The Growing to Do List

One of the hardest things about planning my four-day, single-handed sail through the Florida Keys this February is juggling of all the side projects associated with the trip. Not only do I have to plan normal travel arrangements like airplane tickets, reservations, and meals, but I have to plan for the aspects of the trip that make it more of an event.

There are blogs to write and websites to design and maintain. There is fundraising to do, sponsors to court, and thank you letters to write to the people who have really stepped up to help make this dream a reality.

And, of course, there is the book I’m writing, which unfortunately seems to take a backseat sometimes.

It has recently been in the back of my mind to capture this trip in a short documentary, so today I spent four hours researching how to write, plan, and film a documentary. I read books on Amazon. I checked out video blogs from the sailors currently racing the Velux 5 Oceans race to see the ins and outs of filming on a boat.

And I watched a documentary sponsored by No Limits about three diabetics who go on a kayaking trip to see how to incorporate diabetes into the story as I chronicle my four day journey on the sea. It turns out there is more to making a documentary than just doing something adventurous and turning on the camera while you do it.

A documentary should have a theme and a vision. It should have a plot and pacing. It should have beautiful camera work that does not rock up and down (how I am going to be able to pull that off in a boat, I have still to figure out.) And all of this has to be planned beforehand without actually knowing what is going to take place during the trip.

I have now added the following to my to-do list: interview family members and friends, write the plot, figure out how to upload videos while away from my home computer and how to handle a camera to get the best picture. And the worst part of this entire documentary idea is that for a good portion of the movie, I will be the only person on film.

Anyone who knows me will quickly tell you that this is pretty close to my worst nightmare. I hate to be filmed. I am shy and quiet and have a very hard time expressing myself in person. In writing, I have learned to open up and share, but in person I am still slow to speak.

To fix this, I have written out interview questions to ask myself during each portion of the trip hoping that this somehow magically lets me overcome my lifelong severe shyness and makes me into my daughter who could have eight hour conversations with the wall if she needed to.

The thing that this whole trip keeps teaching me, though, is that I still have plenty of room left to grow as a person. I do not have it all figured out. I have weaknesses. I have fears from childhood that need to be overcome. If you were to ask me what my worst fear is about this trip, just after being cast out to sea and set adrift in my life raft for sixty-six days, it would be having to speak in public with a microphone or to speak on camera. Actually that one would probably come first.

As a rational adult, I know it is not a reasonable fear. I know that no harm will come if I happen to let out to the world that I am a total dork, and I know that by challenging myself to get out of my comfort zone and forcing myself to do the things that I would naturally shy away from, I will gain new skills and lead a fuller life and hopefully, as an added bonus, I will provide a little bit of motivation for another person to get out there and lead a more adventurous life in the process, which I suppose makes it worth the risk.

Plan B Book

I have two sides to my personality, one that likes to fly free, moving on every whim of desire and taking every opportunity as soon as it presents itself, and the other, which is my practical side. It’s my practical side that likes to prepare and research and plan for every possible obstacle.

Single-handed sailing through the Florida Keys this February will provide a place for both sides of my personality to work together as one unit. While at sea all alone, I will be free to change course, to get a closer look at an island that catches my eye, to slow down and follow a manatee eating lunch, to find the craziest, out-of-the-way dive bar to grab some hot food and recharge my batteries (both my actual batteries- cell phone, laptop, GPS, and my more figurative batteries-, a friendly face, stable ground, and a warm meal). But because of my diabetes, I will need to do a great deal of behind the scenes planning and preparation before I ever set foot on that boat.

One of my latest preparations is writing my own emergency manual, my Plan B Book. For the non-diabetic world this might consist of a first aid manual and the number of the Coast Guard.

For me, it is a thirty page book organized from the most extreme emergency to the least. If I need major medical care (short of a call to the Coast Guard to bring in the helicopters and rescue divers), I will need to get myself to a hospital, which is easier said than done. If I were on a typical road trip, I wouldn’t even bother to find the names of any hospitals along the way. The amazing 911 system takes the hard work out of it. Simply call, tell them where you are and in a few minutes you’re safe.

On a boat, it is a whole new game. You can’t exactly pull the boat up into the hospital parking lot and jump out to find a nice orderly waiting with a wheelchair. Thus, my creation of the Plan B Book. The first pages are for every hospital and emergency medical center in the Florida Keys. Each page includes a map of the hospital and at least three docks nearby.

For each dock, I need the longitude and latitude, address to give to the ambulance driver, the phone number of the dock master so he knows why I am crashing at his dock, and in case I can’t contact an ambulance, the path I would walk to get to the hospital.

After that, follows the plans for the mishaps. The “I forgot to pack my Symlin,” or the “Oh crap. I just dumped all of my test strips into the ocean,” or the “I never even thought of what the Florida heat would do to my insulin” mumbled as I roll the insulin bottle around in my hands and notice that the once clear liquid is now chunky and white.

So in the next few pages are the addresses and phone numbers of every pharmacy in the Keys, all five pages of them, divided by region. And just in case there is not a single one who will transfer my prescription (which of course I have every one listed with the prescription number and phone number of each pharmacy who holds the prescription), I have the number of the only endocrinologist in the Keys in case she might take pity on me and give me one of those free samples of insulin or strips or whatever it was that I ruined, or lost, or forgot.

