Diabetes in Daytona

Posted by Chris on Feb 17, 2010 in Diabetes Awareness | 1 comment

This past weekend I went up to Daytona Beach, FL for the Daytona 500 race. This was my second consecutive year going. I met a guy up there who said that he has gone to 42 straight, this year’s was the 52nd so he only missed the first 10 races. That sounded like a great idea to me, and I think I am going to do it. Amanda, her brother, friend and myself all packed up Friday morning / afternoon and made sure we had everything ready to go for about a 3:00 departure for the 3 hour drive. Everyone was packed to go and I of course was doing the diabetic thing and triple checking. Having type 1 diabetes isn’t always the easiest thing to pack for. I made sure that I had everything that I would need and we were set to leave. I tested before I got in the car, 345, not a good start.

I had eaten two bagels for breakfast that morning, I know probably not the best idea. It was about 3:30 and I didn’t eat lunch and there was some Little Ceasar’s pizza, so of course I ate some. I bolused enough for the correction and then again for the pizza and I felt like I was going to be just fine. About two hours later I tested again and I was down to 180, not bad at all since I ate pizza. We finally arrived in Daytona and were going to get Subway for dinner. Blood sugars didn’t go so well Friday night. At one point it was up to 425. This high blood sugar gave me the opportunity to educate some body on diabetes however. The kid we were staying with didn’t really know anything about diabetes, he just knew that his grandmother had it and that his mom had told him that it skips generations. Let the lecture begin.

I was explaining to him that it is difficult for anybody with type 1 diabetes to drink because when you get low, you feel light headed and woozy and when your blood sugar goes high, you pee a lot. So, since we were heading out to a bar, he realized the difficulties and the confusions that can come of this and the dangers behind it. Throughout the night, the blood sugars came down and I was ready to go Saturday morning (except for the little headache I had from the night before.)

Saturday night led to another conversation with this same kid about diabetes, but not about drinking this time. It was just diabetes in general. I explained how I became diabetic [or how I was born with it, according to Dr. DipShit(OZ)]. I took him through the whole night, the 858 blood sugar, the issues, the problems, ways to avoid problems, and discussed with him about the skipping a generation issue. I am not a scientist or doctor, but I didn’t think that was true because there is plenty of people that I know whose parents are diabetic and so are they, but I don’t know, correct me if I’m wrong please. After the conversations with him, it felt great! I love teaching people about diabetes or eliminating their ignorance or mis-understandings about it. Explaining the insulin pump is always the best and then asking them if they want to test their sugar is funny.

The answer is always the same, “Hell no, get out of here”