Sunbathing on the First

Laying out in the sun in eighty degree weather on the first day of the year sure makes me grateful to live in Southern California where I can train outdoors year-round with no problems whatsoever. I don’t even own running pants. Most days I can barely stand to run in more than shorts and a running bra.

But it also means I never really have a good excuse to wimp out of a run or bike. It's this time of year that I understand why we have to pay the big bucks to live in San Diego.

It’s also the time of year when I start to put together my plans for this year's race/adventure calendar. And it’s loading up fast. My last race was February 2010 when my thyroid finally won and I had to admit that I was no longer capable of any sort of physical exertion.

Finally, after two years of finding a diagnosis and fighting this disease with meds, I have the upper hand. I am, for the first time in a long time, looking forward to a full year of racing and adventuring.

First up is the Carlsbad Half-marathon. For me this means an entire weekend of fun and events. Insulindependence is a major charity for the race and makes it worth your while. The weekend starts with a Torrey Pines hike and a time to meet the athletes in from all over the country. Saturday morning means breakfast and a surf session or watching the kids race at Lego Land.

Of course there is the carbo-loading dinner the night before the race and the celebratory party after the race. There is nothing better than celebrating with over one hundred diabetics and diabetic friends after a huge race.

Next up is the race that ended my 2010 season, the Race On the Base in my hometown of Los Alamitos, CA. It’s an early season reverse triathlon which means you run then bike and then swim. I love these because there is nothing better after a four mile run and twelve mile bike than to jump in a super warm pool and rinse off. You finish the race squeaky clean and smelling of chlorine.

This year it is also the first race for each of my kids and hopefully the beginning of a whole new love for them. It may make Eli one of the youngest bilateral club footers to finish a triathlon. He is following closely in his father’s footsteps as he may become one of the first bilateral club footers to finish an Ironman Triathlon next November.

In February I may also be applying for a Captain position for the Insulindependence A1Sea program. This is, I think, one of the greatest parts of Insulindependence. If I get accepted it will include a week at Insulindependence University in late June, a possible sailing trip to Florida next February and a possible trip to Hawaii in June of 2013 to spend a week mentoring the group of Junior Captainsand taking advantage of all the aquatic opportunities Hawaii has to offer. The Captainship also includes some work fundraising.

Other than my races, I will be spending a large amount of time and energy trying to bring down my A1C’s which have shot out of my comfort zone while I have been battling this thyroid thing. And more time trying to finish the book. And, of course, I was silly enough to swear off all soda, so it should be an interesting year.

Florida Keys 2010

For thirteen long years I have contended with Diabetes on my own. Of course I had family and friends to lend their support, a husband who was amazing at helping me deal with the emotional side of Diabetes, and good doctors to give me Diabetes Basic Training and to run their tests, but I never knew a single other person with Diabetes.

You see, Diabetes is a tricky opponent. The goal is to keep the amount of sugar in your blood at a constant level between 80 and 120 mmol/dl. In a healthy person the pancreas works like a thermostat turning insulin production on and off to keep it even keeled, like a heater in your home to keeps it a perfect 72 degrees. It does an incredible job, seldom a moment does it miss.

In my case, I have been entrusted with this never-ending job. And so I balance. I balance everything to keep it steady. I balance my food, my exercise, the insulin I give myself, and my Symlin (an extra medicine given in a shot at meal times). I have to account for stress and all the other “normal” illnesses.

Even things as simple as a scary movie can throw things out of whack. With so many variables to balance, the math becomes difficult and complex. And it’s hard to get any valuable information on the finer points of management from a doctor who has to specialize in so many different diseases. When I came up against a new roadblock in figuring out this equation, I had to use myself as a guinea pig to experiment on to find the best course of action.

After thirteen years, the roadblocks were getting more frequent and more frustrating. It had gotten to a point where I needed some help. Never a joiner by nature, I had decided to pass on the support group and, instead, check out a more anonymous Diabetes Conference. It was there that I first ran into the guys who run Insulindependence.

Now here was a group of people who were doing things. Big things. Like running the Ironman triathlon, climbing mountains in Peru, and surfing in Costa Rica. They had gotten together to play and to swap all the data they had gathered through years of using themselves as guinea pigs.

This was just the help I needed. Why reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to? If someone else had come up with a good strategy for mastering one of the hundreds of situations that would drive my sugars skyward, I could save myself another long, drawn-out experiment. The best part was these people were into anything you could think of, running, triathlon, surfing, snowboarding, just about anything challenging and active. For me, my passion was, among other things, sailing, and I wasn’t alone there either.

I think I have always dreamed of going to sea. From the moment my grandpa, Captain Jack, let me come aboard when I was eight, I found a place where I could finally feel at home, as if I had been called to the sea. Just the sight of a boat heeling over at the perfect angle, cruising along at a good clip is enough to instantly cause my body to relax in the midst of a stressful day (thus why my classroom is plastered with sailing pictures.) The thought of one day being able to sail away, even if for but a little while, was enough to keep me going through the rough patches in life.

When I got Diabetes, I could feel that dream slipping away. Common thought at the time was that there were things a Diabetic couldn’t do, or maybe shouldn’t do: drive a big-rig, get a pilot’s license or sail a boat alone. People feared that if a Diabetics sugars got out of control and rendered them incapacitated there might be trouble.

But times have changed. The technology we have available to us now-- from insulin pumps that deliver a steady stream of insulin to Continuous Glucose Monitors that measure the amount of sugar in your blood every five minutes—have changed that belief and the attitude that is sweeping the Diabetes community is that, with enough planning and attention to every minor detail, Diabetics can do, and should do, anything.

So to prove my doctors wrong, to prove to myself that I can conquer anything, and to be an example to al the people out there that are still discouraged by others telling them that they can’t, in July 2010, I will complete a 4-day, single-handed sail through the Florida Keys.

Alone.

With only myself to manage a boat and a disease.

And I ask you to join me. Join me in getting the word out that there are people with Diabetes who are challenging outdated concepts of their boundaries, everyone knows someone with Diabetes. Tell them. Tell them there are others just like them. Others who like to play, who are better controlling their disease through rigorous exercise and who would love to swap their war stories and their strategies for dealing with this complex and sometimes bewildering disease.