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!

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Tagged as: Adventures in Juggling, Post of the Day Award, The Rising Blogger