Shooz Schmooz

Stress is running rampant now and managing it as a diva is tough. I have my good days and my bad days. On my good days I exercise, eat lots of veggies and dress to the nines. On my bad days I have strokes and feel defeated. Stress is like an unwelcome drinking buddy, it’s a pimple on prom night, it’s scavaging looters during a disaster. The problems are only made worse by this annoying undercurrent of stress that lingers like onion on a chef’s fingers. It hangs in the air and wreaks havoc in subtle and not so subtle ways.

My usually rock solid, non-moody, positive hubby, Stefano, has had more ramifications than me recovering from my stroke. Seems he developed a “frozen shoulder” when I was in the hospital and no amount of muscle relaxants or Vicodin can relieve him of the anguishing pain that makes even a handshake an excruciating task. Luckily he isn’t a politician where obligatory arm pumping is a daily requisite to the job.

We all have to manage stress and dance with it at every turn – embrace it, woo it, tease it, fool it — much like the tango from Scent of a Woman. It is electric and palpable. It is my life’s work to make peace with it. Stress is a killer they say, but I won’t let it strangle the joy from my daily existence. That is a lofty endeavor. Resolution worthy. Top o’ the year to y’all. And speaking of dancing…

Since my bike has been stolen 35 times (not the same bike mind you), I have given up throwing good money after bad and decided to travel around the Big Apple like everyone else – bus, subway and the occasional cab. I really love to walk, but my feet hate it. A combination of killer shoes and bad genes has given me no other option but to wear flats, good thing I am 5′10″ and don’t need height. I loved my bike because I had mastered the art of biking in heels. People used to say, “Can you bike in those high heels?” My reply was, “I sure as hell can’t WALK in them!” Today’s aggressive shoes are iron maiden-esque in their ability to make you cry “UNCLE!” even if your Uncle happens to work for Zappos and couldn’t care less what FMP means. Pretty and painful that’s how I describe ‘em…pretty painful! Pass the Dr. Scholl’s corn and bunion pads. I can’t say I can even walk in these torture chambers with heels from the cab to a party now. I am considering hiring a rickshaw. But, even sitting down in them hurts.

Max and I have been toying with shoe makeover ideas for our divas. How to wear the trends comfortably. How to find manageable examples that won’t send your feet into neuropathic paroxysms. Now that’s a footful of blues. How to choose style and comfort…you get the idea.

I am curious as to how my fellow divas manage their soleful dilemmas. Let me know if you get a quick sec and can walk me thru solutions. And don’t tip toe around the subject – give it to me straight up. I want to get a leg up on 2010 and master my achin’ and barkin’ dogs. Let me stop now before the metaphors and similes take over! I gotta ….er, run !!!

Madison Plus Saves the Day!

Aimee Cheshire in Lane Bryant for Madison Plus

http://madisonplus.com/mp-daily/madison-plus-and-divabetics/

MADISON PLUS AND DIVABETIC

Please click on this link and feast your eyes on the plethora of blue dresses from all the designers who agreed to participate in the Divabetic runway event. Such a beautiful layout of photos. I felt like I was there! For those of you who have come to our Makeover events, you know I always do the Little Black Dress. It is the essence of being a DIVA and having a dramatic look in your wardrobe has to start with the LBD. In fact, Glam More Fear Less: Do you know YOUR little black dress? is one of the features of my makeover station. I use my Shape Shopping with Figure&Fit image program to advise women on how to Know Your Shape, Show Your Shape! So, when Max came to me in the summer and asked if I could reinvent this one color dress idea and come up with a new theme for the fashion show, since the event fell exactly on November 14th, International Diabetes Awareness Day, and the theme color was BLUE…I said LBD can stand for the Little BLUE Dress. The Empire State Building cooperated and changed its lights that day to blue, so it was a pretty big deal! Aimee Cheshire and Erica Young are the beauties and brains behind this new plus size site, Madison Plus. They were thrilled to be involved with the fashion show and lent their expertise to backstage that day. It was a good thing because I was off getting treated all day at the hospital for the stroke I had that morning. How inconvenient but how marvelous that I had the foresight to involve these capable and passionate women into the mix. You should definitely check out their site for all things PLUS. They have a brand new site that just happened to have launched right before the Makeover Your Diabetes event. I guess you could say “what goes around comes around.” About eleven years ago, Aimee had emailed me and asked for some inspirational advice because she was interested in plus size modeling. She wrote to me and I had encouraged her to “go for her dream” and based on the strength of my advice, she got into the “business” and here she is so many years later….November 14th to be exact, returning the favor! Let that be a lesson for life!!

