Adventures in Juggling

Laura Scar­bor­ough calls her­self the “Mas­ter Jug­gler under the Big Top that is my life.”

With good rea­son. Laura has a hus­band, five chil­dren, a beau­ti­ful new grand­daugh­ter named Hazel, a few ani­mals, and a full-time job — she’s a Reg­is­tered Nurse in the Level III Neona­tal Inten­sive Care Unit of a local hospital.

Laura resides in nearby Man­teca, Cal­i­for­nia and, a few months ago, was the sub­ject of a Stock­ton Record piece about women who blog. She told Record Staff Writer Jo Ann Kirby that she began blog­ging in 2004 while going through a rough patch in her life. “It was a tough year. Sev­eral peo­ple close to me had passed away.” Laura recalled that the jour­nal she main­tained as a child helped her “clar­ify and under­stand her feel­ings.” So like approx­i­mately 65 mil­lion other folks, Laura joined the blogosphere.

Since becom­ing a grand­mother, Laura has been post­ing the “Daily Hazel,” a series of por­traits of her adorable lit­tle grand­baby, any num­ber of which would merit a Post of the Day Award. Instead, upon those posts, we bestow a Ris­ing Blog­ger first-ever “Hon­or­able Men­tion,” espe­cially as to the sweet August 23, 2008, depic­tion of Laura and Hazel’s pedi­cures.

The Post of the Day Award, how­ever, goes to Breath­ing In and Out, pub­lished on August 14, 2008.

Laura is not just a highly skilled med­ical pro­fes­sional with a keen under­stand­ing of addic­tion. She is also a for­mer two-pack-per-day smoker who finds her­self sur­rounded by an extended fam­ily of largely unre­pen­tant smok­ers. “Break­ing free of their addic­tion is bru­tally hard but watch­ing peo­ple con­tinue to smoke in spite of the ill effects they live with is just as bru­tally hard,” she writes.

Recently, a num­ber of her husband’s friends expressed con­cern about what appeared to be a decline in his over­all health and well-being.

Sure enough, a recent check-up revealed that “Bill is in the begin­ning stages of Chronic Obstruc­tive Pul­monary Dis­ease or COPD.” And Laura is mad. At her­self for “stay­ing quiet most of the time. I stayed quiet to keep peace under the Big Top.” And at Bill and their daugh­ter for con­tin­u­ing to smoke in the face of his diagnosis.

Read­ers can count on Laura to “dose every­thing around here with a sense of humor.”

Laura’s hon­est and raw emo­tional response to this lat­est devel­op­ment under the Big Top mer­its not only your read­er­ship, but sup­port and encour­age­ment.  But “[d]on’t defend them or tell me how hard it is for them or any other smoker out there, seri­ously, because I just might hyper­ven­ti­late,” she fumes. “In the mean­time, I will con­tinue to breath in … and breathe out … and cry … and pray.”

I was sur­prised to learn that COPD is the fourth lead­ing cause of death in the United States. About 24 mil­lion peo­ple suf­fer from COPD, but it is esti­mated that about half that num­ber remain undi­ag­nosed. In an effort to help edu­cate Ris­ing Blog­ger read­ers, Laura for­warded these links to sites con­tain­ing use­ful infor­ma­tion about COPD:

• Breath­ing Bet­ter, Liv­ing Well
• Euro­pean Fed­er­a­tion of Allergy and Air­way Dis­eases Patients Association
• YouTube Video Series on Liv­ing with COPD
• Liv­ing with COPD Online Sup­port Group
• Web MD: Liv­ing with COPD

Laura, our thoughts and prayers are with you and your fam­ily as your con­front this lat­est chal­lenge. I look for­ward to read­ing about your ongo­ing daily jug­gling act, con­fi­dent that you will, as always, “dose every­thing around here with a sense of humor.”

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Laura on receiv­ing the Post of the Day Award!

Tech­no­rati Tags: Adven­tures in Jug­gling, Post of the Day Award, The Ris­ing Blogger

You should also check out:

• You Are a Fly on My Wall
• Writing in Faith
• We’re At Dad’s That Week
• Vent … a Series of Takes
• Tricia’s Musings