, but Dear Lord. No really, Dear Lord because without my faith I’d be done in right now. I feel like I could have done everything better had I known what was coming. I was raised to prepared for “just in case”. I could have just dealt with the mess as I could get around to it. Stupid thing to say. I guess Mom was right and hindsight is 20/20. I’m still a bit scorched and the younger ones refuse to let Remus and Lupin out of their sight. And neither will the others. Not a bad thing in and of itself but …
Geez. I thought writing this stuff out would help me use up this energy that can’t go anywhere at the moment, and also help me to straighten all the crazy that’s rolling around in my head. I’ve got to be careful with the stress or my numbers are going to climb through the roof again and I need to be as careful as I can. I’ve got enough insulin for my pump to last over a year, at least that long for normal usage assuming I can keep it cold, and I should be able to the way Mom insisted Dad set things up. But still, not if I’m forced to use more to keep my numbers down. I have enough pods for my insulin pump for longer than that but they only work if I have the insulin. I also have needles and syringes if for some reason the pump stops operating which it might because it is dependent on the transmitter and I have no idea if I’ll have to stop using it for some reason. I have enough Flexpens for at least another year on the other side of that, again that depends on usage and assuming I can keep things refrigerated.
Worst case scenario, assuming the world hasn’t come back from its serious dose of ipecac, after that I have Dad’s Metformin which is enough to last at least as long as what I have in insulin. I seriously don’t like the side effects of the stuff. Dad could take it with impunity while I had plenty of “punity” from it and spent my life in the bathroom when they tried me on it; but if I wanna live I’ll do what I must. [Note the bottles of fiber I have for just in case as well.] The metformin may give me another year or two on the other side of the insulin if I haven’t found a way to manage my hyperglycemia with diet, exercise, and supplements by then. “Managing without insulin” however may be impossible. I have enough of my CGM supples (continuous glucose monitor) to last three years and then on top of that I have Dad’s glucose tester, my glucose tester, enough strips and batteries that I should have several years on top of that which will at least give me some idea of what my numbers are at any given time. How I came by those supplies is another story that I’ll get to in a bit. I’ve got a ton of supplements that we’ve tested over the years, some of which had no effect and some of which I take because they kinda sorta have a good effect as long as I keep up with everything else, including my diet and exercise routine. Worst worse case … I gotta make it so that Ethan and Ezra can take over well before the worst worse case happens.
My brothers are only twelve and fourteen years old. In two years – assuming I haven’t figured out something by then - they’ll be fourteen and sixteen. Eden, who is eleven, will only be thirteen and she’s more tomboy and hates anything to do with “girly” activities. Even the boys can cook better than she can. It is like she has a block, possibly intentional, and can even burn water. She cannot be left unsupervised in the kitchen or there will be a disaster. I ought to make her go hungry just to teach her a hard lesson … but I can’t. She’s hardheaded enough that she’d starve before she gives in. Maybe her hormones will kick in at some point … Lord help us all. The twins, Elijah and Esther, are nine and that will make them eleven in two years. My name? Eve. Do not ask me why my parents got the stray hair to name us all with E’s. I guess it was kinda cute with three kids, but by the time there was six of us? No. Uh uh. And to make them Biblical names on top of that. I mean sure, our family is one of those “of faith” but that shouldn’t dictate naming practices. I mean seriously. Then again, it might have been because of the names their parents cursed them with … Daniel and Grace.
That “of faith” thing. I mean yes, we have an “of faith” worldview and all that. And I’m not being sarcastic or blasphemous or anything else either. It is a fact of life and is what helped us build our boundaries and morals, it isn’t just something we “do,” it isn’t just our “lifestyle”; it is who we are by choice. And it got us labeled. People are so weird and strange. We live in a country that was founded on Christian morality and the principles there of. Everyone is expected to obey the laws that are based on rights expounded in the biblically inspired influences of The Constitution[1], our founding document. Even the most progressive, ambiguous, and left-leaning individual has the expectation that people will act in a moral way, morals that are based on traditional Christian principles. Yet, people who acknowledge they are biblically inspired to behave in certain ways are being labeled, ostracized, and in some cases criminalized. Of course, right now everything is nuts but some of the insanity is because of the oxymoronic effect of people denying what they still have expectations of for others. That’s all part of why we are where we are, but I digress.