MY “LUCKY” STROKE

by Catherine Schuller, AICI, CIP

DIVABETIC IMAGE AND STYLE DIRECTOR

Sudden and unexpected and potentially fatal.  That’s how I describe it.  If anyone would have told me that sometime during the year 2009’s end I, Catherine Schuller, was going to have a stroke, I would have said, “Unlikely!”  But, that is exactly what happened.  Let me say that I had absolutely no prior symptoms, no shortness of breath, chest pains, heart palpitations, enlarged left side of my heart, susceptibility to pneumonia or bronchitis.

I just lost 40 pounds, am controlling my prediabetes and insulin resistance, monitored every six months at my endocrinologist, who listens regularly to my heart and monitors my now-perfect blood pressure.  However, it seems as though I was a ticking time bomb waiting to “go off.”  So, on Saturday, November 14th at 8 a.m., World Diabetes Awareness Day, while I was packing up the car going to execute my duties as Image and Style Director for my Divabetic makeover event, with a full day ahead of me doing two fashion shows and hosting The Glam More Fear Less makeover station, I became one of the 800,000 people in America who experiences a stroke.

The only reason I am able to write this article today is because I recognized the symptoms and acted quickly on them.  As someone who knows strokes because of my work with diabetes, I recognized what was happening to me, had my husband, who was assisting me at the time, call 9-1-1 and got myself to the emergency room.  They acted quickly, stripping me of my leather jacket, jewelry, bustier and boots in two minutes and started the necessary procedures to diagnosis, determine the brain damage and hopefully arrest the stroke.  The ER gave me the immediate treatment for stroke, tPA (tissue plasminogen activator) – the ‘clot busting’ drug, which if administered within the required three hour window, halts the stroke and reverses the possible physically disabling consequences.  Many Americans, especially women, are not aware that stroke is the leading cause of disability and the third leading cause of death.   The odds are 30% higher that women will have longer times before diagnosed.  Perhaps because symptoms such as altered mental state, slurred speech and even unconsciousness are not just associated with strokes or because they ignore them and don’t get the help they need quickly.  I was lucky because just my right side was rendered immobile but my speech, level of awareness and lack of confusion were in my favor allowing me to ask for help and tell my husband, “Call 9-1-1 and tell them I am having a stroke!”

Getting people informed is my new mission, so I am officially on my soapbox and itching to get this information out there.  It saved my life and I am literally the walking, talking example of how a little ‘knowledge is power.’

As it turns out, there are two kinds of stroke (or “brain attack”) and you need to be able to recognize the warning signs.  Suffice it to say that a blood clot blocks an artery (a  blood vessel that carries blood from the heart to the body) or a blood vessel (a tube through which the blood moves through the body) breaks, interrupting blood flow to an area of the brain.  When either of these things happen, brain cells begin to die and brain damage occurs.  If you act swiftly and get to the hospital and have them administer that tPA, the prognosis is 80% in favor that you will recover.

You cannot ignore what is happening to you in hopes that the symptoms will simply pass.  I’m wagging my finger here.  In the words of another Divabetic makeover station title, “Denial is not my style.”  One of the things the ER does is not only diagnose and arrest the stroke, but determine how and why the stroke occurred so that they can prevent another one in the future.  In my case, the diagnostic tests determined that I have a patent foramen ovale, (hole in my heart) which I’ve had since birth.  And to make matters even more interesting, I have an ASD (atrial septic defect), a flap between the upper chambers which did not close at birth.  The hospital delved deeper and had me sign (privacy reasons) for DNA testing on my blood to see if I have any clotting factors which I am also genetically predisposed to, and the results came back that I have the Factor Five Leiten gene – a triple whammy!  So, between the hole, the flap and the clot, I was a trifecta ticking time bomb!  I guess you might say I won the “clottery” and there were no symptoms until my right leg crumbled beneath me and took me down.  It wasn’t painful but I was devastatingly startled as I fell.  I remember thinking “Why am I falling -  I did not trip over anything!!”

In a nutshell, the foramen ovale is a small hole in the atrial septum of the heart that is used to speedup the travel of oxygenated blood from the placenta through the umbilical cord to a fetus in the womb.  In most cases the hole closes naturally when a newborn takes its first breath.  However, 25 percent of the population never experiences this closure, a defect that works like a flap valve and opens under conditions when there is more-than-usual pressure inside the chest.  If the pressure is great enough, blood may travel from the right atrium to the left.  If there is a clot in that blood, it can cross the PFO, enter the left atrium and travel out of the heart and to the brain (causing a stroke) or into a coronary artery (causing a heart attack).  See, how it’s just a luck of the draw where the clot lodges?  It took out my right side and left me partially, and thankfully, somewhat immobile.  But, it could have severely taken out my speech, disfigured my face or any number of other physical inconveniences involving speech, movement, and memory.

