The Dream Tour is my dream to ride a bicycle to all 48 states in the contiguous United States. This became my dream about twenty years ago. Today, my dream is still alive, but it is more than a personal goal. I want to show other people with diabetes that diabetes doesn’t have to limit what you do.

With the help of the Ascensia Dream Fund®, I can accomplish this 9700 mile journey in under seven months. This will require the stamina that comes from 22 years of touring and competitive cycling. It will require excellent control of my diabetes because failure to control diabetes will increase my risk of illness and injury as well as reduce performance.

During the tour, I will provide reports, photos, and videos on a web site about diabetes care, the challenges of diabetes during strenuous activity, and the importance of a healthy, active lifestyle for all people with diabetes. After the tour, I will continue the web site.

Why is this my dream?

I’ve had diabetes for 31 years. In the beginning, my approach to diabetes was to fight against it. I waged that battle in many ways, some of which were very negative — anger, denial, ignorance, apathy, rebellion — I used all of these and more. During 1987, after my doctors found the first evidence of background diabetic retinopathy, hypertension, and a double-digit A1C, I realized that I was losing my fight against diabetes. I needed a new plan or the bad news from my doctors would surely be followed by worse news.

That summer marked a new beginning for me. Instead of fighting against diabetes, I started learning how to live well with it. I had been active for most of my life, so the first step was to re-dedicate myself to regular exercise. I explored running, swimming, and bicycling, but soon discovered that bicycling was the most fun, interesting, and challenging. Since then, I have educated myself about diabetes, become friends with my healthcare professionals, made blood glucose monitoring a frequent and regular habit, and realized that it’s up to me to learn to live better with diabetes.

In 1995, I switched from multiple daily injections to an insulin pump, another milestone in my diabetes control. Not only did my A1C’s drop from the low 7% range to the high 5% range, I was able to tune insulin delivery to accommodate my lifestyle instead of the other way around.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 11th, 2005 at 4:56 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.