Lots to update on, so this post is a little bit of everything, hence Smörgåsbord.

First, we had a big life-changing event in our family a few weeks ago (actually it’ll be a month this coming Monday…wow time goes fast!). Mark got diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. He hadn’t been feeling quite right for awhile (lost almost 1/3 of his body weight, not able to sleep at night b/c of leg cramps) but he wanted to wait to go to a doctor till I was living in CA with him. When Mom came down for Menininho’s blessing she figured out that Mark had diabetes (my little sister also has it, so Mom’s been through this before). Sure enough, Mark was diagnosed a week later. Long story short, the doctor who diagnosed him was terrible and caused us a good deal of stress, but we were able to Mark in to see an endocrinologist at Stanford by the end of the week. She’s great and very impressed with Mark. He’s memorized just about everything there is to know on the subject (including bringing in some Swedish research articles to discuss with her at his 2nd appointment) and has been extremely adept at controlling his sugars. It’s not an easy diagnosis to get and I’m really proud of Mark for the positive attitude he’s had about this and how proactive he’s being in taking care of himself. [Right now he’s sitting here telling me that he wants to know the derivative of his blood glucose waveform in order to stop oscillation so he can correct based on the rate of change instead of the poor data based on the low sampling frequency he has right now….say whaaaaaat?]

We did have a good laugh over a couple of things associated with the diagnosis. For starters, during grad school I had to evaluate a healthcare program for my Program Evaluation class. I chose the Bag of Hope program that the JDRF does. I never thought that we would end up the recipients of the program! Mark (read: Menininho) is now the proud owner of a teddy bear with patches to show him where to give shots, hahaha.

Also, not too long ago my friend Jeanette posted on her blog about how, after seeing a commercial for the One Touch blood tester, one of her young daughters was so enamored with the product that she professed a desire to have diabetes one day so that she could use it. Well, Jeanette: between the two of them, my sister and Mark have used every blood tester product out there now. Lindsey should rest assured that should she ever get diabetes, One Touch is indeed the best product out there. 🙂 Mark is VERY excited to get his new One Touch pump in a few weeks because of all the doodads on it.

Today was a rather bipolar cooking day (i.e. – the best of times, the worst of times). I decided to make scalloped potatoes for dinner in order to use up the rest of our Easter ham (we bought a fair sized ham for Easter thinking we were having 2 families over for dinner that evening, and then one of them canceled last minute so she could potty train her son). I worked really hard to get dinner in the oven before Mark came home. However, I misjudged how long it takes potatoes to cook (at least 2 hrs), so we didn’t sit down to eat till 8:40 or so. But, even after over 2 hours of cooking, the potatoes were still hard! Mark and I really tried to eat them, but they just weren’t edible. I put the leftovers in the fridge and I’ll try to cook them longer tomorrow to see if the dish is salvageable.

I had also decided this afternoon that I *needed* to make strawberry shortcake. Luckily, I just happened to have all the ingredients handy. I must say, they turned out great! I’ve included a picture below, though I’m not sure it does the dessert justice. I used Splenda instead of sugar (couldn’t taste a difference) and sugar free whipped topping instead of heavy whipping cream. This success made up for the scalloped potatoes failure for sure!

I know I have more to post but I am so tired I honestly can’t remember what else has gone down recently. Oh well. 🙂