Glucose garden, what's it about? Two things. Can a person who lives alone navigate on a third floor during surgical recuperation with one working leg? And, how does a person with a longtime sweet tooth live with and manage pre-diabetes and as much as possible, keep it from turning to full-blown diabetes?

The first I know the answer to: Yes, with more than a little help from her/his friends (and good medical attention). Now this is not exactly neat looking (in fact it's pretty damn sloppy), but my bed has held a bin with cereal, dried fruit, sometimes fresh fruit like apples (bananas ripen too quickly with a too-sweet smell), a hunk of cheese, crackers, juice, cinnamon. That has been for the time when I was really sick and getting out of bed was way more trouble than it is now. I think I'll retire the bin soon...but it’ll be easier to disburse the goods again when I am fully on two feet. Right now I'm heel-walking on the right foot.

The bin has also held bills, important papers coming in from the mail (thank you, next door neighbor Katie, for bringing my mail up). Also cables for my laptop computer. On the left bedstead: all the clothes I need, folded, at hand. On the right bedstead: meds.

How to consolidate the span of our reach and our needs as restrictions arise. The goal: good health.

The bathroom is 20 feet away. Clothes washed out in the bathtub from a tub bench and hangers. About the bench: new song while showering, to the tune of “There is nothing like a dame,” South Pacific: There is nothing like a shower! On a bathtub chair. You can never glare or glower, if you’re show’ring on a bathtub chair.

As for living in a glucose garden – uncharted territory, in good part, for me. I’ve been eating good breakfasts (oatmeal and fruit) for awhile. Somewhat prudent lunches. But my weight has yo-yoed for a long time, there’s a good deal of diabetes on my mother’s side of the family, and I am a sweetaholoic.

I was well forewarned by my mother’s experience in 1997, when she lost her left leg below the knee to diabetes. And by her valiant struggle to accommodate to that loss for the rest of her life.

But not enough was I responding to my own problems with glucose, evidently. How am I going to handle it now that thank God, I seem to be being released back into grateful mobility and ordinary life? Remains to be seen. I have a goal of never going through this again. How now to live in ways to support that? I’ll continue this blog from time to time on the subject.

There’s a third point to this blog. How is God, Creator and Sustainer of all creation, present in our world? In my humble opinion, God is at hand, God is afoot, God is about, while leaving us to our free exploration and discovery. God wants our participation, not us enchained.  

It seemed impossible that I could find a way to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital for hyperbaric oxygen treatments that were recommended as a way to save my distressed toes. As I sat in the hospital lobby the first morning waiting for the cab, I thought: This has gone amazingly well.

All of a sudden I saw the face of my mother’s good friend, Sr. Antonie Mueller, SSSF, School Sisters of St. Francis. Sr. Toni lived down the street from my mom and brought her a wonderful meal every Friday and they solved the world’s problems. She retired to St. Joseph’s Convent in Campbellsport, Wisconsin. I’d visit her when I’d get to Wisconsin. Sr. Toni was in excellent health in her 80s, gardening, sewing, attending lectures, reading, playing cards, visiting with her friends. She was taken ill and died unexpectedly in March.

As I sat at Shady Grove Hospital wondering why and how things had gone so well for me when they had seemed so impossible, I saw Toni’s face. Well, of course, she was saying.

Well, of course.

God is alive, God is at hand, God is afoot.


Photos: Bed bin, bathtub bench, St. Toni in May 2011, and Sr. Toni with her friend Sr. Betty. 6/21/2012 Th