Increasing difficulty...

Have you ever walked up a really steep, really big hill?  At Camp Needlepoint, when I was growing up, there was a hill just like this.  We called it Reaction Hill because the journey from the bottom to the top induced many, many insulin reactions.  We had to walk that hill nearly every day.  It lead down to the beach and then back up to the camp.  Life is just like that hill sometimes!  Diabetes is just like that hill sometimes.  You start out at the bottom with all the energy in the world.  You hit a plateau in the middle and get a tiny bit of a break and then have to start up on the hardest part to finish.  As you get closer and closer to the top, it feels like there's something pulling you back down, harder and harder.  This is how I've been feeling lately.  It's a struggle just making it through a day sometimes.  I have to push myself to keep on going.  Winter makes me want to crawl under the covers and hide until the sun comes back out and the temperature rises again.  Diabetes makes me want to crawl under the covers and hide until a miracle happens and a cure is found.  The thought of exercise makes me want to crawl under the covers with a pint of ice cream.  I'm resisting all of those urges.  For the moment....

So here's the first problem.  Lily was born in May of 2007.  Since then, I've had exactly one night away from my children.  For the first year, I didn't really take any breaks from her.  For the second year, I was busy with adding Leo to the family and didn't take many breaks then either.  After Leo was born, I made a bit of an effort to go out and meet other mommy friends for drinks.  But every time I went, I'd come home to my husband who was upset that I'd stayed out until 10:00 p.m.  Leo was awful back then.  He woke up wanting to nurse all the time.  He didn't sleep through more than a couple of hours and often, just wanted to remain latched onto me all night.  Breaks didn't do much good when I would just go back home to the same problems.  It got easier to take breaks as Leo got older, but lately, I haven't really bothered with any kind of break.  I've fallen out of touch with a lot of the mommy friends I used to talk to.  Many of them I don't stay in touch with because it seems like so few of them can even begin to comprehend what my life is like.  I'm disconnected.  So, if I take a break, it's most likely just an hour or two to myself.  Or dropping the kids in child care at the gym and working out.  Or my husband letting me sleep in on the weekends, which I appreciate so incredibly much!  Unfortunately, none of those things help me get back to functioning at 100%.  I'm becoming more and more emotionally exhausted as each day passes.  I keep giving more and more and more until I have nothing left.

Second problem....working out helps tremendously with the emotional exhaustion.  But it is leading to a very physical exhaustion.  I'm taking breaks, taking days off when I'm feeling too physically exhausted, but it's hard to take a break from it because I'm still somewhat afraid that if I take a break, I'll revert back to old behaviors.  I'm pushing myself and trying to keep myself going.  Working out is still hard and feels like torture.  And I'm still having other issues.  For a very long time, I let some issues I'm having with eczema keep me from working out.  I have patches of eczema on my feet.  They've been there for about two years now.  They break out, the skin thickens and cracks open.  It can be really painful sometimes.  And so far, nothing has helped to clear them up.  No prescription, no cream or salve or ointment.  They just keep on persisting.  I have one particular spot that burns when I work out.  But I ignore it.  I'm also having problems with cramping in my feet when I workout.  It always starts about 15 minutes into my workout and lasts until 30 minutes in, if not a little longer.  The middle toes on my feet go numb after that.  In spite of all of that, I keep on going.  I need to keep on going.  I've been doing 60 minutes of high intensity exercise every time I make it to the gym.  I want my heart to be healthy.  I can't focus on the 60 minutes though.  I focus on 10 minutes.  I work for 10 minutes and then reverse.  Work for another 10 minutes and go back to pedaling forward.  Each time, I'm nearly exhausted by the time I finish the 10.  But then I reverse and find another burst of energy and keep on going.  I'm upping the resistance on the machine and I give myself permission to slow down if I need to.  For some reason, that usually keeps me going at the same pace I was at and rarely do I find myself slowing down.  I just keep going and going.  And somehow, I've found myself 15 lbs lighter now.  Which is an incredibly awesome thing!  And once I discovered that, I shoved the scale back into the closet.

Anyway, I just needed to get all of that out.  I'm finding myself rundown in so many ways and it's taking a toll. I need to find a way to recharge my batteries.  Anyone know of a good way to do that?