I’ve just become aware of a book I’m eager to read but haven’t yet got my hands on. Even so, I thought it worth telling you about it. It’s called, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware. Bronnie became a palliative nurse after doing many other things in her life and spent a lot of time with people who were in their last days. 

I’m not attracted to books like this because I have a ghoulish side, but because I think life is short – easy to do since I’m approaching 60 – and living with diabetes, one wonders will life be even shorter?

I like to know what people value at the end of their lives and what they think they would have done differently given the opportunity to do it all again. Of course, we can never really know if we’d do something differently in the moment without the benefit of hindsight, but still…

So while I haven’t yet read the book, I thought you might enjoy reading the article as I just did. It tells what the top five things are that people regret. 

I won’t spoil the surprise. I’ll just let you know that while I’ve been finishing writing my third book, Diabetes Do’s and How To’s which you will love — it’s just the actions what you need to do to be healthy with diabetes, and how to do them, available this fall–I will tell you I wish I’d made more time for regret number 4. 

There’s a strange phenomena that comes with living with diabetes. Perhaps the same as living with any illness or condition that slowly, gradually, over time, progresses. So slowly we don’t see it progressing; I certainly don’t feel it progressing.

It progresses whether we take care of it or not. In the background, slowly during the ordinary days when I get up, work at my computer, meet friends for lunch, walk through the city, laugh through dinner out with my husband.   

If I look back I know exactly when my ophthalmologist told me she saw the first sign of an eye problem – a slow growing cataract when I was 52. The first sign, after 34 years of being so relieved I had no eye problems, now I did.

I remember exactly when I got my first, of the two I’ve had, frozen shoulder. It was the day I got off the plane after living in Tokyo for six years. Day after day my shoulder became more limited in its movement and more painful. 

For a year I went from my endo to my family doctor to an occupational therapist, even a chiropractor while I was visiting friends in San Francisco. But it wasn’t until my mother told me to go to her chiropractor when I came home that my shoulder was properly diagnosed and treated. My second frozen shoulder 15 years later needed an operation. When I asked if this could recur, my ace surgeon said, “Maybe, in about fifteen years.”

I consider myself lucky that after 40 years of living with type 1 diabetes I have relatively little to show for it. Yet, when I sat in the doctor’s office four years ago and was lucky enough to hear I had a significant hearing loss I could only cry and think diabetes. 

When I notice my calves cramping more than usual, as I have the past few weeks, I can only think neuropathy. And while I notice for the first time an odd pulsing in my forearm, like a string being pulled on my nerves, and it subsides, but never really goes away, I think, diabetes? 

Now you see me, now you don’t, diabetes. You are there and not there. I can forget you, but never as long as for a day. While I believe I’m better off to work hard at keeping my diabetes in control and complications at bay, I also know, I cannot control anything, least of all whether complications will creep in in the mist of day, while I’m trying so hard, or during the dark of night, while I’m hoping only to wake up in the morning.  

That’s me, of course. Probably in my early twenties, just a few years after getting diabetes at the age of 18. This month is my 40th year with diabetes. I can’t say if I ever thought I’d reach this point: I don’t think I ever really considered it. I did think, however, how in the world will I read the little lines on my syringe when I’m old? Luckily at 58, I still have my eyesight. And better yet, I don’t think I’m old, yet!

I wrote about my journey to here on the Huffington Post. Maybe another reflection when I hit 50 years!

It’s not often in life we meet people whom we feel so in tune with, but when it happens I really, really treasure it. Not surprisingly, many of my diabetes colleagues, friends and acquaintances I meet initially through email. The best is when we actually get to then meet face-to-face – and this week that happened. Two of my email friendships got consummatedshall we say ;-). 

I’d like to introduce you to Heather Clute and Jeff Horacek, tell you what makes them amazing, and share a bit of my week. 

Heather is a wellness counselor and coach and has had type 1 diabetes for 14 years since the age of 27. Jeff is an internist and some roads in his personal life led him to run Portland’s diabetes support group. Jeff is the kind of doctor who credits his patients for his deep understanding of what it’s like to live with diabetes. I know because he’s said it more than once including at his diabetes support group this week.

Both Heather and Jeff also co-host the online radio podcast“Transforming Diabetes” where their interviews with diabetes experts help us transform diabetes from foe to friend. The link above takes you to the program we recorded while I was in studio. We call it ‘getting real with riva’ but it’s really three people sharing what it’s like to live with diabetes and what we’ve all learned along the way. 

I went to Portland to give an A1c Champion presentation to Jeff’s support group and I arrived a few days early to get to know my hosts. And I do mean hosts. Heather hosted me in her home for two days. And besides enjoying her hospitality, and the drive to the second largest waterfall in America, and the walk in the Japanese Garden – which transported me to my days living in Japan – what I also got to see and appreciate is what it’s like to manage type 1 diabetes when you’re also managing three littles ones, two aged 6, one age 8. Cute as buttons they are, yet your time is their time. I saw how many more challenges there are in that setting than my own where I have no one vying for my attention, where diabetes is my only child so to speak. And that’s just the kind of stuff we talked about on our in-studio Transforming Diabetes program.

The evening before my A1c Champion presentation to Jeff’s support group, Heather and Jeff invited two other professionals from the Portland diabetes community to join us for dinner – endocrinologist Elizabeth Stephens and RN, CDE Susanna Reiner. We had a great evening sharing tapas and conversation. I learned from Susanna, who’s heavily pursuing gluten free cooking, about substituting almond meal for flour, which I plan to do in my next batch of chocolate/ginger biscotti which my husband loves. 

The night I delivered my presentation I did something I’ve never done before. Before I began, I led the group through a mindfulness exercise to ground everyone about why they’d come and have them remind themselves what they hoped to get out of the evening, and to be present. I thought to do it because every time I look at Heather or Jeff I think mindfulness – they are working on a program they hope to offer next year that will revolve around mindfulness and diabetes management. 

Maybe this is just my way of saying “thank you” to my hosts. To take a few moments to appreciate how special my time in Portland was and how special it is when people walk into our lives who make us feel validated, important and seen. When you wrap that around diabetes, that’s quite a gift.

In a way there is nothing amazing about Heather and Jeff, they are just two people living their lives and doing what they love. And in the doing they are brightening a little corner of their own, and our, lives. They are, as are so many, the unsung heroes in diabetes, and all our unsung heroes are pretty amazing in my book.