Ride to Cure Diabetes: 2007 (UPDATED: GETTING CLOSER...).

The time: August 25, 2007.
The place: Glacier National Park, Montana.
The cause: The Ride to Cure Diabetes
The goal: Raising $4,000 for a cure.
Raised so far: $500 $566 $666 $1,186 $1,286 $1,586 $1,771 $1,891 $3,281 $3,661!

Please donate here. And please forward this post, too, if you know anyone willing to help with my ride.

Let's recap: In January 2003, I was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes. And the second semester of my third year of law school turned out not to be quite the party I had been expecting. In fall 2004, I decided to do something about it, and I rode 105 miles through Death Valley to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, one of the most effective charities on the planet. In spring 2006, I did the ride again, also in Death Valley, and again I raised thousands of valuable dollars for diabetes research.

So I've got the Ride to Cure Diabetes on my schedule again for this year, except a couple of things have changed. First, I'm through with Death Valley, at least for a little while. It's a place of stunning beauty, to be sure, but I'm eager for some variety. And my last experience, which involved the taking of IV fluids, didn't exactly endear the place to me. (See here for more details.)

But second, something else that's much more important has changed. You can probably guess what that is. If you read this blog at all and you have functioning eyeballs, you will have noticed that, in the main, it is devoted to my son, Benjamin. Jeanne and I are lucky that his life so far has been close to perfect. His birth was (relatively) smooth, and he has been healthy since.

Unfortunately, because I am his father, he inherited a genetic predisposition to developing type-1 diabetes himself. As part of a study we enrolled him in, he had genetic testing that showed his risk of developing the disease to be almost 10 percent. That's pretty high. And there's no way to delay onset, or guarantee that he would get the disease at the same age I did - the early 20s, which is very unusual for type-1 (formerly known as juvenile diabetes for a reason).

Treating an infant or child with diabetes requires solving very different - and much more difficult - problems than those faced by an adult. I'm a pretty responsible person, I don't mind needles too much, and I have patience. In fact, I don't really have any scary stories about sudden and severe lows in the past 3 years. (Partly this is because I'm fanatical about my control, but partly I've been lucky.)

If you talk to parents of diabetic children, however, you get a very different picture. You'll hear about multiple trips to the emergency room, and about the constant struggle to keep their child's glucose numbers within ranges that are much wider, out of necessity, than what I aim for and usually hit. Maybe it's a fraction easier if one parent has the disease, too - and there are many families in that situation - but no one wants to bond with a child over shared hobbies like counting grams of carbohydrates, or pricking fingers a dozen times a day. Bicycling, to pick just one example, is a much enjoyable father-son activity than insulin pumping in this respect.

At least for Benjy, and for other babies and children who haven't developed the disease yet, there is a real chance that research into a cure will bear fruit in time to make a difference. Though of course I hope that what the JDRF is doing will pay off for me, the most promising therapies depend for success on a recent diagnosis, when enough islet cells (which make insulin) survive in the pancreas to be rescued and restored. Diabetes doesn't set in all at once; the body slowly destroys the islet cells over a period of time, sometimes lasting months or years.

Please help me make sure that diabetes is one thing that Benjy and I will never, ever have in common. Your money makes a difference. Just check out the JDRF's list of accomplishments recently on replacement and regeneration. There's so much promise now, but time is short. We won't know if there's a timer counting down inside him until it's too late.

I thank you for your generosity, and Benjy would thank you, too, if he could take his thumb out of his mouth for a second. (Or if he had acquired yet the power of speech. Judging from this, though, that's not too far away. . .)



Thanks for reading, and again, you can donate here, or by clicking on the link to the right.