Inspiration

The last 2011 JDRF Ride to Cure was the weekend before Thanksgiving, in Tuscon, AZ.  I love flipping through the pictures posted on Facebook.  You can see the people's faces of how amazing of an experience this is for them.  Reading about a parent's journey of riding for their children, or even reading about a marriage proposal at one of the rest stops!  It's an inspiration to see the sense of accomplishment in their faces, whether they have T1D or are riding because some one they love has it.  The smile on their faces as they cross the finish line tells a thousand stories, and you don't even have to know "their story".

I had to get on the computer this morning to send out an email.  I read a little while ago that JDRF would be finalizing the 2012 rides with in a few weeks.  I went to see if they were close to releasing them yet and found a link to this story:

Huntsville's Ross Armstrong does 111-mile Ride to Cure

Nate was working on the Christmas lights and I started to read the story aloud to him, without pre-reading it.  I made it through the first two paragraphs with no problems.  I started on the third and my voice started getting shaky.  Once I hit the word "needle" I had to stop to gain my composure.  Nate knows me better than I know myself because he didn't waste any time coming to me.  Needless to say, I didn't compose myself, instead as Nate wrapped his arms around me from behind, I lost it.  Like his daughter Mallory, my daughter Ellee had very little memory of what it was like to be carefree.  Even I have very little memory of what it was like for 4 years to be able to feed her without having to check her sugar first then to give her an injection of insulin afterwards.  

I know that very few parents understand how I feel when it comes to this ride.  When we tell people that we will be riding over 100 miles next summer, the mileage is what catches their attention, not the cause.  In my eyes, riding a bicycle 100 miles in one day is nothing compared to living a lifetime of daily care of T1D. But after each training session and after the day of our big ride, my life will resume.  Back to checking sugars before every meal, dosing for everything with carbs that she eats, changing out infusion sets, and analyzing sugar results to make sure her dosage is working.  

I ride because it is my hope that one day Ellee will be able to say "I vaguely remember what it was like to have to check my sugar and dose insulin after eating."