You’re Never Gonna Make It

Well I’m snowed into my apartment in North Carolina, so I think it’s finally time to tell the story of the time I missed my flight to Bolivia and got stuck in Miami, and then, miraculously, how the plane came back for me.

Chapter 1

It was 4 pm on a Tuesday in June, and I sat in the Raleigh-Durham airport next to several women dressed for the beach. A woman on my left read the paper, the news showed the latest escapades involving Donald Trump, who at this point hadn’t become President. Reality still felt somewhat trustworthy, and I expected soon enough to hear over the loudspeaker that my plane to Miami would board.

I was albeit, quite early, having left my house around 2 pm for a 6 pm flight, driven to the airport by my friend Sadie, who escorted me all the way to security at which point she waved goodbye dramatically. We wouldn’t see each other for at least three weeks, which was far longer than any other separation we’d had since becoming friends in grad school.

Sadie sent me several WhatsApp messages while I waited at my gate. I was going to Bolivia, where text messaging wouldn’t be possible, so we’d already assumed the new mode of communication. She told me to be careful, to have a safe flight, implying that I was somehow in control, which seemed doubtful.

Things still felt very normal, but I was on edge, as I am before all big things that involve a dramatic leap into the unknown. In this case, this trip, involved several layers of unknowns, from the people I would be working with to the culture and landscape I’d be entering.

And then the first text message arrived from American Airlines. My flight was now set to depart on time at 8 pm. This was not on time at all. My connecting flight from Miama to La Paz, Bolivia, was set to depart on time at 10:25, which meant that if my flight was leaving RDU at 8:00 and arriving in MIA at 10:05, I would have a layover of 20 minutes. Miami is a large airport, but I did not know this at the time, and even were it small, the gates close 10 minutes (at least, I would learn) before flight time.

I saw people around me lining up at the counter. I, flustered, quickly followed suit.

When it was my turn, I explained my situation, and the airline professional explained theirs right back. There had been heavy rains in Raleigh, making landing impossible for a while, and all the flights coming in, mine included, had been delayed. However, now flights were arriving on time. There was nothing they could do to get me there sooner. However, she looked at my itinerary and said, with a slightly detectable accent, “Oh, you’ll make it, you’ll be fine.”

I went and sat down. “I’ll be fine,” she said. I tried to remain calm, or rather, become calm again, which I hadn’t been for several days. I thought about eating, but I had stress-eaten an apple while trying to interpret the text message, and now my blood sugar would be soaring because I hadn’t thought to give myself more insulin until after I spoke with her, so I decided to wait.

A beautiful woman with lush black hair sitting near me, was talking about her crumpled plans. I guessed she was returning to Brazil, but I found out her destination was actually Argentina, and they had told her a similar explanation of why, but that in fact she would not be fine, and would have to reschedule the second leg of her trip because she would never make her connecting flight with such a short layover. I asked her how long her layover had become, and she said her original connecting flight was set to leave at 10:45 PM. My brain registered a problem.

I went back up to the counter where the woman with red lipstick and perfect scarlet gel nails had told me that I would be just fine. I recounted my situation again, almost verbatim, with the caveat that although she told me it’d be ok, I just didn’t see how that could be true. She clicked her nails on the desk and asked for my boarding passes. “Oh no! You’re never gonna make this. Sorry.”

“What?” I asked, or said, because I had heard her, and really didn’t want to hear it again.

“Yah, no, you’ll never get from that gate to the departing gate in, what, 20 minutes. Nope.”

“Ok, well, can you offer me some other options?”

And then she starts looking at tomorrow’s flights, and she’s talking about how I can leave in 24 hours, from here, this gate, and just do this whole thing that I’ve been waiting for, for months, tomorrow, instead of today. And tomorrow feels so far away, in fact, so far, that it doesn’t even exist in my mind. Tomorrow is supposed to exist in Bolivia, which is a place I can’t even imagine, and that I would learn was totally different than even the small imagining I had been able to do. And I couldn’t imagine, going back home. Going back home to my apartment where I had eaten all of the food except for half of a carrot because I wanted to make sure I could leave everything closed up like a book I had finished and come back fresh from this journey. The house that I had checked four or five times to make sure that the dryer, and coffee pot, and oven, and lights, and sinks, and all of it, were turned off, that the door was locked, the blinds were drawn. I couldn’t go back.

“I can’t go back” I told her.

“Well if you go to Miami, I mean, you might be able to get on a flight tomorrow at 11 AM instead of 6 PM but….”

“No” I said, “I have to get to Bolivia by tomorrow morning.” (I was scheduled to arrive and meet my friend in the airport in La Paz at 5:30 AM).

I began to look more and more frantic. My eyes were wet, I was crying a little. I heard her speak Spanish to a co-worker as she turned and took a break from me. She looked back.

“What are you doing in Bolivia?”

I responded in Spanish, which was a good move, it turns out. I explained to her about the children with Type 1 Diabetes I would be meeting and talking to. Her eyes looked wet too. Suddenly a flurry of google searches, she was really trying to help me. I had become ‘Mamita,’ which I felt really good about. But…there were still no good options.

“What if,” I started, “the weather gets bad in Miami,” and then the planes can’t leave or are delayed from there?”

“Nah, it’s not as hard for them to leave, and your second plane is already there, sitting at the airport. Not gonna happen Chica.”

“Ok, ok, well what if my first flight gets in earlier than expected, I mean that happens right? And then I run like crazy to the next gate and at that one, maybe they know, at the airport, because y’all could give them a call, and tell them, that it’s not my fault but I’m going to be just a few minutes late..and…”

“Mmm, look, if you get on the plane to Miami, you better make sure you have some backup once you get there. Because since this is weather, and we can’t do anythin’ about that, they’re not gonna pay for any accommodations for you either.”

I go sit down. I get on Facebook. Miami in the search bar. I know no one. I start to send text messages fervently. I realize I know two people who know two people in Miami. Neither can promise me outright that those people want a house guest who may, or may not, be arriving at 11:00 PM and leaving early the next morning, but it’s the best backup I’ve got.

I go back up to my friend at the counter. She says hello, with sympathy in her eyes. I explain the situation and I say, “What would you do.” She meets my gaze and says, “You’re never gonna make it. But you could go for it.”

This was the whole truth. I was never gonna make it, but I could postpone that realization by several hours and accept it once I was alone in Miami. So that’s what I decided to do.

To be continued.

Constant Resolution

As I alluded to in a recent entry, open conversation, not being silent, is still key right now. In the spirit of embodying my 2017 theme, I’m going to string together a few pearls of wisdom I’ve picked up from the various people who inspire me every day. Then I’ll talk briefly about diabetes, too.

My head is brimming lately with all these phrases and metaphors that my friends have shared with me as the wisdom that guides them around their busy lives. One of my friends, as we were driving down a street full of piles of leaves and Christmas decorations that had been taken halfway down, shared a quote by Martin Niemoller, a Holocaust protester and survivor, which I had heard many years ago but had forgotten until then. It’s important, and I don’t want to forget it again:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

So much of what I have to be grateful for in my life comes from the friendships, like that I have with this friend, with wise women and men around the world who are searching for purpose and striving to be all they can be every day. Another friend of mine, who I’ve recently reconnected with, reminded me that we are never through becoming ourselves. And yet another, in a parallel conversation earlier this month, shared a favorite guiding quote of hers, “the most important thing in your life is…your life.”

Translating all that to diabetes management, as is the constant struggle, leaves me with some interesting reflections as well. In 2016 I left the pump and moved back to insulin injections. This was a really positive change for me. Interestingly though, so was the pump when I started with it. Which reminds me that diabetes management, like life, is not a static endeavor. Our needs change and being able and willing to adapt is a sign of healthy coping, not an indicator that we are failing or were wrong before.

Now I’m enjoying more fruit and less wheat, more cooked vegetables and spices and hopefully, just a little less hot sauce and salty condiments. I’m borrowing some wisdom from both my Southern mother and Chinese medicine, that cooking foods, especially in winter, makes the nutrients more accessible to the body and of course easier to digest.

And finally, my 2017 health resolution, both because it directly improves my blood sugar and because it makes me friendlier, is to prioritize sleep. I rang in the New Year with this theme last night. But I’m also hoping that regular sleep will also help me effectively abandon it when I have the chance to work on my last, little, other resolution, which is always my resolution, to dance more.

So in sum, may we never be done listening to each other, learning about life and ourselves, and resolving.

World Diabetes Day/Dia Mundial de la Diabetes

Solamente unas pocas horas mas en el dia Mundial de la Diabetes, y quisiera compartir este infografia que la organizacion JDRF me ayudo en crear sobre mis ultimos once anos con diabetes. Este es una pintura correcta, mas o menos, de las maneras en que diabetes tipo uno me afecta, pero hay algunas maneras mas en que me ha afectado, y quiero mencionarlas aqui tambien. Just a few more hours left in World Diabetes Day and I wanted to share this infographic that JDRF helped me create about my last 11 years with diabetes. It paints a pretty accurate picture of some of the ways Type 1 diabetes impacts my life, but it leaves out a few things, which I would like to mention as well.

Countless Friendships I have found through T1D/Sinnúmero Las amistades que he encontrado por medio de diabetes tipo 1

3000+ Hugs and words of encouragement I’ve received from friends living with T1D and friends and family who are not/3000+ Abrazos y palabras de aliento de amigos que tienen diabetes tipo uno y los que no la tienen

Endless inspiration, from my friends here and abroad, who are continually learning how to live with Type 1 Diabetes in each new day/Sin fin inspiracion, de mis amigos aqui y en otros paises, quienes estan continuamente aprendiendo como manejar diabetes tipo 1 en cada dia nuevo

The tongue may be an unruly member…

As I nursed my own aching and raw hurt, so many of my friends and colleagues expressed the same sentiment, “I feel like someone has died.” The mood yesterday (at least in my community) was funerary, grief-ridden, and I approached the world in mourning.

Yesterday I did some writing, but thought to myself that I should keep political opinions off of my blog. I realized though, talking to mom last night, who has waited, and hoped, and fought, for years, for even a glimmer of equality between men and women, that this is not, ‘talking politics,’ whatever that means, this is talking about my life.

When Donald Trump was elected, so many of my hopes for the future and my excitement at the progress we had made as a nation did truly die. My trust in humanity has even faltered. And reading the comments of my friends expressing their fears and sorrows on Facebook, reminded me that this is not just a scary time for me as a woman, it’s a scary time for me as a person with Type 1 Diabetes. With the passage of the ACA, I felt recognition, that I was no longer a person who would be stigmatized for having a ‘pre-existing condition.’ As if any of us are a tabula rasa who signs up for healthcare without any history of illness or health-related needs. ‘Pre-existing condition,’ was a label that made me feel dirty, tainted, somehow broken. It reminded me of that feeling I had hours after my diagnosis, hooked up to IVs, thinking to myself that no one would want to be with me now that I had diabetes, now that I was damaged goods.

I, like so many Americans, am damaged goods in Donald Trump’s eyes. As a friend of mine put it, under this administration we women are worthless save for our reproductive parts. (I would add that even those are only viewed as worthwhile if they are put to use). As a person, who is a woman, who has Type 1 diabetes, and who views the word ‘community’ to mean that although we are all autonomous individuals, the pain and discrimination that my friends are feeling because of the ways that this administration labels them as damaged hurt me too, I am wounded but am not giving up. And so instead of keeping politics off of my blog, I insist on having a space to speak for equality. Again and again in my life, I come back to the words that give me hope in light of injustices: “The tongue may be an unruly member, but silence poisons the soul.” Don’t be silent. Don’t be defeated. Be disappointed, but keep going. Strive to be thoughtful and compassionate and caring for each other.

A Note on Perseverance

Something caught my eye last night as I turned into my apartment complex. I was driving home from ‘helping a friend move’, which ended up just being eating popsicles with friends, and it was late when I returned. I’m not sure where the moon is in her cycle right now, so it was dark, and since the fireflies have been dwindling lately, even they were calm.

Then there she was, illuminated in the lamplight, a giant dark flyer against the blanket of beams. Maybe a Cecropia Moth, or an Imperial, I wasn’t close enough to tell.

And she was frantically trying to reach the source, although she seemed capped at her present height.

We’ve all seen beetles and moths swarming the porchlight at night. And there’s been a time when I remembered why they engage in this seemingly futile pursuit. But I don’t right now, and it’s not the point anyway.

She was all alone in the beam, or she at least was the star, because she was all I saw. And it made me think to myself, about the things we set ourselves towards, and fight for, and goals we accept without questioning.

And on the other side of that I thought about her perseverance, her unquestioning dedication to the task at hand. And about how at the same moment that the stresses and to-do lists of my life feel heavy on my shoulders, somewhere, everywhere, a Cecropia Moth is consumed with her all encompassing desire to reach the light. DSCN3288

Look Up

Every now and then I am reminded that I am in awe of the Earth.

This time it happened paddling down the Eno River after the sun had set, it’s rosy imprint slowly fading away into a violet-blue darkness.

The moment that it hit me involved a Great Blue Heron, so aptly named, sailing like a hanglider overhead, silver wings outstretched, croaking its primordial call.

This night, and all nights, this world exists here on the river, while cars whiz by each other and humans do their violent and hurtful human things.

The fugue of frogs began. At first it was the peepers, a high-strung section of music, the violins of the amphibian orchestra. Then the pickerels chimed in, their voices harmonizing into a smooth mezzo-soprano (I just looked up vocal range on wikipedia). The rubber-band frogs, I don’t know their scientific name, soloed their song of: “boing! boing!” And then, a tribe of frogs illuminated the soundscape with a single wave of speech, their voices so artificially high it sounded as though they had sucked the helium from some abandoned birthday party balloons. I tried to figure out what they were saying but was distracted by the fireflies, just a few at first, strobe-lighting the dark outlines of the sycamores and tulip poplars. Every third stroke or so the half-moon found its way through the dense branches and illuminated my boat or my arm, reminding me that I was now part of the scene. The frogs sang and played on to a constant chorus of insect sound.

As my mind drifted into their performance I wondered what it would be like to stay all night and just soak up this other world. Suddenly a new vocalist called out, a Barred Owl (as pointed out by my friend and fellow Frog Hollow Guide Cathy), with her signature, “Hooo cooks for you???” A friend, or suitor quickly responded in a lower barotone, “Hooo cooks for you???”

The stars were out now, so fine in the sky: the Big Dipper scooping up the darkness, and I thought, how did I get this lucky?

Which takes me back to chord that’s been running through so many of my discussions lately about luck and blessings and fate and purpose.

And I still don’t know, how things fell into place. But I feel so lucky to have found Frog Hollow Outdoors so early in my time in the Triangle and through them, a river playground to call home. And that’s just the tip of the heron’s wing. So many things, if I pause to look up, are glittering in my life.
Whenever this happens, which as I said, is every so often, I am reminded of my favorite poet Mary Oliver, who provides me with endless inspiration. Among the frogs and owls and soft clicks of bat wings last night I kept hearing these words from her poem, ‘Mindful.’

“Every day

I see or hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight,…”

And she goes on…I encourage you to read this and all of her work if you need to be reminded too of the awe out there, especially if you can’t get straight into the woods.

And I will hope that in the middle of any chaos or sadness or uncertainty, that I can remember the reassuring lullaby of a summer river at night.

Worth the insulin

Here are a few Bolivian specialties that I declare are worth the extra insulin. Salteñas, various baked and fried goods at street markets such as this one that appeared to be purely cookies, and small batch Greek yogurt w blackberry beet sauce at ‘Frozz’ icecream and yogurt shop in Sucre.

The best laid plans

When one is traveling, going with the flow is essential, de acuerdo? I think the same with diabetes. I actually missed my flight to Bolivia. But the plane came back for me, as it turns out. We’ve visited so many amazing families who have fed us some amazing Bolivian delicacies. It’s been necessary for me to take more insulin than usual in order to aprovechar de la experiencia and also deal with the stress of last minute changes and running to throw our luggage onto buses. Also, blogging, probably not going to happen much. But I did spend a 6 hr bus ride trying to photograph an alpaca or maybe a llama, for my friend Ms. Boffa, and I finally succeeded. Continue reading “The best laid plans” →

Glucolift, checklists, and a lot of luck

My Glucolift is packed, I’m ready to go…

I’ve been marking through checklist after checklist for the last two weeks. The nice man who works at CVS doesn’t need to ask for my card number anymore, he just remembers it.

Today I went to the pharmacy twice, yesterday once, and the day before, yep, at least once.

The last time I traveled out of the country was in 2011. At that time I was preparing for a three month long trip. I quit my job, packed up a huge suitcase and my backpacking pack and filled a lunch box sized cooler full of insulin. This time it’s just a three week trip, and yet I feel like my wheels are spinning as I try to get organized with all these medical supplies.

It’s my first trip out of the country since getting the Omnipod insulin pump. I wore it when I flew to San Antonio for a business trip and to San Francisco to visit two great friends, but never on an overseas adventure and never to a place where I’m not sure what obtaining supplies will be like.

diabetesmeds

These are some of the diabetes-related supplies I have to carry, and yes, before you say anything, chocolate is a necessity. In the past, I’ve felt so burdened by all of this ‘stuff,’ but in this moment, embarking on this project, I feel so exceptionally lucky.

I am so lucky to be able to afford and obtain these supplies. I am so lucky that this technology is available in the U.S. and that my insurance covers at least a portion of it. And I’m lucky to have so many amazing friends and family supporting me.

When I was diagnosed with T1D 10.5 years ago, a doctor looked at me in my hospital bed and said, “You know, it could always be worse.” At the time, that was not the wisdom I was hoping to hear (actually I was hoping for, “most cases of diabetes clear up in two to three weeks…”). Yet, nearly a decade later I realize how right those words were, although maybe not in the way that doctor intended. I am so very lucky to have been born in this time, with these resources, and this support network, and have such a good starting point for managing diabetes. Not everyone is.

One more thing this time: if you enjoy my blog please go ahead and become an official follower (see the little button bottom right of the screen). It’d be a big help to me and I’d really appreciate it! You can always unfollow or change your email settings if you feel like you’re getting too many notifications from me, but I rarely write more than once a week.

Heading South for the Winter

I’m so excited that in a couple of weeks I’ll be traveling to Bolivia to explore the Altiplano and do work that is very near and dear to my heart. Once again, I plan on blogging intermittently about my experiences traveling with diabetes. In the past I’ve lived in and traveled around Costa Rica four months and through France, Switzerland, and Austria. With international travel there is always a little bit more to consider. For one, I have to pack all the insulin and medical supplies I’ll need for the whole trip, or at least I have had to in the past, because getting these abroad can be a challenge. Then there is the altered schedule and different food options that traveling presents.

photo (9) — Bedtime reading for the next two weeks (although I should also be studying Quechua, Aymara, and other indigenous languages).

The way I’ve decided to blog this trip is by one picture a day while I’m there. I’ll post again at least once before the trip, and I’ll be reading blogs to find out what others with T1D have done when traveling in South America. This is new terrain for me! Thank you in advance for any comments you have that might be useful tips for a person with T1D managing blood sugars at high altitude. Or if you can recommend a high quality, affordable digital camera!

Oh also, about the title of this post, it’s going to be winter there. I’m anticipating a nice cool down from the glorious, yet humid NC summertime.