ADA Tour de Cure vs JDRF Ride To Cure
I’ve had diabetes for 17 years. Friday, I went to the local JDRF office for the first time ever. I went there to sign posters for the 5 riders that were being sent from New Mexico to Sonoma, CA for the Ride To Cure Diabetes. While there, I had a good conversation with some of the JDRF folk. We had a conversation that I had often thought about but never expressed (or maybe only slightly expressed it).
I went to college with one of the JDRF peeps and she knew I was into cycling and she said that I should do a Ride To Cure. And so, the conversation begins.
I’d want to do a Ride to Cure, but when I look at the impact it will have and how much money needs to be raised for a single ride, I don’t see it going as far as me being able to go to several different places and to be able to ride more miles and see and talk to more people and for the same amount of minimal fundraising required for the Ride to Cure.
And I broke it down for them.
With the Ride to Cure, there are two routes to go:
1) raise money for the “event package” which depending on the ride is either $3000 or $3200 and includes
• Ride training by a local coach or our National Head Coach certified by USA Cycling
• Fundraising strategies, support and tips from JDRF
• First night welcome reception
• Three nights stay at host hotel for the event
• Breakfast and Dinner (Lunch on your own during excursions and travel)
• Pre- and Post-ride celebrations on site
• Ride to Cure Diabetes jersey by Hincapie Sportswear
• Finisher medal
• Reward of having made a contribution to finding a cure for diabetes!
or
2) raise money for the “complete travel package” which, depending on the ride this is anywhere between $4200 or $4700, it includes everything in the event package as well as:
• Round-trip airfare to the ride city booked by JDRF
• Bike shipped to and from the ride city
• Transfers to and from the airport on Thursday and Sunday
And then I started in on my opinions. I’m not raising money to travel to go and do something for a cure, I’m raising money for a cure, traveling is all on me, I don’t have to travel to help find a cure, it’s a bonus. With that said, people shouldn’t have to donate to me traveling. Their donations are in the name of a cure. I’d go with the “event package” just for that reason and I’d stop donations just below the amount for the “complete travel package” because I think it’s wrong that someone else pay for my trip in the name of finding a cure.
Riding in the Tour de Cures, I’ve figured out how to minimize my traveling costs (it only took me a year of driving, flying, and hotel stays to figure this out)…I have friends/family all around the country. The majority of them are more than pleased to see me even if it’s in the name of a bike ride and they’ll let me stay at their homes. If I book my plane tickets in advance, they’re below $200, even to big cities across the country from me. If I’m smart, I book my flight on Southwest, because they’re the cheapest airline to put a bike on at $100 round trip. If I don’t have a choice but to fly another airline I’m looking at $200 round trip for my bike. I’m all about having a car where ever I’m going, my very own car, and really, it’s not a car, it’s an SUV and it’s because I’m slightly a snob and because I don’t like sitting on the ground in little cars. I rent a car where ever I go, no questions asked. End of story. It’s a cost I prepare for. There’s no need to raise an extra $1500 to cover these costs.
And then I broke down the bare minimum cost, $3200. In most cases, the minimum fundraising amount for a Tour de Cure is $150. Some of the rides are a little more because we cover greater distances, it’s a more popular ride, it’s a multi-day ride, etc. I like to strive for a minimum of $500 a ride, sometimes I do my due diligence and make it, sometimes I just raise the bare minimum. But lets say I do $500 a ride. With $3200, I could do 6 Tour de Cures in a year. Which means, I could ride up over 600 miles as opposed to the 109ish which is the max mileage in any of the Ride to Cures.
Riding is important to me, 2 years ago, cycling saved my life. It gave me a reason to live, something to strive for, it keeps me healthy, it keeps me intact. Training for a single century-ish length ride a year, it isn’t enough. And I know that it’s for more than the sake of riding, that it’s for a cure, but if I’m going to raise that much money, I want it to mean more than a hundred miles and a check written to stem cell research.
