SOLITARY CONFINEMENT-DAY 2

What a completely different experience than yesterday. I woke up feeling hungover. I don't think my body handled the twelve hours of hyper that was my day yesterday. I was dragging all morning until I passed out for two hours.

After that I felt a little more human. But the solitary confinement is starting to wear on me. I realized today the reason I love to have eight hours a day to write all alone is because I come home to an amazing family. Now that I can't hang out on the couch with the kids or sit around and talk about my day with Tony, that isolation is a bit overwhelming.

Only twelve hours left of the damned low-iodine diet, which also made today unbearable. After eleven days of eating the same meal again and again I am ready for a change. I am thinking a big plate of fish tacos tomorrow is definitely in order. I made the worst batch of low-iodine blueberry muffins, but had to eat them because there was nothing else in the house on the diet.

The only good thing that happened today was that I got tired at 9:30. It has been over five years since I have gotten tired by ten without taking one type of pill or another. I hope this is a sign of things to come.

My One Drop Interview...

Tell us your diagnosis story.

About a month before I was diagnosed, I began drinking water. And I hated water. But I was craving it all day long and even at night. I couldn’t make it through a one-hour lecture without needing to go get water. And of course, as I had reasoned, all the water made me get up several times a night to go to the bathroom. But that’s really the only things I noticed.

After a month of the water, I got a cold. But I still went to classes. At the end of my bike ride home from school, there is this short but super-steep hill. I called it Hell Hill. And each day I would try to get to the top without having to stand up on the pedals. And I had been making it pretty regularly by then.

But that day, I couldn’t even make it halfway up the hill before I had to jump off my bike to rest. And I mean slumped over in a big ball on the sidewalk kind of rest. After twenty minutes of this, I knew I had to get home. I didn’t have enough energy to ride, so I slung my body over my bike and wheeled myself home.

I didn’t have a doctor at college because I was never sick. So when a friend of mine told me she’d be driving by my hometown the next day, I grabbed a ride with her to check in with my old GP. We saw the doc for my sore throat and got some antibiotics. And then my mom started pressing him about my “other” symptoms. One I hadn’t even noticed.

She had noticed the water and bathroom trips. She also noticed the 15 pound weight loss in the last month. She demanded that he test me for diabetes. I think he knew he wouldn’t win that argument — my mom can be pretty persuasive when she wants to be–so he drew some blood and sent me back to school.

Two days later my dad called with the news and told me he’d be picking me up from school to take care of it. I spent three days in the hospital learning about my new regimen and then was back to school. Three days later I was off on a backpacking trip int he middle of the woods.

Why do you track your diabetes data?

If I am going to get better at my diabetes care, I have to know where I am right now. If I want to see how a new exercise affects my blood sugars to see if it is a good method, I need data to back it up. If I want to see if a new tweak to my food is bringing down my sugars, I have to have numbers.

Science cannot be done without data. And my life has become one big scientific experiment to maximize what I have.

What’s your favorite One Drop feature?

The Dexcom data analysis. There are so many data points to contend with that to analyze that data by hand would take forever. Now at any moment, I can see what my daily average is or how I’ve been doing this month. And I love that I can go back and compare it to previous months to see if I can draw out patterns of certain behaviors that bring on better sugars.

What do you do for fun?

Planning wild adventures, stand up paddling, building furniture out of wood. Lately I’ve been doing a lot more writing for me. Not books or blog pieces to publish, but pieces like screenplays that I enjoy just for the sake of the process and creating something that I can hold up and say I made this. Art for the sake of art.

What inspires you to be adventurous?

I get bored very easily. Which means that, in order for me to be engaged, my projects need to be wild and big. If they are too small I won’t have the pull to train for them and then I lose focus.

Why did you start the One Drop Caicos team?

I had done a solo adventure before and saw the amazing benefits of picking a huge adventure and then preparing for it. It takes all the tediousness of continual diabetes care and breathes new life into it. Now, I don’t test for the 23,345th time because I have to and I do it to be healthy for my expedition in a few months. It gives these tasks new purpose.

I wanted to take that and share it first hand with a group of people who could go out and share it with even more people.

What’s your favorite guilty-pleasure food?

I am a simple person when it comes to food. I eat cupcakes and cookies at times, but those aren’t that tricky with insulin.

But, Rice-Krispie treats with M&M’s. I can never get the insulin right for these so they are a guaranteed high. I don’t eat them very often, but when I do, I enjoy every minute of them.

What’s the weirdest place you’ve checked your blood sugar, injected insulin, changed your infusion set, etc.?

I’ve checked my Dexcom while submerged in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean during the Swim Around Key West. I’ve had to put in a new site at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Inserted a new Dexcom sensor in the cabin of a 35′ sailboat while between California and Catalina. I’ve corrected a high with an Insulin pen while on a Stand Up Paddle board in the middle of the Intracoastal Waterway in South Carolina.

Anything you’ve learned on your diabetes journey that you’s like to share with the world?

Find your active passion and then tie your diabetes care to preparing for it. Find your big adventure. It will provide you with a new dose of motivation to maximize your diabetes care.

Why It's OK That "They" Just Don't Get It

I have yet to see a character with diabetes who isn’t a day-player, who has diabetes, not because it will make a kidnapping even more dramatic, or create strange events in an operating room, but because it makes a character more real and layered having to deal with an ever present challenge.

To have a group of people who have lives and interests and desires and also diabetes, to see the different ways personalities interact with the management of diabetes, to have the jokes that we can all tell each other privately finally up on the screen would be incredible.

So instead of just complaining about how “they” just don’t get it or ever do it right, I decided to do better.

A Bad Case... is an original comedy series about four friends. It is not some PC, educational crap about fighting stereotypes and bringing a message of hope and happiness to the world. It is a dark comedy about when diabetes goes all wrong and how real people come to grips with it and become better versions of themselves because of it.

It is purely for entertainment value and laughs told in six episodes of five to seven minutes each.

I would love to have this series made by our tribe, the people who deal with diabetes day in and day out. There’s something about being in the trenches together that makes it ok to tell these kinds of jokes. We go through it. Our lives are shaken by it. We are the only ones who can really get away with making fun of what diabetes can do to our lives.

If this sounds like something you would love to help make a reality, I am currently looking for a cast and a few select crew positions.

If you have ever wanted to be in front of the camera, or maybe behind it with a cast full of people with diabetes producing the reality of what life is like for us in a seriously funny way, I want to hear from you.

If you have that one friend who is hilarious and you have told them a million times they need to get into a show, I want to hear from you. And them.

If you have zero acting ability and no experience with a camera, but you can hold a pole above your head for a few hours while watching an amazing team put together something that has never been done before, drop me a line.

And if you have been working in Hollywood for years, but haven’t had the pleasure of playing someone with diabetes like you, (yeah, I’m talking to you Derek, Austin, and Jennifer) reach out.

And if your best trait is your ability to sit behind a screen and binge watch shows for hours while Tweeting and Snapchatting and Instagramming all your friends, we need you, too, to get the word out and to enjoy the show. Feel free to drop me a line and tell me you’re out there, too, waiting to see a version of yourself on your phone.

A project like this needs a community to make it happen and I tend to think we have one of the best communities out there. Here’s your chance to prove me right.

For more info on how to join the cast or crew and on the production details, go to S