I'm not cheesy enough to get one of those "I *heart* My Husband" Bumper Stickers

My husband is one of the most patient people I know, unless of course he thinks I am ready to go somewhere when I am actually not.

When my BS levels are sky-high, he'll go get me a glass of water, make sure I took a correction, tuck me into bed if I need to take a nap to get through it.

When they're low, he'll hop out of bed in the middle of the night and run to the kitchen naked to grab me a glass of juice. He rubs my back to calm me, holds me until the world stops shaking.

We first started dating in high school. We went to different schools and met at a mutual friend's Halloween party. We were instantly infatuated with each other and ended up making out before the night was through. Then we made plans to call each other. Matt still has the Post-It note that I wrote my phone number on. It's tattered, but he keeps it amongst all the other things in his wallet, no matter what. He's gone through a number of wallets since then.

We've grown and changed as people, but through college we kept up our long-distance relationship. We helped each other cope through our parents' divorces, which were only a year apart from each other, right before the start of our respective senior years at Elizabethtown College (me) and the University of Delaware (him).

He has always known about and wanted to help me with my diabetes. In high school, he told me he checked a book out of our public library on diabetes because he wanted to learn, but he couldn't get past the first chapter because right off the bat it ran though the typical GIANT list of complications. It made him cry. I told him it's not always that bad. He marvelled at the wonder that was my first insulin pump, a Minimed 508, with its clicks, beeps, its tubing that never got in the way of being intimate (although it was initially a concern).

Of course, there came the kidney scare. The first bout of depression. The divorce. The long nights spent apart. The bad A1cs. The swollen ankles. The second bout of depression. The tears that seem to come once a week for one reason or another.

But he is always there. He always loves me exactly the way I am, and tries to remind me, gently, if I seem suddenly cranky with him that "maybe you should do a finger prick, Hannie, hasn't it been a while?"

The other night, I was sitting on the bed in my pajamas while he rubbed my swollen feet and ankles. I was busy making happy noises and readying my mind for sleep when he asked, "Do you ever write about how I do this on your d-blog?"

Well, Matt, I just did.