I get that meaning in the Tour de Cures. Having ridden in 9 Tour de Cures, 8 of them in different states, I’ve learned several things. One being, people riding in the Tour de Cure, aren’t necessarily riding in it because they know someone with diabetes, many athletes use them as training rides because they’re mostly well supported. So I’ll be out there riding, and having a conversation with someone about diabetes because of the jersey I’m wearing and it’ll be great because I’m educating them. And I love that. Whereas, you can bet if someone’s riding in the Ride To Cure, they know someone with diabetes or they have diabetes. It changes everything when I’m out there riding and people don’t even know what they paid for because all they wanted was a training ride.
Ok, back to where my money goes, because they made a good point, and this point used to bother me. The ADA has a lot more overhead than the JDRF and much of our money raised goes to other things besides finding a cure. But some of that stuff is important, camps for kids, educating people (I’m not so much a fan of the pamphlets sitting in the doctor’s offices though.), I didn’t use to think that that other stuff was as important as a cure and I scoffed at it. But education is important, and I think more importantly than the education being funded through the dollars I raise, is the education that is being displayed with all the diabetic athletes out there because it shows younger kids with diabetes that it’s not the end of their lives (so different from what was portrayed 20 years ago, at least to me, I digress). The JDRF is ranked high among non-profit organizations for keeping their overhead low and for “putting almost every dollar spent to work curing disease….” my main concern with this is the research their funding. They fund mostly embryonic stem cell research and that’s not something I support. I don’t believe that our cure lies in embryonic stem cell research and I don’t support it on moral grounds. That’s not to say that the ADA isn’t supporting it with the funds I raise, but they’re also designating the funds to other things as well. And the other things are important. (I will say this though, I did find out that I can check a box that says “don’t donate this money to stem cell research”).
It was a good conversation, and both sides were well taken, and one day, I will do a Ride to Cure, but probably not in the near future. And not in the near future simply because I have a goal I’m working on, I want to ride in every Tour de Cure, and at last count, there was 84 of them, and in order to do that and raise the funds for them, I need to not put all my raised funds into a single ride.
Content with CDE Appointment
Almost a month ago (April 8th) I went and saw my CDE. It was very different from what happened the last time I went and saw her.
The last time she saw me I was at the tail end of a destroying my life via poor/non-existant care of my diabetes phase. My A1c had risen over 7. And there was a bit of a drinking issue. And really, the last time I didn’t desire to fix anything. Not the broken A1c that I was angry about. Not my poor eating habits. Not my lack of desire to train. I was in a bit of a slump, but when it comes to my diabetes I think it’s safe to say that I spend a decent amount of time there.
And then I got the results of my blood work back. The blood work that was done because I told the truth on the questionnaire, the one that asks “how many drinks do you have a week”. The blood work had a highlighted comment on it “cease drinking and seek counseling”. Now I hate counseling. I hate counselors. And I’ve resisted counseling for a long long time. The CDE and Endo have often said “Courtney, we really wish you’d see a counselor that’s familiar with diabetes.” and everytime, I smile and say “no thanks”. This time around through, it was a little more important. My little liver was endangered. I was on my way to having sclerosis of the liver in 20 or so years. And so I went and saw a counselor.
The very first time I saw the counselor was the day my drinking virtually stopped. Any drinking since that day has consisted of exactly 1 shot of vodka and there have only been two instances of those. With alcohol out of my system there has been some improvements with my diabetes. It’s easier to track what’s going. It’s easier to tell what’s causing the upsets in my numbers. And it shows.
My A1c dropped from 7.1 to 6.7 in a matter of 2 months. I was picking up trends in my numbers and making adjustments where appropriate with my basal rates. I was noticing what foods were wreaking havoc at my 2 hour post meal checks (which pains me because these are foods that are normal staples in my life). These are all things that I wasn’t noticing before. Well, half of them I couldn’t see because there was so much alcohol in my system that it was jacking everything up.
So, that was 3 weeks ago. And it was very good. In the past 3 weeks, there have been some massive developments, but those will have to wait for another post. But as I said last night, I have a lot to write about.
Wolves, a Medic Alert Bracelet, and Diabetic Cows
I’m at a bowling alley. Bowling. Chilling. Talking. Bowling. Chilling. Drinking. Chilling. Bowling. Talking.
Something happens and I decide I have to run to my apartment real quick and grab something. I exchange my bowling shoes for my regular wear shoes and I head outside. It’s the wee hours of the morning so it’s considerably dark out. There’s a line of trees between the bowling alley and the apartment complex and I don’t have to go far and there’s enough light to get from the bowling alley to the apartments. Crossing from the bowling alley to the apartments isn’t difficult at all as we’ve blazed a trail between the trees. It’s well worn. It’s like a hop, skip, and a jump, and then BAM! you’re there.
Except not on this night.
I walk outside, see my breath as I breathe, and I look up to see the stars. It’s a beautifully clear night and the air is crisp. I start walking away from the building and towards the row of trees when wolves with yellowish, goldenish, like a yellow lab or a golden retriever, colored hair circle around me and encroach upon my space. They’re growling and as they approach I notice they have green eyes and they stand almost 4 feet tall at their back. They’re teeth are eerily white and shiny like they’ve been using crest whitestrips. They get closer and closer until I can feel them breathing on me and then one of them flips his head and rips my medic alert bracelet off my left arm (ooh shiny?) They all circle around the wolf that has the bracelet leaving me mostly unattended. I turn to run, but at the sight of my movement they jump towards me with mouths wide open. I get torn to shreds.
It was a dream.
But it made me think.
The examining of my bracelet, like they were checking to see if I was edible, as though I needed to be FDA approved or something before they ate me. It made me think of cows for some reason. And if diabetic cows taste different from non-diabetic cows. And can we taste the insulin in cows, because that stuff stinks to high heaven, the smell of insulin, it’s horrible, so can the insulin be tasted in things that are using it, can we taste it in our cows. And then I thought, they wouldn’t give a diabetic cow insulin, they’d just kill it, it’s meat. But then I thought, that’d be a sad cow to kill, all skinny, there wouldn’t be much meat on it. Which brought me back to giving cows insulin. They’d be healthy if they had insulin, the diabetic cows, and so there’d be more meat on them, and then they could be killed for us to eat, so would they give the diabetic cows insulin long enough to make them healthy so that they could turn around and kill them for their meat?
And then of course I thought, do cows even get diabetes? Humans get diabetes. Cats get diabetes. Dogs get diabetes. What would make cows impervious to diabetes, yeah, cows can get diabetes, but you never hear about cows having diabetes…do fish get diabetes, can you imagine being a shark with diabetes, talk about mood swings, everything dies in it’s path as it is (okay, that might be slightly exaggerated), what if he went low, think of the destruction that could happen if a shark had a low blood sugar. Sharks don’t each much carbs, I mean, fish is like a free food, so could they just manage their diabetes with diet, it practically would be anyways…i wonder how many carbs are in grass…wheat grass, is that what cows graze on, out there in the lush green fields, are they eating a lot of carbs?
Like The Tail Of An Angry Stegosaurus
It’s not something I would normally notice, but it’s something that I’ve noticed since I’m not eating except for when I go low. At which point, I’m not bolusing so I therefore go high. And then I bolus when I see the high and I drop the first 2 hours, I’m steady from hour 2 into hour 3 and by hour 4, I’m low. Every. Single. Time.
Novolog has a tail for me. A tail with a spiky end on it, it’s got extra power, and I go from happy steady, stable looking numbers, to low. BAM! just like that. And I shouldn’t. It’s like an ankylosaurus all cute lookin until you see his tail. Wait, his tail is like a mace, but without the spikes…
Stegosaurus, he’s all cute but with spikes on the end of his tail. Yes, that’s what novolog is, a stegosaurus, you think it’s all not so dangerous because he’s a veggietarian but you get too close and he whacks you with his spiky tail. The last hour of novolog running in my system, that’s the spiky tail.
I’ll be walking along happily by the creek, listening to the water gently run down stream. Enjoying the greenness of the plants. The smooth round river rocks under my feet. AND THEN BAM! I get whacked by a stegosaurus that I (unbeknownced to me) wandered to close to, that sends me through the air, and next thing I know, I’m falling off the edge of a waterfall and when I try to grab something to stop myself, there’s nothing there and then I’m beneath the surface of the water at the bottom of the waterfall fighting to swim back up.
