Saturday

This is a shout out to the occasional readers of this blog asking for your prayers for ElenaClaire, who is facing profoundly challenging health complications with both physical and emotional manifestations. It is a very, very serious situation and we need wisdom. Pray specifically that she can receive nutrition, rest, and that we can get to medical professionals early on Monday. Read Romans 15:13 and let that also direct your prayers:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Wednesday before Thanksgiving

Tuesday at 5:50, ElenaClaire was found collapsed on the floor of the rest room at the Pharmacy where she worked. She was taken by ambulance to the ER on a stabilizer board. She was released late last night.

Her Dx as of last Saturday is Clinical Depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. This manifests itself in acute panic/anxiety attacks with nausea leading to vomiting. This has been going on longer than I have been aware, leaving her in a weakened and dehydrated condition.
She had an attack at work and went to the ladies' room feeling nauseous and was found there on the floor a few minutes later.

She was discharged last night after a full check-over and they added an anti-nausea to her anti-depressent and anti-anxiety meds.

News we've waited to see

The most hopeful news I've seen in 10 years

Two common cancer drugs have been shown to both prevent and reverse type 1 diabetes in a mouse model of the disease, according to research conducted at the University of California, San Francisco. The drugs – imatinib (marketed as Gleevec) and sunitinib (marketed as Sutent) – were found to put type 1 diabetes into remission in 80 percent of the test mice and work permanently in 80 percent of those that go into remission.

Monday 11/17

Pictures from the Tea Fire in Montecito - from my friend Bill Groeneveld. This is outside the Westmont College Post Office. How does someone get a picture like this?

Fire in Montecito

I've been watching the news from Montecito and Westmont College with sadness.

I started at Westmont in September of 1977, about 3 weeks after a terrible fire. The first weekend I was in town students went out to help dig out houses that were totally lost. Shoveling a family's posessions that were now nothing but ash.

You know how sometimes a page burns, but if it hasn't been crumbled, you can still read the ink on the sheet of ash? I remember picking up a sheet of ash that had been printed music. I could still see the staff and the notes. Then I tapped it and it dissolved into powder. Being a musician myself I felt a moment of the family's loss.

We all know underneath the veneer that "you can't take it with you", but loss through fire strikes something primal.

All of the dorm buildings that were lost, to my knowledge, were in the Clark complex, including Clark S. I roomed in Clark R - a few feet from the destroyed building.

My heart aches for the campus, faculty, staff and students. And I am praying for my friend Don Johnson and his congregation at Montecito Covenant Church just down the hill. Church members lost 10 homes.

I'm Back...

...after nearly a month-long sabbatical from blogging. Sometimes one needs to step away.

-The Houston Walk to Cure Diabetes was Saturday, November 8. Some ten thousand people showed up to walk. Our MILES FOR MILES team was the largest we've ever had in this, our tenth walk.

ElenaClaire couldn't make it but here are the rest of us. The "10" on the shirt refers to Miles' ten years living with diabetes, and our tenth walk. It also happily declares that we surpassed our goal of raising ten thousand dollars for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation!