It's Been One Hell of a Fall

I'd like to start out by apologizing to everyone. I am so sorry for falling off the face of the "earth" with no warning or explanation. I just didn't really have the energy to share all of this until now.

I don't know if I ever officially shared this here, but Tim is a professional pilot. He went to college for it. He has just about every license the FAA provides. And what's really amazing is it all comes so natural to him. To him flying an aircraft of any type is as easy as walking down the street. What is strange is he's always known that he was going to be a pilot. His family tells stories of asking him what he was playing and he'd answer, "I'm Darryl Klink the spray pilot." It's still a mystery where he got the name.

Every year a professional pilot must get a flight physical. Tim went in for his early this fall. I went along, but waited in the waiting room. The whole thing took way to long and I made it through the waiting rooms selection of crappy magazines way to quickly. When Tim finally came out front he didn't speak to me, in fact he walked right by like I didn't exist. I knew something was very wrong. It seemed like forever at the nurses check-out. He was setting up more appointments for some scary unknown reason. Why wouldn't he look at me to let me know it was alright?

The next couple of weeks were a blur of doctor and nurse's appointments. To make a long story short Tim has Type I diabetes. His blood sugar level at that first doctors appointment was in the 300's, a normal person's 80-120. It had some how developed in the last year (the previous year's flight physical was completely normal), and as the doctors described the signs we began to wonder how we didn't catch it earlier.

So with one simple urine test a 10 year career is over. The FAA doesn't license pilots who are taking insulin due to the risk of low blood sugar. How does someone find a new "career" when they've already had the one they love? That's the question he's struggling with now. And I don't know how to fix it. I'm not used to that. I dive in with a list and a plan of attack to make it all better. But there is no where to dive and I can't make it better. I just want to give him my pancreas, but we'd probably need a weeks vacation time to get to one of those countries that would perform that kind of surgery. I used all of my vacation accompanying him to flight training schools this spring. (see we still have some what of a sense of humor)

But according to his specialist the out look is good. In 5-10 years a legal transplant or a prothesis of some sort is very likely to be an option. His only task is to keep himself healthy until one of these options becomes available. And he's doing a wonderful job of that. He was just telling me the other day that his one month level is at 97. And this entire time he's never had a low blood sugar episode. Take that stupid FAA.

In other news we have hired a friend of Tim's to help finish the house. Last week was his first week and he's doing a beautiful job. He works quickly and neatly. I had some real problems wrapping my head around the idea of someone helping with stuff we are "perfectly capable of doing ourselves." But Dale definitely won me over in the first week.

Plus, how much right to I have to complain when I'm not allowed to help because I'm pregnant. Yes, one week after we found out about Tim's diabetes we were very surprised (we had been trying for over a year) to discover I had my own health issues.

So I am 28 years old, pregnant, married to a guy with no job, and living in a house with holes in the floor/walls. Not exactly where I had pictured my life ending up. But you know what, I wouldn't change it for the world.