That there is the image of what my insulin does to me in the last hour of it running in my system. If it were doing what it should be doing (or what I think it should be doing, or what a real pancreas does *sigh*), I’d still be walking along happily by the creek. There’d be no stegosaurus with a dangerous tail snacking on the lush green foliage to whack me over the waterfall.
There is going to be a conversation about this nasty tail that novolog has at my next endo appointment (i.e. tomorrow) I find this unacceptable. It makes me wonder how many of the lows I experience from day to day and the seizures from the past are results of this stupid tail.
2009 Goal Review - Round 3
I’m a little late, but we’re here in the 4th month of 2009 which means the third month has gone flying past us. Things are starting to being kicked into gear and I’m falling into place of something that I should’ve never left (stupidicy, go figure). And so, it’s time to do a review of what went on last month and readjust the goals for April.
Big Goal: I will work towards my A1c dropping below 6.5%.
March Benchmark: I will do 4 session of basal testing. 1 each week.
The week of March 1-7 I’ll test the night time numbers into the morning.
The week of March 8-14 I’ll test the morning numbers through lunch time.
The week of March 15-21 I’ll test the lunch numbers through the dinner numbers.
The week of March 22-28 I’ll test the mid afternoon numbers through the bed time numbers.
This benchmark was shot to hell when I got sick and remained sick for half the month. I did however in a way start logging numbers and that led me to some trends and I was able to make some adjustments. I’m still encountering lows consistently when I think I shouldn’t be having them so basal testing the morning numbers through lunch time is imperative. That will be done during the week of April 6-10. The other thing I’m going to nail down is logging my blood sugars. Last week (March 31-April 3) I created a spread sheet with a graph and because I’m a geek and want to see my numbers in a certain fashion it’s about to be turned into a pivot chart.
The April benchmark is to simply log. I’ll start small, blood sugars only. I’ll get complicated with insulin doses and carbs at a later date. (Mental note, I think my bolus rates are off, but the only way to figure that out is to get serious about carb counting *rolls eyes and sighs* who wants to do that anyways?)
Big Goal: I will do 3 triathlons as an individual -> Jay Benson (May 10, 2009), Bottomless Lakes (July 11, 2009) and Socorro (August 1, 2009).
March Benchmark: When I get back on the 9th, I’ll cycle to work on Monday’s, Wednesday’s, and Friday’s. It will give me 30 miles a day with some good hill workouts for 3 weeks. Also, I’m going to force myself to get up and get out for a walk at 10am and 2pm daily at work. It’s important and I’ve got to do it.
Meh. I think I’m not tri-ing this year unless I’m on a team and I’m cycling…I’m just not feeling it. I wouldn’t be cycling if it weren’t for Misty. The rides we do on Saturday (2 in a row now) are the only reason I’m riding and yes, I do try to get out of them. I try very hard to get out of them…The weather you know, it’s been cold and windy…that’s reason enough to not ride right???
April Benchmark: get on the bike every weekend. short and sweet. if I can do that, I’m making progress. End of Story
Big Goal: I will read a minimum of 24 new books (2 a month).
March Benchmark: 2 new books will be read.
I read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. I got part way through Cheating Destiny and part way through Shadow of the Wind. Needless to say, I didn’t finish 2 books. The good news, I’ll finish two books for April seeing as how I’m in the middle of two books now anyways. Well, barring that I don’t start another book and not finish any.
April Benchmark: 2 new books will be read.
Big Goal: I will take a picture each day that represents diabetes in my life for the diabetes365 photo a day project.
March Benchmark: 31 pictures, 1 picture a day
All 31 pictures got taken. All 31 got uploaded. 30 got labeled. 29 got described and posted to the D365 group. I’m a tad bit behind. But they all got taken. So that counts for something.
April Benchmark: 30 pictures, 1 picture a day.
Big Goal: I will see a new movie each month.
