Two strong legs, grounded like tree trunks in the ground. Hundreds of times, he practiced going from the floor into his standing position. Hundreds of times, he fell back to the floor. As many, if not more times, he contemplated lifting a foot and placing it in front of him to go toward where he desired.

My labor and delivery didn't go as expected. Honestly, the entire few months leading up to my son's birth wasn't as planned. It was not optimal in many ways. My labor included excessive low blood sugars over many hours,. I would drink the orange juice and shortly there after I would throw up the orange juice. By the time I heard his cry, I was beyond exhausted doing what I could to remain awake to meet, kiss, and hold him. I was told I wouldn't be able to have children living with diabetes.

It wasn't easy to navigate diabetes management while living abroad. Long plane rides impacted the timing of my different basal rates on my insulin pump. My diabetes doctor said to expect one day of adjustment for every hour of time change. Each trip over the Atlantic took nine days to re-calibrate my hormonal response. Insulin pump supplies, insulins, blood glucose strips, syringes, glucagon kits, wipes to get the sticky residue off my skin, and wipes to keep the supplies sticking to my skin were ordered in batches and transported in travel.

"Babe, let's go look at some puppies. We will go look, just look." I said to my boyfriend on a sunny Sunday morning in the living room of our condo. Soon after, we were off in our Subaru Outback on the hour drive to the breeder advertising in the newspaper's classified section. I called ahead, and they were expecting us. She wasn't old enough to go home with us, but she became part of our family that evening in August.

On the last day of 2000, the sun set behind the mountains, and the light was fading quickly. We were one day into our approach to base camp. Wearing puffy jackets, beanies, gloves, and clanging our cups full of libations to toast to a rather exciting way to close out the year. I felt my diabetes dissolve that day, just Terra, another climber on the expedition team. We all were navigating diabetes while being there. Some on pumps, some on injections, some had high blood sugars, some had low blood sugars, some had diabetes a long time, and some only a few years. We all laughed, we all climbed, we all were in awe of the penitentes, we all got sick of oatmeal, we all were grateful for the opportunity to be together. 

After the race, I sat on the bus on the ride back to our car and was looking at the gorgeous view along HWY 1. I asked myself what happened with my glucose that morning, again and again. None of it made sense to me, none of it. In my nine years of living with diabetes, I hadn’t experienced such sustained low blood sugars for such an extended period, especially while consuming tons of glucose. My mind kept raking over the morning insulin dose details, the carbs in the morning bagel, the effort at the start of the race.

The snow was softening quickly and becoming hazardous as large clumps stuck to the bottom of my crampons. Using the ice ax's shaft to knock the snow off was becoming annoying but a great trade-off from losing footing into the glacier's depth. As we descended, I just wanted to be done, warm, and risk for my life to be zero. Many diabetes management decisions I made that day did not serve me optimally. My body was dually exhausted from the climb and diabetes, and I have never had another lemon-lime PowerGel since.

During previous runs, I learned that freezing water in the bottles gave me perfectly cold water to drink around 11 minutes into the run. I knew an extra snack or less insulin was necessary pre-workout as the heat upped my metabolism and blood flow much differently than the colder temperatures ANYWHERE ELSE. I learned never to leave a vial of insulin anywhere but the fridge in this town. Heat very quickly denatures insulin, and its effectiveness becomes questionable. I recall wishing my vial would turn purple once this happened, kind of like in movies when a kid pees in the pool, and it turns into a dark abyss.

Bluntly put, most of my weekend, I’d be cold. We were headed into Canada to go waterfall ice climbing. It was a new sport for me; some aspects of it I enjoyed tremendously, others brought tears (mostly the approaches)- it’s definitely for not everyone.

There is this thing with being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. After meeting and discussing this with many d-peeps it appears to be universal. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you were diagnosed in the 70s, 80s, 90s, or later. Perhaps it is a question to exit medical school.