The treatment will be anti-coagulant blood thinners and a miraculous procedure that involves a catheter insertion into the femoral artery in the groin and an ingenious springy stainless steel umbrella that collapses in the tube as they shoot it up the catheter and into the heart where it blocks the holes.  Cells grow over the device in a few months.  I was amazed as my doctor described this procedure which is done in a few hours on an outpatient basis!  Right now I am awaiting a pediatric cardiologist who will assist my regular cardiologist.  He does this kind of operation on babies all the time.  Makes sense to me!

Looks like it was my “lucky stroke” in more ways than one.   I wasn’t flying, I wasn’t driving, I wasn’t coming down the stairs, I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t out of town….no, all things considered, I was with my husband just around the corner from the BEST hospital – New York Presbyterian Hospital – and I was given the absolutely most wonderful care.  (Don’t know what my story would be if I didn’t have health insurance, but that’s ANOTHER discussion.)  Ten days after my stroke I took my first real steps – held up by two amazing physical therapists and a walker.  Later I was in a wheelchair and then a walker with supervision.  But I used the health, strength and determination to come back quickly.  And it was quite fitting that my first steps were on Thanksgiving Day – I had a LOT to be thankful for.

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If you want to read my story, there is a wonderful site called www.caringbridge.com.  It is a social network for the hospitalized who cannot get to their cell phones and email to let the world know what has happened to them.  The website is “catherineschuller” (all one word) and my password is “divastyle.”  Here are the warning signs and a little mnemonic device to help you remember them.

ACT  F.A.S.T.

FACE	ASK THE PERSON TO SMILE.   DOES ONE SIDE OF THE FACE DROOP?
ARMS	ASK THE PERSON TO RAISE BOTH ARMS.  DOES ONE ARM DRIFT DOWNWARD?
SPEECH	ASK THE PERSON TO REPEAT A SIMPLE SENTENCE.  ARE WORDS SLURRED?  CAN THEY REPEAT THE SENTENCE CORRECTLY?  REMEMBER DETAILS LIKE THEIR NAME AND WHERE THEY ARE?
TIME	IF THE PERSON SHOWS ANY OF THESE SYMPTOMS, SEEK IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION BECAUSE TIME IS IMPORTANT (THREE HOUR WINDOW)

My “lucky” stroke could also be yours or someone you know if you heed these and act swiftly.  As much as I wouldn’t wish a month’s hospital stay on anyone, it gave me pause for reflection and a renewed perspective on life.  If you are reading this and among those who prayed for my recovery or held me in your thoughts and wishes, thank you for letting me know how much you cared about my restoration and return to my active, normal life.  Small pleasures in life that I will never take for granted again include:  sleeping on your side, showering, washing your hair, using the bathroom instead of a bedpan, wiggling your toes and WALKING down the street!  I am happy to report I am “off my walker” and in rehab once a week and looking forward to 2010 as I write this.  Stay tuned for my continuing saga as I need to go back in for heart surgery to close the PFO and ASD which should be a few hour procedure on an outpatient basis.  Modern medicine rocks!

Catherine lying in hospital bed with immobile right leg

Novo Nordisk to start testing on new insulin pill

Novo Enters Phase 1 Test of an Insulin Pill

Patrick Totty
Dec 24, 2009

Denmark-based Novo Nordisk A/S has begun phase 1 testing of an insulin pill that, if successful, could replace injections as the primary means of blood sugar control for millions of people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The company has enrolled 80 volunteer German test subjects in the study and expects to have preliminary results by the first half of 2011. The test group consists of both people with diabetes and people without it.

The quest to find a way to deliver insulin without the pain and inconvenience of needles, pens, and pumps is a long one. Novo’s experiment comes almost three years after Pfizer, Inc., withdrew Exubera, an inhaled insulin, from the market after it failed to build a following with patients or healthcare professionals.

Any method that involves administering insulin orally must overcome the ill effects of saliva and digestive juices on insulin’s relatively delicate molecular structure. The problem is keeping the hormone intact until it can get far enough into the system to enter the bloodstream. Novo’s approach uses a patented drug delivery system called gastrointestinal permeation enhancement technology (GIPET), which helps the gut absorb insulin.

Developed by Novo’s Ireland-based R&D partner, Merrion Pharmaceuticals, GIPET works by adding patented absorption enhancers to a heavily coated pill containing insulin. After the pill is ingested, the coating protects it until it can reach the duodenum, the first section of the small intestine, just past the stomach. There, as the pill begins to dissolve, the absorption enhancers quicken the passage of the drug across the duodenal cell membrane and into the bloodstream.

