Take this Pin and Blog it

The Diabetes Online Community is made up of individuals from all around the world who are united by a common cause.  We all live with a type of diabetes.

Some of my dearest friends, and folks that I consider to be like family, are people whom I’ve never met in person because we live hundreds or thousands of miles away from each other.  Yet, through Twitter, Facebook and other social media venues, we’ve been able to form awesome friendships.

And occasionally, we even get together for “family reunions.”

It just goes to show the power of social media.  No matter the distance between us, we are all neighbors in the DOC.

Being diagnosed with congestive heart failure and battling to regain some of the strength my heart had lost has, in many ways, been like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle.

My heart is broken and I’ve endured the painstaking process of determining exactly what the problem was and what may have caused it to break, ie…gathering the puzzle pieces, and then had to figure out how to treat the problem, ie…put the pieces back together to make a properly functioning heart.

I’ve been successful in finding many of the pieces and putting them back in their place. And my heart is much stronger than it was three years ago. There are still missing pieces, though, and I’m still working at putting my heart back together. It is, in effect, a work in progress. And one that I refuse to give up on.

From the time we get out of bed each morning until the time we go to bed each night, and even in the middle of the night, those of us living with a type of diabetes have to give it the finger.We all endure the pain of the lancet in order to get that precious drop of blood from our finger tip to coat those insanely expensive test strips in order to test our blood glucose levels.

Some times, I’m able to do that without thinking about it.  But other times, it hurts so bad that I do end up giving diabetes the finger. Well, the spoken word version of the finger, anyway.

When I shot this picture several months back, it was only partially done in humor. I was having a rough day and felt nothing but hatred for this disease. And so, being the brash and bold guy that I am, I posted the picture here on my blog. And eventually on Pinterest. And I can’t tell you how many people have told me just how well they can relate to it.