Always have a backup plan.

The www.insulindependence.org symposium saturday before last was great and one of the gentlemen (I forgot his name at this time but I will give it to you later, or just go to the link above) had a great discussion about training diabetic athletes.  He said to always have a valid back up plan for your medications.  Then he was talking about how one time a student of his forgot their backup and the good doctors message was "Then you don't do the activity."  I really liked this and preach it to every diabetic I know.  One thing I have had an issue with while training for the philadelphia marathon was that about halfway through my body turns into a turkey in an oven and pops out all my medical devices.  So what I have done is put multiple sites on for my insulin pump.  I also learned some of this with my good buddy Vic who sunday before last sunday finished another ironman.  He is such a beast.  Lucky for me I had both sites in at the finish line and for over 5 hours my BG's were between 130 and 180.  If I just could always run I would be cured!  Back to the moral of the story is not only to have a backup plan but you need to test it as well.  Just like having a spare tire means nothing if you don't know how to jack your car up, a backup diabetes plan needs to be tested and used in a safe control environment.  I would say go somewhere a safe distance from everything and cut the line to your pump and see if you can switch to lantis and humalog injections for an afternoon.  Practice makes us diabetics look perfect so you have to be ready for anything.

A whole bunch of naked diabetes!

 Last week I was battling this horrible cold from Sunday night through basically still today (I know I need to see a doctor for a cold lasting this long).  So the Philadelphia marathon was last Sunday and my only goal was to finish, if that meant to walk half or crawl, I was going to do it.  You can see in the picture above my pre-race look.  The weather was great and I was feeling the best I had felt all week.

 So the gun went off at 7:00am and I crossed the starting line at 7:33am or so at a solid slow pace, but I was feeling good and the course was so beautiful.  The thing though with me is I talk to myself way to much.  you know that angel on one shoulder and the diabetic devil on the other shoulder?  That is exactly what I have just for some reason I lever listen to the angel side.  At about mile 20 I started to think about things to make this marathon memorable.  The thought entered my mind to streak the finish line.  The idea first was to take off my long sleeve under shirt and cross the finish line in just my tank-top and undies, but that just didn't seem like a streak to me.   Then I thought to just take all my shirts off and my shorts and cross the finish line in just my undies and hold my clothes as I crossed the line to get an official time and everything.  From the picture above you can guess that I decided on just my undies.

 Once I crossed the finish line, Oh yeah before I forget to tell you that yes I stripped down right next to the cops stationed at mile marker 26 and they could have cared less that I was going to to my skivies to finish the race.  Then once I was done and I felt good because I had my sweaty clothes off I walked around for about 30 minutes just with my undies and finisher medal on.  It felt so great, and now I know that I am a true amateur nudist.  Above is me sitting next to the "Thinker" statue near the finish line.

I was a bit disappointed they didn't have "finisher" shirts at the end but the "finisher" medals were cooler than cool.  This was my favorite marathon to date and I can't wait till next year and to see what I come up with to top my streaking the finish line.  Sometimes I think I use diabetes as an excuse to be over the top crazy.  Would I be this over the top if I weren't diabetic?  Who knows because I am a diabetic and this is how I roll.

What is Juvenile Diabetes?

 So this past weekend was the Philadelphia marathon and also the www.insulindependence.org diabetes symposium.  I thought this would be a great opportunity to take my mother with me on a field trip a day early and explore the city where America was founded.  We decided to see the Philadelphia museum of art and from the photo above you can tell that the juvenile diabetes was in full bloom.  I had so much fun and this was really a great museum besides my juvenile ways.

 Here I am looking like I am going to pick the nose of this statue.  Since I am always finding ways to do funny stuff this was pretty easy stuff to get away with even though the museum security was watching me.  They seem to be behind the times and don't realize that cell phones not only have a rear facing camera but a front facing camera and when I looked like I was next to this guy trying to get a photo of the statue across the room I really was snapping these photos.  If I only put this much effort into the rest of my life.

 After a while I went even further down the juvenile road and started to do funny pictures of me pointing at bare naked boobed sculptures.  Notice how I had to use my finger to show you the naked boobs on this lady?  Very classy right?

Here is another shameless boob picture of me showing you where hers were at.  The security was in this room as well and even moved out of my way thinking I was taking a picture of the bust of a guy across the room.  One day I will grow up and not have fun, but until that day comes I am milking this as much as I can.

Glucolift travel tubes

I was thinking the other day about my dilemma with the bad tube of fast acting glucose tablets.  The raspberry ones that had water get into the container and spoiled the tablets.  My thinking was how my friend Chris Angel and his company Glucolift has these awesome travel tubes that you can refill and they don't leak any water.  Actually it was a tube of Glucolift travel tubes filled with orange creme tablets that rescued my bad glucose tablets.  It is funny how something so simple can impact your life in such a great way.  Chris has these travel tubes on his website for a few dollars and they are amazing.  First they fit any brand of glucose tablets and they are re-usable.  I have reused the cheap generic glucose tablet tubes before and they are nothing to write home about, but the Glucolift travel tubes are awesome.  I have like six or seven of these travel tubes and they are awesome to keep your tablets in a safe, waterproof, and durable container.  Go to www.Glucolift.com website and take a look at them and if you have never tried Glucolift tablets I would reccomend you picking up a bottle of the orange creme.  You will almost enjoy getting a little low to eat these all natural diabetes treats.

Yield to Peds

OK so I am training for the Philly marathon on November 17th and I enjoy running on a certain trail by my house.  Well it is not exactly by my house but within ten miles and this trail is 11 mile loop and I enjoy running it twice.  The trail is a good because it has things to distract me while I run like a dog park, ponds with ducks and kids fishing, play ground parks, and nice homes along the way.  Last Sunday I was on this trail running along and all of the sudden a cyclist buzzes by me and he is yelling at me some random get on my side of the trail and stuff.  This upset me and so I knew he would be back so I definitely was going to mess with him when he came back.

About ten minutes later he comes cycling back and I get in the middle of the trail and ask him why he can't yield to pedestrians.  He responded back with, if I didn't have my earphones turned up so loud I would have heard him yelling at me to get out of the way.  So I asked him the question of "what if I were deaf?"  The guy says back to me, "if you were deaf you would have a shirt on that said deaf on the back."  At that moment I nearly exploded and jumped the guy.  I then lifted up my shirt to show my diabetes pump and CGM and told the guy I had diabetes should I wear a shirt that says diabetic on the back all the time?  He got real scared that I was about to beat his a$$ and I asked him if he hated all diseased people?  I then calmed down and told the guy I was a cyclist and when you are on a trail the pedestrians have the right away and that the cyclist yields to the pedestrian.  He smarted off and said that pedestrians are supposed to stick to the side of the trail so cyclist can get by.  I decided to leave because there was no way I could beat that much stupid out of him. 

His comment made me so upset because at times it does seem like all us diseased people are supposed to constantly educate the stupid that we have diseases and certain things are not as easy for us, like diabetics need insulin to digest a cookie and stuff.