And so, with a text message, began a pretty incredible year helping our young son deal with an illness that will forever change how he lives his life – but not necessarily shorten it.

Thankfully, we caught Christian’s type 1 diabetes pretty early, even though his symptoms (looking back at it now) were classic signs of undiagnosed diabetes. Extreme thirst, frequent urination, a general malaise – we noticed all of these things for four or four five days before the doctor diagnosed him.

Of course, we tried to rationalize them away as anything but serious.

“All kids wet the bed.”

“He was just playing outside in the snow. Of course he’s thirsty.”

“Maybe he has a cold. You drink a lot when you have a cold.”

“He’s just tired from running around so much.”

We should have known better … but, like many, we simply didn’t know enough about type 1 diabetes to raise any red flags. Diabetes is only for the overweight and sedentary, right? That was our misguided mindset.

Thankfully, Christian already had a doctor appointment on the calendar for an ear infection follow-up, so we kept it and told the nurse about his symptoms then.

The doctor ordered a urine test. The results changed our lives on January 25, 2011. One year ago today.

The year since has been a mix of emotions for us as parents.

Fear of the newly diagnosed disease and its implications.

Anger at why Christian had been stricken with this seemingly at random (there isn’t too much known as to why someone contracts type 1 diabetes).

Depression over the gravity of it all.

Relief when learning more about just how manageable diabetes is – and how it need not prevent Christian from living life as he otherwise would have on January 24, 2011 B.D. (Before Diabetes).

Sadness when remembering the days before diabetes.

Admiration for all the people who have helped us deal with diabetes in the past year, from the health care professionals at Children’s Hospital to his teachers and staff at Rawson Elementary to our family and friends.

Amazement at how well Christian has dealt with the illness, including his nonchalance at getting poked upwards of 10 times a day and his acceptance of changes to his eating habits.

Joy at watching him live his life like any 7-year-old.

Indeed, Christian is the hero in this story. His courage is inspiring.

In so many ways, Christian still leads the life of a typical young boy.

He competes hard in sports — including soccer, Little League and basketball – both on the field and in our living room. He does great at school, at the top of his class in reading and math. He loves the Brewers, Bucks, Badgers, Packers, Panthers, Golden Eagles, and seemingly dozens of other random sports teams, not to mention monster trucks and NASCAR, He has lots of friends. He loves to laugh, yet he cries when his favorite teams lose. He hits his sister, and hugs her too.

In other words, he is that wonderful mix of innocence and precociousness that you find in any 7-year-old, even if that maturity is multiplied because of the illness he deals with.

Yes, diabetes forces you to grow up quickly. Too quickly.

*****

I won’t get too much into the complexities of type 1 diabetes here, and I’ve pasted some links below for those who are interested.

Simply, type 1 diabetes causes a person’s pancreas to produce little or no insulin. So we have become Christian’s “pancreas on the outside” in the past year – and will until he’s old enough to take more ownership of the illness. He’ll have this for life.

Day to day, this means blood sugar checks at wakeup and bedtime, before every meal and snack and at other times throughout the day. Each check is a finger prick – drawing a small blood sample that we run through a small device that tells us his current blood sugar.

His normal range is now 80 to 150. Most of the time, he’s in that range. Sometimes, he’s high, and we inject him with insulin to bring it down. (At diagnosis, for a frame of reference, he was 479.) Sometimes, he’s low, and we give him food to bring up. In all, Christian gets at least four shots of insulin each day – before every meal and bedtime. He gets more if he snacks and if he’s high.

In other words, our lives have become a numbers game. We religiously track Christian’s carbohydrate intake and dose him with insulin accordingly, no exceptions, using a scale that seemingly always changes and cross-multiplication skills that we thought we’d left in our dust in high school.

“So, how were Christian’s blood sugars today?” That’s typically how Sarah and I start every phone conversation these days.

“How many carbs are in that?” “How much should we dose him?” Those are other questions we ask throughout the day, as we determine how much insulin to give Christian at meal time.

While we deal with this daily, we also never forget how high the stakes are. The long-term complications of high blood sugars are real – from amputations to vision loss to organ failure. The short-term implications of lows are just as real. A severely low blood sugar can kill.

That is why we are always watching him closely for signs of lows and asking him, “Christian, do you feel wobbly?” Wobbly – that’s how he describes his low feeling.

Thankfully, he has gotten much better at identifying his symptoms – part of that unfortunate maturity. At the same time, he occasionally rebels over his diet, and who can blame him?

Gone are the days of Skittles and juice boxes, unless he’s low, of course. And no more of the “reward candy” we had grown so accustomed to giving him. We’ve also had to rethink Halloween, Thanksgiving and other carb-heavy holidays.

For the most part, Christian has embraced all of this, and thank God for that.  Still, diabetes has robbed him of the one thing that should define every child’s life: spontaneity.

Kids should be able to sprint to the ice cream truck for a cold treat, or have that second piece of pizza for diner, without thinking twice. Shouldn’t they? (Well, ice cream and pizza are full of carbs.)

A 7-year-old shouldn’t have to think twice before playing hard in the backyard on a hot summer day. (Well, exercise can lower your blood sugar, so we have to watch him closer.)

Shouldn’t all kids be able to have a piece of candy after being particularly nice to their younger sister? (Well, he can, but only after a shot.)

Yes, diabetes forces you to think twice. And that is my biggest source of anger over this illness. It’s the reason I still sometimes ask, “Why Christian? Why us?”

*****

So this has been our life the past year, 365 days that began with one text message. I was a thousand miles away when I received it, on a business trip to Texas, and never felt so far away.

Sarah and I occasionally wistfully look back to the days before diabetes, but we have grudgingly accepted our new reality, as has Christian. We’ve had to.

We’ve also decided to educate others as much as possible about type 1 diabetes, clearing up any misconceptions about the illness. The job continues … as does our own education.

One blessing of the past year has been getting the chance to meet some of the people affected by this illness, from the families faced with the same challenges we face to the advocates working toward to improve the quality of life of diabetes sufferers – and ultimately toward a cure.

We pray every day for that, and there is real progress being made. Please join us in those prayers.

In the meantime, I ask you to learn more about diabetes and consider supporting the incredible efforts out there to help kids like Christian.

Nearly 26 million people in the United States have diabetes. Only 5% of those people have type 1 diabetes. Ours is just one story, and this is just one pulpit – my small opportunity to shine the light on an illness we all could stand to learn more about.

For Christian.

To learn more about type 1 diabetes, check out the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, American Diabetes Association and the Diabetes Research Institute. And please consider joining us on Christian’s Crew during the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes at the Zoo in September. Send me an email if you’re interested in walking with or sponsoring our team.

• TV Repairman Held For Trial In Waukesha County, Faces Trial Here (Racine Journal Times)
• Cudahy Steel Manufacturing Firm Goes Into Receivership (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
• Error Put Some Oak Creek Residents In Wrong Voting District (Oak Creek Patch)
• Retirements In City’s Workforce Create Voids, Savings (Oak Creek Patch)
• Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana Presents All Sides Of Flamenco (South Milwaukee NOW)

A woman’s body was found Tuesday in Lake Michigan near 5th Avenue and Bender Park in Oak Creek.

Check out the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story here. From it:

About 10:29 a.m., firefighters and police officers responded to a report of a body washed up on shore near Bender Park.

Officers asked plant operators to open the gate to a closed fishing pier on the north end of the property shortly before 11 a.m. Tuesday so that they could get access to the lakeshore, said Scott Royer, general manager for Veolia Water Milwaukee. Veolia Water operates the South Shore and Jones Island treatment plants for the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.

Here is Fox 6 coverage.

I’ve been told the woman is from South Milwaukee, and that there is no evidence of foul play. Per the Journal Sentinel story, the woman appeared to have died from exposure.