March Benchmark: I can’t remember what movies are coming to theatre but I know there’s got to be at least 1 that I want to see so I’ll be seeing at least 1 movie in theatre.
I went and saw Knowing. In the theatre. Goal Met.
April Benchmark: go see a movie (which, I’ve already met because I went and saw duplicity this last weekend)
At a minimum, I’d like to blog every week day this month. That gives me weekends off if I need them, but it also challenges me to actually say what’s in my head.
I think this happened for most the month. But then I started storing my thoughts away instead of sharing them. And my D365 photos became my post for the day. But the D365 photos also became more intense, I was expressing my feelings through them, and speaking what was on my mind there. So, I’m counting them, we’ll say this goal was met. But still, I’ve got posts half started, thoughts stored in the back of my mind, notes in my moleskine, there’s a lot to say, a lot. I don’t have a benchmark for this one this month…we’ll just see what happens.
You think I’d learn or at least pretend that I’d learned
March 2003
I almost died, which really translates to, I almost killed myself. I took a year off from taking care of my diabetes and I was drinking fairly heavily during that year as well. After I almost died, after the doctors told my mom that they had no clue what I had done to myself, after I was released from the hospital, I was rather sick for about a year. I couldn’t get healthy. My body’s immune system and resistance to germs was shot. But still, even after that near death experience, it took me several more years to get serious about taking care of my diabetes.
March 2007
Cycling saved my life. Cycling gave me a reason to take care of my diabetes. I don’t think that if I hadn’t thought about how I could be an athlete/cyclist that I would’ve ever found a reason or felt a need to take care or my diabetes.
September 2008
I went back to my old ways. I started drinking again, my diabetes care slipped (which, to be completely honest, wasn’t really all that great anyways.) Nothing was worth taking care of my diabetes for because I wasn’t cycling because I was constantly injured because the idiot in me who has a bum knee decided that running would be a great thing.
My first half marathon at the end of August severely injured my knee (that was already injured).
My second half marathon in October was ok because I walked the entire thing.
And then I trained for a marathon and was mostly injuryless during that time but because I was training for a marathon I wasn’t cycling (and it was cold and it’s easier to run in the cold than to cycle). And then I got injured during my marathon, severely strained my peroneous longus. That took me out for another month after the marathon.
And then, I was lazy, and it was still cold outside, and I had no desire to cycle. And then when I wanted to cycle, I got sick, so sick I was lying in bed whining like a baby for 10 days. And I’m still sick, fighting off whatever has got a hold of me.
This is where one would think that I would’ve learned. Not taking care of my diabetes leads to bad things, like getting sick and my body not having the strength to kill the bacteria that is “killin” me. Which leads to me not wanting to do anything in general, which leads to me not wanting to take care of my diabetes because I can’t do things because my diabetes interferes anyhow…see the vicious circle I’ve got going here.
Currently I’m where I’m sick, and so I don’t want to cycle, but I also feel like I don’t want to cycle because it takes too much for me to manage my diabetes in order for me to be able to cycle, and so, I’m doing a mediocre job of managing my diabetes…(well, ok, honestly, in the past several weeks I’ve done better than mediocre, it’s just so hard not seeing things snap into place as quickly as I can make them snap out.)
It’s a phase, and I know I’ll step out of it sooner or later…I just had to get this off my chest…
Knowing Numbers
I’m going to go see the movie Knowing tonight and the preview has made me think about numbers in general, well not really general. More specific than general, it’s made me think about my numbers, diabetes numbers. The numbers that I really pay no heed to, the ones that I refuse to write down because I don’t need them in a logbook because, hey, guess what, they’re in my machine and on my pump. The numbers that really tell me a lot if I would pay a little bit of attention to them as a group instead of a “hey, i’m low now” or “hey, I’m high”. If I would take a little more time to analyze the trends in them, I’d have more perfect numbers, something I’m not achieving right now which is throwing everything in the big scheme of things off.
In the Knowing trailer it’s said “systems that find meanings in numbers are a dime a dozen because people see what they want to see.” Anyone can look at this list and they’re going to see what they want to see.