The doctors told Mom and Dad that I would be the only kid they would have, and they were lucky to get me. Mom had some weird female problems ever since she hit puberty … PCOS, fibroids, cysts, and lots of other TMI things that I’ll leave between my parents. So, I was born twenty years ago. My parents are bebopping along all happy and satisfied that their quiver would only have one arrow in it. Family all got along. All of us weren’t exactly the Brady Bunch, but my Dad liked his in-laws and Mom liked hers and the grandparental units made a point of showing me and my cousins the same amount of attention so no one was jealous or anything. Everyone shared the same worldview and, while we didn’t attend the same church all the time, the churches we did attend shared beliefs and mission statements making them almost interchangeable. It made for a great big bunch of getting along people. My dad had two siblings with two kids each and my mom had three siblings with one to three kids each. My parents were both the babies of their families with my father being the youngest by several years. I wound up being the youngest kid of the youngest kids. Made for some age differences and for my grandparents to be a little older, but hey, nothing is insurmountable, right?
Life shuffles along. Maybe we were complacent but I don’t think so. There was just a … normalcy that kinda laid thick and heavy on us … all of us, even if we did believe that something could happen and that we should prepare for just in case. Then just in case happened, or a version of it.
I started first grade just fine. Then I had a run in with a bully who pushed me down the school’s granite front entry stairs. I was learning a lot in school but how to fall safely was not something they taught. Not only did I wind up with a broken leg, broken arm, and bad concussion, I had some trauma to my abdominal area that wasn’t detected immediately. I was in the hospital, and it was a good thing too. I wound up with pancreatitis, something really rare in kids. They got the pancreatitis healed, my arm and leg as well, but my energy just wasn’t coming back. I was tired all the time, lacked an appetite, and was losing weight. I had been a chunky little kid, which was partly why the bully targeted me, and the weight loss was significant and noticeable. They did all sorts of tests and then admitted me to the children’s hospital for some kind of brain scan because they thought maybe, based on some of my symptoms, that the concussion had some lingering effects. For being a good sport about it all, I was given some ice cream. I nearly fell into what would normally be called a diabetic coma. I was diagnosed with a metabolic issue. It wasn’t Type 1 Diabetes because I was still making insulin, just not enough. And what I was making my body wasn’t using properly. They call it Type 3c diabetes if you want to get doggone technical about it. I don’t bother as it confuses too many people who only know about Type 1 and Type 2. If it comes up, I just admit to having diabetes. The infection also left me with IBS-M. Not to be too graphic but this means that my bowels can swing in both directions, sometimes chronically … diarrhea and constipation. Fun, fun it is not.
Most people look at me strangely because I don’t fit the stereotypical body shape for people with diabetes or any kind of chronic condition. I’m athletic. Not naturally and not because I really want to be, more because I want to live a long life … which means that being a couch potato or desk jockey is just not something I should be.
While all this is going on Mom thinks she might have forgotten to take a BC pill … which she took more for keeping her period in check than she did for contraception because, hey, the doctors said she couldn’t have any more kids. Well Ethan is proof that they call it practicing medicine for a reason and doctors don’t know everything they think they do. You should have heard the family squawk about it. First my diagnosis and then Mom’s diagnosis. But the family pulled together because that’s what families are supposed to do. Right?
Well Mom and Dad figure since the docs had been wrong and they had Ethan that maybe we weren’t just one off’s. Sure enough, two years later they have Ezra. Mom goes back on birth control pills to help with her female issues, and they didn’t help quite as well as they had before Ethan but that was the treatment that did the most to help her. Sort of.
Eden was another whoops and Mom got her tubes tied after she was born to make sure there wasn’t another whoops. I mean four kids and all that and one of them “medically fragile” wasn’t quite what they had expected life to hand them. They weren’t resentful but Mom admitted to me one time that they did wonder why things happened the way they did. They still had their faith, but they also had days they felt a bit like Job the same as anyone else would in such circumstances.
I need to back up just a sec to explain that Dad had gotten really bent at the school for allowing a violent mainstreamed kid to run loose with no boundaries, or an Aide to monitor him, and not warn the other parents about it. The kid’s “permanent record” was over a foot thick, and he was only in third grade (should have been in sixth and over at the middle school). Other parents at the school kinda did know but the new parents usually had to learn the hard way that some of the school’s students really should’ve had their own wing, if not their own school, where their needs could be met and not just expecting them to swim at the deep end of the pool before they were ready. Parents learned that if you did make noise, you were labeled racist or some type of -phobe, and your children could be given a harder time than others as payback.
