messages

It is always neat when the book that you are reading has a message that is relevant to events in your own life.
Last week, my pump, like the Toronto transit workers, walked out. It began to protest. After phone calls, emails and international collaboration a replacement pump is on its way. All is well on the diabetes front. However, a situation such as this is always a little stressful, especially when it means changing travel plans and the schedules of two others. The inevitable ‘why me?’ question raised its ugly head. “Why do I have deal with this?”

Last night, I read the last chapter of ‘Mutant Message Down Under’. The book was written by an American woman who went, unknowingly at first, on a walkabout with an Aboriginal tribe in Australia’s outback. There was a paragraph that reached out to me. Marlo Morgan was describing how this particular tribe of Aboriginal bush people interpret disease.

“There should be no suffering by any creature except what they accept for themselves. That was a thought to ponder. The elder explained that each individual soul on the highest level of our being could, and sometimes did, select to be born into an imperfect body; they often came to teach and influence the lives they touched. All diseases and disorders, they believe, have some spiritual connection and serve as stepping-stones if people would only open up and listen to their bodies to learn what is taking place”.

Hum…that would mean that all of us ‘Diabetic Souls’ have something in common, other than just daily routines of blood glucose management. It would mean that we have a greater duty then just ‘dealing’ with our own malfunctioning pancreases, that we have insight into valuable information about the human body that needs to be learned, taught and shared.

Whoa! Kind of heavy for a Monday morning! But it made me look at last week in a new light…there is much to learn from my pumping experience on the under side of the world, as well as much to share.

Now I just have to figure out the message behind loosing my medic alert bracelet in the ocean.