03152009081551031520090934105031520091053830
31520091217108031520091331229031520091517223
03152009174514003152009193658031520092242760
31620090454840315200907538003152009090767031
52009120899031520091306620315200915131530315
20091839620315200920021900315200921331480317
20091213980317200902484103172009070826303172
00908062350317200910241770317200912406603172
00916028403172009170011503172009212580031720
09232768031820090739117031820098001530318200
91008178031820091153860318200915369103182009
18491520318200921272580319200912486803192009
07477503192009113853031920091457174031920091
74716503192009210511003192009232815703202009
12391410320200907211250320200910001270320200
Those numbers to me, they’re dates and times (the most obvious thing to pick up from that mess of numbers) and my blood glucose readings. This list of numbers here, they’re important, to me. I can find a system in them, well, that’s a fib, I know the system. They tell me that there have been far too many lows in the recent mornings when I wake up. They tell me that changing my breakfast foods have effectively subjugated the post-prandial highs that I was having.
Of course, not in the jumbled number format do they tell me much. And I’m really not much of a logger as I’ve said, I hate logging. I have many many untouched by ink logbooks just laying around.
I’m not the only one that hates logging. But, it doesn’t do me much help to know the here and now and not the patterns being produced. Not logging makes my diabetes difficult to tweak. And then I sit around complaining about how it’s not doing what I want it to. *rolls eyes* (story for another day I suppose)
BUT! Yes, there’s a but, and as my therapist has said, me saying “BUT” negates anything that preceded it.
In a way, I’ve started logging, kindof sortof. Electronically logging, in no way that a doctor could easily look at it and pick up trends, but I am logging, electronically writing my numbers down, even carb intake and insulin taken, I even make occasional notes about other things, like calibrating my sensor and going for walks. It’s going to be great when I start cycling again to be able to log those adventures. I’m twittering my diabetes. It’s out there for anyone to see. Does it mean much to anyone else if they’re not familiar with diabetes, probably not, but it’s one way that I’m better able to manage my diabetes. Because numbers are being “written” down somewhere, I can see the trends. It’s at the forefront of my mind. And it’s easy, because I’m always in front of a computer.
If you’re curious to see what a day in the life of a diabetic looks like, and you want to know what the numbers mean to us, you can follow me too. Follow me on twitter @ridetoremedy.
Honestly?
When people ask me to give my opinion of something I always look at them, raise an eyebrow and ask “honestly?” because there’s always the safe answer, “yeah, you look great in those pants” and then there’s the honest answer “well, they make your butt look big, I wouldn’t wear them”
I had to start asking “honestly?” because sometimes, I’m too honest and it’s a bit of a problem. Sometimes I don’t even ask which one they want, I give them both, the safe answer, followed by, “but honestly, …” It’s a trait I get from my mom 
Here on my blog, everything I write is how I honestly feel, but then there’s things that I don’t write because I’m afraid to tell the honest truth, to put it out there for all to read, because I’m afraid of what people will think. It’s kindof funny in a way, because most things, I don’t care what people think…but then there are things I do care about and what people think, it’s something I’m plagued by in some cases…
So, in honor of the honest scrap award that was bestowed on me by Allison and Chris, I’m going to be honest about a couple things. Well, 10 things according to the official rules:
The Honest Scrap award comes with a caveat or 2. Firstly you have to tell your readers 10 things about you they may not know, but that are true. Secondly you have to tag 10 people with the award.
- I love wearing hats. I’d wear them at all times if I could. Ball caps and beanies are my favorites. Normally I just comb my hair and put my hat on, but then there are days where I’ll feel like doing my hair all nice, just to turn around and do it and then put a hat on.
- I sometimes feel like a hypocrite because for as much as I do that puts diabetes out there and makes it a visible disease I often wish that it truly were invisible and that I could go on living in a manner that no one knew I had it.
- I want to name a pet “Creature”.
- Boredom causes seriously huge problems for me. I tend to cause and get into more trouble when I’m bored than any other time.
- I quit what was formerly the DiabetesSisters Triathlon Team, which is presently Team Wild, because I felt that I was cheating on myself with regards to cycling and my goal of riding in every Tour de Cure in the country.