My preparation goes far beyond the Plan B Book, too. It covers knowing that things happen: airlines lose luggage, I lose my mind and forget to pack things, electrical systems on a boat can break and leave my fridge as nothing more than a cheap cooler without any ice packs to keep it cool. So I pack multiples of everything I need and I pack them in multiple locations and in multiple contraptions.

I pack four blood glucose meters, one in each backpack, one in a waterproof Otterbox below deck and one in my ditch bag, just in case. I bring six vials of insulin, enough to keep me alive for five months, and hide it in all of the same spots as the meters and two more in the fridge.

I pack my insulin pump, my old insulin pump, a loaner insulin pump from Minimed, and even needles (which I have not used to inject insulin in the thirteen years I’ve been pumping) in case all three pumps break. I bring Nick, my preferred Dexcom CGMS with his extra sensors, and Johnny, my back up CGMS system, with his extra sensors.

My bags will be so full with back up diabetes supplies, I will only be able to fit one swimsuit and one pair of shorts into the remaining spaces. Looks like shirts will have to wait for another trip.

After spending countless hours thinking of everything that can go wrong, and five ways to fix each problem, after packing and repacking to get all the extra equipment, equipment that I will probably never even use, to fit into my two bags, and after spending time typing up and printing my Plan B Book, I can shut down the practical side to my personality and fully embrace my footloose and fancy free side because I know all of my bases have been covered, and a few extra ones at that. I will be able to fully focus on the beauty in front of me, the one hundred miles I have to cover, and the diabetes that I will be conquering by not letting it stop me from living my dreams.

Old Reliables

After spending the last 14 years as a runner, I have easily run over 2000 times. I have run different routes, in different cities, in different weather and in different clothes, but there are those runs that I will run over and over again. Routes that have cemented themselves in my mind, ones that I look forward to running every time.

There is the 2.75 mile route from my mother-in-law's house in the inland hills of San Diego. This one I run every Christmas morning after the early morning present rush and before the afternoon extended family dinner.

The first mile starts out easy. The first time I ran it I was convinced that I was having the run of a lifetime, where every thing falls into place and every step feel like pure joy. After the first mile, I looked at my watch and noticed it was the fastest mile I had ever run.

And then I turned the corner at the bottom of Alpine Boulevard and realized that I had been running downhill the whole time and that the incline could not last forever. Those first steps around the corner taught me quickly that it would be a long uphill journey home. I finally felt the elevation kick in and start to burn my lungs.

Now, Alpine is not all that high up, but for a girl who has, with the exception of four weekend spent at the bottom of the rockies in Colorado, never lived above thirty feet of elevation, it feels like Everest. The next mile is spent in a gradual incline and then another corner. Then I am running straight up.

At the top of the hill on the right of the road is a graveyard, and by the time I have reached it I feel like finding one of those empty holes, lying down, and just waiting for someone to come along and throw a little dirt on me. The rest of the run is a gentle downhill that lulls me into believing it wasn't such a bad run and that I will probably do it again next Christmas.

There is the run from my parents house that is flat and fast and gives me a chance to see how much speed I have earned from my training. Nine-tenths of a mile as hard as I can before I reach the turnaround at the end of the boat docks in the Seal Beach Marina, stop for a moment to breathe in the salty air, admire the 50 foot cruisers and racers, dream for a moment of taking to the sea for a year long voyage, turn around and sprint the nine-tenths of a mile home faster than I ran there.

There was the five mile loop I ran every Tuesday in college. The one with someone singing cadence alongside me and yelling, "Run! Walking is for wussies." (I think that may be the edited version).

There's the Torrey Pines loop that starts with a hike straight up the mountain chatting with Tony, only to be followed by a great dirt road gently sloping to the sea with enough stairs to descend and turns to make and tourists to dodge that you have not a moment to think of how tired you are, and the views that lull you into the false belief that you could do another loop, no problem.

The great thing about these runs is that you I them so well. I know exactly how hard they will be, and the exact spot where the run will give me a great view, and when I know that it is all downhill form here. I usually seek one of these runs out when I am faltering in my training, or when life is spinning out of control and I want something to turn out like I planned it.

They never disappoint. For me they are a lot like my faithful meals. The ones that I am so familiar with that I know, without fail, exactly what they will do to my blood sugars, and precisely how much insulin to give to cover them. They are the old reliables.

After a day like today, where I am eating on another person's schedule, and the dinner that was planned for two-o'clock is served at three, and I have no idea what ingredients were used in the dishes served to me (did they use canola oil or butter? Or maybe just plain LARD!), when I have been chasing my blood sugars all day and testing every two hours, and checking Johnny every twenty minutes, it is nice to go back to the old reliables and be sure that my blood suagrs will turn out just like I planned.

I think tomorrow will be a day filled with them. A Met-RX shake for breakfast, an apple and string cheese for snack, a Met-RX shake for lunch, and a two egg omelet with a little veggie sausage and some bell peppers topped with a quarter-cup of shredded cheese next to a piece of wheat toast to wrap up the day and plenty of water all day to replace what all the highs took from me today.

And hopefully balance will be restored and I will have one of those flat-line days that we all love to boast about and post pictures of on Facebook. You got to love the old reliables.