Counting my lucky stars…and stripes
As I mentioned last week, I participated in an awesome swim/run fundraiser on Saturday. The proceeds of the event went to helping a young man in the service who recently lost both of his legs in a land mine in Afghanistan. He’s currently undergoing major surgeries and rehab to rebuild the rest of his body, which suffered severe trauma in the explosion. Though the government is footing the bill for his medical care, his mom and sister have both quit their jobs to care for him full time, and the money will go to making sure Dan has people that love and support him around at all times. I can’t even imagine what a young, active, man like Dan must be going through right now knowing that he is facing the toughest battle of his life. From the stories on his blog though, it sounds like he has an amazingly positive attitude, and is determined to continue living life to the fullest, even if it’s with two prosthetic legs.
I certainly know by now that diabetes is never predictable, but it’s still frustrating when things go wrong after doing my best to make it right. I decided to try something different for this race and go off my pump, back to Lantus and Novolog shots for the weekend. I wanted to try this method for a competition for a few reasons. One, I knew I would have no access to my PDM at all during the race, since half of it was in the water. Two, I wanted to see if having a constant insulin in the background instead of adjusting a basal rate would make my blood sugars more even than they were during my last major race, the half marathon. There’s a fine line between pulling back on basal rates for exercise and compensating for the fact that your body is releasing glucose to get through the physical activity. I hoped that having a long-acting insulin in the background that isn’t aggressively activated by exercise would keep me steady.
This plan might have worked except for the fact that in the grand tradition of me and my athletic competitions, I had a gigantic monkey wrench thrown in to the situation on race day in the form a 365 mg/dL fasting blood sugar. Lovely. Just bloody lovely. It was 7am and now I have 1.) a high blood sugar that needs correcting 2.) a heavy amount of physical activity coming up in 2 hours 3.) a need to put fuel in my stomach that includes something beyond scrambled egg whites and 4.) No f-ing clue where to start with this one. I looked at my breakfast and counted 19 carbs. Normally, I would have dosed 6 units to bring down the high BG and 2 more to cover the food. Knowing it was going to be risky having active insulin on board though, I injected just 4 units, hoping for the best.
By the time we were about to start swimming, my blood sugar had crept all the way up to 404. I felt my dry mouth, an aching thirst, and a lead weight feeling in the pit of my stomach. Knowing I was risking dehydration, I made an executive decision to continue on, hoping some of the 4 units I had taken earlier would start to push the BG down.
We jumped in to the cold water and began the swim. My friend Betsey, a former swimmer and water polo player pulled ahead quickly, while my friend Skylar and I plugged through it….uhh, how shall I say this, a bit less gracefully than the others? No one said you couldn’t doggy paddle the entire 500 meters, right? As we pulled ourselves through the water, I thought about Dan. I thought about him lying in a hospital bed, awaiting the next painful surgery, and looking down and not seeing his legs. Though I was tired and out of breath, I pushed on. Dan can’t be in the water today, so I had to swim for him.
We finally reached the shore and headed up to the staging area, where we had laid out our sneakers and shorts, ready for the 5k run. Skylar and I watered down our feet, and slipped on our socks and shoes.
“Sky, I’m going to test real quick, you can take off without me if you want, I’ll catch up.”
“Did you know you’re my best friend and I’m going to wait for you?” she said back.
“You are the BEST best friend Sky,” I told her. And she really is – the ultimate dia-buddy if you ask me.
The meter counted down. 414. BARF was all that came to mind. My mind raced – should I stop? It was dangerous to exercise with my blood sugar that high – I could risk dehydration or worse, ketacidtosis if my sugars continued to climb. I looked down the beach at the run ahead of us, took a swig of water and looked at Skylar.
“Its really high.”
“Are you ok?” she asked.
“Uh yeah, its’ just annoying. Let’s do this, I’ll be fine,” I told her, wondering if I really was. As I looked ahead though, I saw hundreds of Navy guys, and the medical station. If I was ever going to have a problem during a race, this was the place to have it. A 5k would only take me 30 minutes, and I made a game time decision to forge ahead. I planted one foot in front of the other and began to run. Dan couldn’t run that day, so we had to run for him.
The run went by quickly, 5k seems so short to me after having done a half marathon. Still, I was spent from the swim, and running on the loose sand was challenging. But with each step, I thought about how lucky I was. That I knew I could take an injection at the end of the run and feel better in a few hours. Dan can’t just take an injection. Dan has a long road ahead of him. Dan lost so much in an effort to give the rest of us our freedom. I pressed on. I crossed the finish line. And I thanked the powers that be that I had diabetes.
To Dan and his family: carry on, and know that we’re all here for you, cheering you on.
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Way to go Lex! I’m proud of you!