- It’s really hard for me to think of things that people may not know…come to think of it, I’m not sure I ever finished the 25 random things meme that was going around facebook…I think I maybe made it to 13 things…
- I haven’t been on a bike since December 7th when I did the Jingle Bell Triathlon and I really miss cycling. I miss it so much that I dream about cycling and the races and rides that I’m not doing…
- Sometimes I’ll get a great idea for a blog post but I get so lost in my own thoughts that I’m unable to pull the post together enough to actually publish it. Because of this I have 24 unpublished posts dating from recently all the way back to the beginning of 2008. And reviewing some of them, I was onto some good stuff.
- At the doctor’s office this week I discovered that I have gained 10 pounds since I did the Walt Disney World Marathon in January. These 2 months of not exercising have been very detrimental to my figure and I have become slightly subconscious about it (especially when I put on a pair of pants that have never been tight in their life and they were really tight)
- I’m working on several fairly big projects related to my blog that I hope to unleash fairly soon, but I can’t share what they are just yet…I’ll share as I roll them out and I’m thinking about rolling them out incrementally instead of all at the same time…but that’s not written in stone yet…but I figured I needed to throw it out there so that I’d keep working on them and not get distracted.
!0 people, let’s see here
Kidneys, Skulls, and the River Styx
Ok, the places my brain goes when I’m not sick is sometimes pretty out there. And then there’s the places my brain goes when I am sick…and it’s just as wildly out there.
There are two conversations that stick out in my head this week that were fairly amusing to me.
The first one is in regards to me being sick, still, after 8 days of being medicated…
friend: why are you still sick?
me: because i’m the new face of death. charon contacted me and said he needed someone new to run the ferry across the river styx
The other one, well, it wouldn’t exactly be fair for me to say what caused it, but the conversation turned to the selling of our body to get money and then continued as such
me: can’t we just put a kidney out there on the black market
friend: a diabetic kidney? what’s that worth these days?
me: they don’t need to know it’s diabetic…it’s the black market…hehe [shows how much i know about the black market, i read up on it after i made that comment, they run tests before they'll take your organs...a diabetic kidney wouldn't go very far at all]
the next day…following some conversation about what friend was doing…
friend: selling my body again
me: it will be interesting to see whats left when you get done selling it 
friend: just a shell of what used to be me
me: that would be so sad. i like you the way you are. but it would be cool to put your spirit in a skull whose eyes light up…just like that dude in dresden files.
My poor friends, they’re so abused by the stuff that comes out of my mouth or my fingers when I’m texting…
Conspiracy Theory
A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in my counselor’s office and we were talking about my need for a cure for diabetes and how I had no desire to live with this disease for all my life. I am very pro cure, very rarely do I have moments when I think that there won’t be a cure. I’m not one of those people. I know people that don’t think there will ever be a cure and they’re cool with that. I’m not. I want a cure. I need a cure. A cure is a necessity for my piece of mind and for the healthiness of my checkbook. Me thinking that there’s going to be a cure in my lifetime is a necessity for my piece of mind. It’s really what keeps me going, the hope that one day this disease will be abolished.
But then, every now and then, get me into a mood and I will spew my one thought about why we the people with diabetes won’t ever have access to a cure. Yes, access, it won’t be that we don’t have a cure because one was never found, it will be that we won’t have a cure because it’s not released to us.
You see, it is my belief that a cure currently exists. The reason we don’t have it, well, that’s because if there were a cure for Type 1 diabetes, we could single handedly sink the pharmaceutical companies. They make far too much money off of us having to care for there to ever be a cure. And since big pharmas are like the oil companies when it comes to the campaign funding of our elected officials it would make sense that cures stay on the down low and seem elusive.
You should see the looks on people’s faces when I tell them this. And no, I don’t often tell people this, maybe only as many people as I can count on one hand have ever heard this from me. They think I’m crazy. And maybe I am, but maybe I’m not.
We all have our crazy thoughts, some people keep them to themselves, some people share them with a few selected confidants, and then there’s people like me that will share them with the world so that they can make room for new crazy thoughts