Chronic Mama

I gasped loudly in the silence of our sleeping house. She wouldn’t trade it for the world? Angry and offended, I sat upright in the chair, startling Reid. How could…

For 25 years I avoided diabetes support groups. When I was a kid I refused to go to any kind of diabetes camp because I didn’t want anyone to see…

Unable to fall asleep, I wonder what having a child with diabetes was like from Mom’s point of view. I wonder how my diagnosis changed the way she’d mothered me…

The closer I got to home, the worse I felt. It was becoming hard to pick my feet up off the ground; they shuffled and dragged along the pavement like…

My children’s birth stories are different. I did not experience the surprise of my water breaking naturally, or the surge of nervous excitement that follows. I did not count contractions.…

Will began struggling with worries in kindergarten. His throat hurt and he worried that he wouldn’t be able to swallow at school. I tried to explain to him that his…

As a writer I know you can’t create an all-bad character. I write non-fiction and my characters are real people, so I know I have to show both sides of…

My mother-in-law called to ask when we were having the amniocentesis. I told her, in as level a voice as I could muster, that we weren’t doing any testing. She…

Something wasn’t right. My morning runs had been sluggish for weeks; my feet dragged as if I were running through quicksand. Concerned, I went through a range of questions: was…

Jane told me wearing the pump would be like wearing a beeper, but the pump was nothing like a beeper; it was big and black and stuck out under my…

Going to McDonald’s was a special treat when I was growing up. It was the seventies and my parents were hippies. Mom baked her own bread and canned her own…