My parents didn’t blame anyone specific exactly, but they did lose a whole lotta trust and respect in the people they should have been able to trust their kid with. They also lost trust and respect for the other parents at the school for trying to hush them up and force them to “not create problems for everyone.” So, between that and the fact that I was on an insulin pump, my parents decided it was best to home school me … and then my brothers and sister when they came along.
My parents decided if they weren’t going to have us in a school building that they weren’t going to replicate school at home. They chose to take an eclectic approach that was primarily made up of two philosophies … the Charlotte Mason approach[2] and a Classical Education[3]. I did well with this approach, but I’ll admit that my sibs have had the occasional problem. Eden can be a hot mess without a firm schedule. She’s a lot better than she used to be when she was little. We used to call her the Tasmanian Devil and I may yet agree to the threat my parents made at one point of deep freezing her until she turns 42 when I’ll be too old to care if she makes a mess. Add to this she’s one of those people that what she does has to have meaning. Busy work? No siree Bob. Nope. And Lord help us if she gets bored. The craziness she can get up to is terror inducing. Thankfully she and the boys get on well and can work together as a team to use up whatever kind of energy you want to call what Eden has.
The life my parents were building also went along with the fact that my grandparents were … well … calling them survivalists isn’t completely true. Calling them preppers was a better word for them but at the same time it wasn’t for zombies or the end of the world or anything like that. It was more for … well … for just in case. They didn’t especially expect things to go bad, but they also didn’t exactly expect what my grandfathers both called rainbows, Skittles, and unicorn farts.
And then just like that, we hit the brick wall known as just-in-case hard and that lifestyle was no longer just something we chose to do, we had to live the lifestyle to make ends meet and because the world was turning against us politically and socially. Being a person “of faith” could get you targeted not just by the government, but by your own neighbors and employers.
Then Mom’s female health took a weird turn as it had done a few times in her life. She wound up having to have her uterus scraped and some cysts removed. What no one realized was that when they were cleaning up the cysts and fibroids they kinda undid the tube being tied on one side. Whoops. Along comes the twins. And for real Mom and Dad were positive their quiver was full, and they didn’t want more kids. Essentially there are six of us because there was not going to be seven. They refused to regret any of us, but going from four to six was more than a small shock. Especially when people didn’t want to believe that my parents hadn’t done it on purpose. Some of those people included family which was not nice for my parents. And then they were jealous I guess that my grandparents refused to give up on my parents and … blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t really change the story all that much, it just means that while our family used to be extremely close and supportive of each other … that support network shrank in direct proportion to my immediate family’s growth.
So there I was, ten years old, occasionally doing the pre-teen thing of being angry about life events no one can control and that aren’t anyone’s fault. (I can’t have ice cream, I can’t have candy, I can’t have all the spaghetti I want, I can’t eat this, that, or the other because because because. I can’t have certain friends because of their parents’ choices or because their parents are wary of me and my family’s choices. Etc etc etc). It wasn’t like I was the only person in the family with health issues … Mom had her female stuff, one grandfather had high blood pressure, my other grandfather had diabetes, one of my grandmothers had COPD from growing up in a house full of heavy smokers, my mother’s mom had heart issues, then Dad gets diagnosed with diabetes but his is easily controlled with a common and inexpensive medication. Unlike mine which cost about two grand a month between the pump, the continuous glucose monitor, and the insulin itself. And that was with insurance. I felt guilty (not because my family said anything) and was also kinda feeling sorry for myself on top of getting left behind by my cousins who had started to find my pump and monitors, dietary restrictions, and my parents’ behavioral expectations embarrassing. Other family stuff wasn’t helping either. Our family wasn’t exactly fracturing, but it wasn’t like it used to be. I was getting depressed. Mom decided that wasn’t a good place for me to be in.
Rather than send me for counseling, which is I guess something they could have done, they decided to teach me I had at least some control even when I didn’t think I did. As part of my science curriculum I learned a lot about hyperglycemia, IBS, and metabolic issues and learned what I could do to control it rather than letting it control me. And the subject wasn’t just in science. Home Ec and Health had it in there. In social studies I learned about famous people with diabetes[4]. In language arts I read biographies about people with diabetes. Yeah, I know it might have seemed a bit heavy handed, but Mom wanted me to understand that while diabetes might be part of what I am, it isn’t the sum total of who I . Yet I still struggled regardless of Mom’s efforts.
[1] The Bible-Inspired Influences on the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights - American Heritage Education Foundation, Inc.
[2] What is the Charlotte Mason Method? - Simply Charlotte Mason
[3] 20 Pros and Cons of Classical Education | Ablison
[4] Famous People with Diabetes