I’ll keep you posted when I learn more.

As you’ll recall, Educators merged with Kyle, 1201 Marquette Ave., in a deal effective Jan. 1.

Learn more about Educators here and here, and here is a list of Educators locations. South Milwaukee is the 17th.

Welcome to South Milwaukee!

Among the items reported to police in the past few weeks were a break-in on Blakewood Avenue, the theft of a laptop computer from a Willowcrest resident, a Craigslist paycheck scam and a bar fight and chase that started at Pat’s Oak Manor.

Check it out here.

And check out these other local headlines:

• Real Estate: Retail On The Rebound (BizTimes.com)
• Man Who Drove Over Lawn Arrested For OWI (Oak Creek Patch)
• Elementary School Custodian Charged With Sexual Assault (Oak Creek Patch)
• Oak Creek Student Makes Rough Patch A Little Smoother (Oak Creek Patch)

I learned quite a bit from the presentation from the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board.

Of course, the most-publicized major impact of the law is probably its most controversial: Voters must show a photo ID in order to vote beginning this year. And all voters must sign a poll list before being issued a ballot.

Other mandates, however, were more of a surprise to me. Among them:

• The residency requirement — the time someone must live at their current address before voting — has changed from 10 days to 28 consecutive days.
• Voter registration is no longer a year-round option. Registration now “closes” for a short window — from 5 p.m. on the Friday before election day to the day of the day of the election — for each election. This allows for clerks’ offices to prepare their voter lists. Registration then reopens at the polls.
• Voters will no longer be able to select a straight-party ticket. Instead, each candidate must be selected individually.
• Absentee voting is also being changed. The window for in-person absentee voting is shrinking, as it now begins the third Monday before the election and ends at 5 p.m. on the Friday before election day. Photo ID must be provided. Ballots received by mail will be made available sooner.

In the end, I support the new law, which will clearly bring some major changes to how we vote in Wisconsin. The new requirements are reasonable and provide good safeguards to further protect the integrity of the vote.

But I also have this message: Be patient at the polls.

The ID and signature requirements will slow down the voting process, no question about it. Tests done by the GAB showed it took at least 20 seconds per voter to accomplish these tasks — and when you multiply that by hundreds, if not thousands, of voters that you’ll see during high-turnout elections like the upcoming presidential primary and gubernatorial recall and it’s significant.

South Milwaukee poll workers — who comprised most of the approximately 30 people in attendance on Thursday, as the meeting was presented by the city clerk’s office — do their best, but there is a learning curve for them, too, with the new voting rules. Please keep that in mind.

The biggest change: The addition of a new Macy’s store at the former Younkers space.

The store will open March 14, and they’re already working to hire 160 people.

Check out the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story here and Business Journal story here.

And check out these other local headlines of interest:

• Burton And Childress Express High Expectations For 2012 (RacingNation.com)
• Winter Dance Party Returns To Area (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
• Survey: Oak Creek Doing Well, But Room For Improvement (Oak Creek Patch)
• Oak Creek Home Damaged After Dryer Starts Fire In Basement (Oak Creek Patch)
• Updated: Oak Creek Hallmark Closed (Oak Creek Patch)
• Ribbon Cutting Scheduled For New Senior Living Facility (Oak Creek Patch)

Also, State Sen. Chris Larson has published a new Larson Report. The main headline: “Wisconsin is at a Standstill, Forward no More.”