In 20 clinical studies across a range of drugs, GIPET increased oral drug absorption up to 46 times in some cases. Novo’s test will investigate the drug delivery’s safety and effectiveness, as well as test subjects’ tolerance to insulin delivered in oral form.

Divabetic and World Diabetes Day

Ashley Stewart to Sponsor the Divabetic Makeover Fashion Show on Nov 14, World Diabetes Day

Don’t miss seeing the Ashley Stewart Fashions at “Novo Nordisk presents Divabetic–Makeover Your Diabetes” on Saturday, Nov 14.. Here are some shots from the latest shoot.

Ashley Stewart is the premier fashion retailer for the plus size urban woman plus sizes 12-26. Ashley Stewart is truly an eclectic mix. It is fashion forward, sexy and inspirational. Our fashion mix includes plus size jeans as well as the perfect pant, plus size tops, and plus size bottoms, accessories, plus size dresses, plus size swimwear, and sizes 29 to 32. Experience the Butterfly Bra. Be the first to own this new transformational bra designed by Jill Scott and Ashley Stewart. Ashley Stewart emphasizes trendy fashion for the plus size woman of style. Great Fashion, Great Value, Great Service…Ashley Stewart.

ADA Walk with Divabetic Crew on 10-25-09

‘Divabetic-On-The-Road’ — Hagerstown, MD

Divabetic® Live Washington County Hospital
After watching his boss battle diabetes alone Max Szadek longtime assistant to singer Luther Vandross created the Divabetic program in 2004 Szadek fuses …

Fashion Fights Poverty gives me a new career direction!

Cathrine Schuller, AICI, CIP

I sometimes lend my services to host other charities with good causes besides my beloved DIVABETIC, and this past Friday, September 25th I was asked to cover the backstage coverage of Fashion Fights Poverty.  Created in 2005, FFP is one of the largest fashion fundraisers in Washington DC< /st1:state> devoted to educating the public about entrepreneurial, creative, innovative ways to alleviate global poverty.

The fashion industry happens to be a great avenue for communicating and building economic growth because it uses skill building, technology, knowledge transfer, fair trade, education and business development and touches other countries where fashion production can take place.  In the past FFP has raised thousands of dollars for Beads for Life, an organization that provides business training and materials for under privileged women in Uganda to help them create, market and sell beaded jewelry out of recycled magazines.

In 2007, FFP raised money for Aid to Artisans, a non-profit organization that provides practical assistance to artisan groups worldwide nurturing artistic traditions, cultural vitality and well being around the world.  Their continuing commitment to provide creative and economic opportunity to help empower businesses in development countries to begin, finance or maintain art and craft-based businesses made my reaction  a resounding “YES” to their invitation to volunteer at the event and lend my on-camera expertise backstage during the night of the festivities this year.

This year’s fashion event featured national and international designers who employ ethical and ecologically sound means=2 0and practices in their design and manufacturing processes to produce products that promote economic development for the betterment of a given community.  I was amazed at the array of designers and their unique designs, the glitterati who attended with their desire to support this worthwhile cause and the sustainable, responsible and conscientious awareness surrounding the efforts of Fashion Fights Poverty.

I had a ball that night with my “all access” pass and found that truly the ONLY way I ever want to attend an event is with a microphone in one hand and a camera crew in tow!  Absolutely everyone wants to talk to you!   Stars, celebs, designers, models, attendees – no one gave me the cold shoulder and everyone had something fabulous and positive to say!   I don’t know why I never realized this red carpet reality before.  See for yourself with this little clip we edited from the hours of footage we gathered.

If I get tired of working in the Glam More Fear Less makeover station, I am definitely going to strap a mike on and grab my video and do my best interview posturing.  I had a blast!!  Voila!!  A new career is born…move over Entertainment Tonight!!

Meet Mr. Divabetic at New York ADA Diabetes Expo

Meet Max Szadek, “Mr. Divabetic” on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 at the Jacob Javits Center, New York City

Enjoy Broadway-style diabetes educational outreach targeted at women.  This entertaining brand of diabetes educational outreach program, hosted by ‘Mr. Divabetic’, Max Szadek, features a touch of glamour, music videos, fun feather boa work-out (‘Boa-licious Workout’), healthy lifestyle tips, interactive games (‘Strike A Pose’), diabetes education (‘Diabetes Numerology’) and plenty of prize giveaways.

For more information on this year’s ADA Expo,  please contact: Dorothy Harper: 212-725-4925 ext. 3414.