• The council voted 6-2 to spend more than $99,000 to construct a new stormwater relay at the North Chicago Avenue site soon to be a Walmart. The new pipe and other infrastructure will replace rusty, metal pipe more than 50 years old and improve stormwater flow through the area. This is work the city has contemplated for some time, but we wanted to wait to do it until we had formal plans from a developer for the vacant site to move ahead. The system will connect to Walmart’s proposed underground detention pond and also serve the approximately 10 acres north of Carroll Avenue to College – site of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, etc. Bids ranged from the one we selected to more than $170,000. We chose Bradford Contractors out of Burlington to do the project starting as soon as possible.
• The council voted 8-0 to spend up to $8,000 to hire a consultant, Sigma Environmental Services, to study noise and vibration reported by neighbors of Appleton Electric in 5^th and Milwaukee Avenues. Neighbors have complained for some time about excessive vibrations coming from the foundry. The city looked into the matter in 2011, but with continuing complaints, we felt it best to bring in an expert to look into the issue further. Sigma will do two weeks of testing in and around homes in the neighborhood. I am glad we’re doing our part to get to the bottom of this. I’ll keep you posted.
• The council also agreed to amend our ordinance around junk dealer licenses. It passed 8-0, but the debate was more on the size of the annual fee we’re now asking junk dealers to pay. As part of the approval of our annual fee schedule last fall, we increased the junk truck fee from $150 to $1,000. I was uncomfortable with the increase then but voted yes because it was one of hundreds of line items in the schedule – and the only one I had serious issues with. We now plan to have a deeper discussion on the junk truck fee at a future Legislation & Permits Committee meeting, where I hope the fee – which would kick in July 1 – will be lowered to a more reasonable increase. I’ll keep you posted.  
• Aldermen also made a couple changes to upcoming meeting times. We moved our meeting scheduled for Feb. 21 to Feb. 22 to accommodate the primary election for Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge. We also decided to cancel our first April meeting (April 3) and only hold our April 17 meeting that month. This is because of expected high turnout (and added work for the clerk’s office) for the election on April 3, which you will recall is also the Wisconsin presidential primary. The council also meets May 1.
• We also named former Alderman Mark Milinovich to the Police and Fire Commission, replacing Richard Cole, who is moving from the city.

Of course, if you have comments on any of the topics above, post them below!

Check out the story here. From it:

This weekend, Kashian returns to her old stamping grounds – including a gig only eight blocks from the house where she grew up. She headlines shows at Daddy’s Rockin’ Steakhouse in South Milwaukee on Friday and Rounding Third on Saturday.

Kashian, who describes her comedy as “social commentary with family stories,” expects her family – otherwise known as the people in her jokes – to be in attendance, including her father, the man she describes in terms not appropriate for a family newspaper. But she does it tenderly.

She tells one story about meeting her dad at a McDonald’s during a visit home, when her dad arrived in too-short jean shorts that he made himself. She gave her father’s wardrobe a “creep factor of 90.”

“He’s a handsome guy,” Kashian said. “If anyone could wear such an outfit or if he were looking for gentlemen callers . . .”

She doesn’t finish the thought, although she likely will this weekend.

Did you know Jackie? Did you envision her becoming a comedian? If so, or not, post your comments below!

Check out the Journal Sentinel story here. From it:

Separately, Caterpillar said in December it would sell a part of its Bucyrus distribution business to the industrial division of Malaysia’s Sime Darby for about $360 million.

“We are making good progress as we transition the product distribution and support of former Bucyrus machinery to Cat dealers around the world,” Steve Wunning, Caterpillar group president, said in a news release.

Here is the news release. And check out these other local headlines:

• Short-Term Oak Creek Mayor Could Have Long-Term Impact (Oak Creek Patch)
• Four Vehicles Involved In Domino-Like Accident (Oak Creek Patch)
• A Night Of Passion-In-Motion (South Milwaukee NOW)
• Gourmet House For More Than Gourmands (New Kid’s View blog)
• WWE Superstar Headlines Event (South Milwaukee NOW)

Also, a new South Shore police blotter is available on NOW, and it includes items on a fight at Liquid Hideout, the theft of a snowblower from a garage on Drexel Boulevard and more on the fire on Laurel Lane last week.

And mark your calendar for 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, when Studio 915 will hold an artist reception for Amy Magnuson, a Wisconsin-Milwaukee Peck School for the Arts student who specializes in abstract pieces. Wine and appetizers will be served, and there will be live music. Learn more about Studio 915 here.