I've never traveled outside of North America before.
And now, I've just landed in Tanzania, a small country in Southeast Africa.
I've been invited to join a team of other athletes from around the globe who, like me,
live with type 1 diabetes.
Our goal is to show that this incurable medical condition does not have to limit the challenges
we tackle in our lives.
During 2012, I spent 365 consecutive days rock climbing across North America to promote
this same message of empowerment, but this will be different.
I'm comfortable on steeper rock at lower altitudes.
Big peaks present much different challenges, and I feel a lot of pressure to perform.
Expedition style climbing with porters and cooks is very far from my standard method
of just flying by the seat of my pants.
I'm used to climbing alone with one other partner to whom I can trust my life as we
share a rope, but there won't be any ropes on this climb, only the thread of type 1 diabetes
connecting a group of relative strangers.
We begin our climb by ascending 12 miles through the jungle canopy.
I've been told that it will be either muddy or dusty and that there is no happy medium
anywhere on the mountain.
Each day spent on the climb affirms that this is no exaggeration.
Hiking does not seem a great physical challenge.
I've carried heavier backpacks across greater distances.
My concern is my ability to maintain good health along the way.
Climbing around the world places a huge strain on my immune system, and I have been fanatically
avoiding any food or drink that could be tainted.
The last thing I want is a gastrointestinal problem to complicate managing my blood sugar,
which is already challenging under the most familiar circumstances.
We continue upwards on the second day, out of the canopy, and into the heather, a semi-arid
moorland covered with shrubs and small bushes.
It feels good to finally get above the lowland clouds and moisture.
I feel good about the altitude we've gained.
We are around 4,000 meters, which I'm finding to be fairly manageable, due largely to the
massive quantities of water we are consuming both day and night.
Almost everyone else on the team is taking diamox, and a climatization drug.
Only Alexi and I have opted out.
I'm curious to see what my body can do if I do my best to simply fuel it well as we
ascend.
I'm willing to push myself to my outer limits, but I still hope it doesn't actually come
to that in the long run.
Drinking water and trying to keep blood sugar stable seems to be working.
No headaches or loss of appetite.
Two of the initial grievances known to indicate developing altitude sickness.
When my stomach decides to go off script for a day, however, I begin an aggressive antibiotic
treatment in order to squash what could develop into a real problem given the remoteness of
our location.
Prevention and preparation seem key to thriving in this environment when it's possible.
After that, it's just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other.
But going through that process day after day leads me to question what we are doing out
here in the first place.
Why climb anything at all, let alone a big mountain so far from where we all live?
As I trudge along, I keep wrestling with these questions.
Does any of this actually mean anything?
Or are we just walking from one seemingly arbitrary point to another, which just happens
to be on a mountaintop?
I don't have good answers to these questions immediately.
The physical stress is much less significant to me than the mental aspect.
There is very little variety in each day, living under the looming shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro,
eating and walking and always drinking more water.
I know that simply keeping up the repetition will yield the summit, but at many moments
it is difficult to see the value of continuing, and my blood sugar has been running high from
the start of the expedition.
By the time we start closing in on our high camp, from which we will attempt the summit,
I have had to increase my insulin dose just a little bit in hopes that my sugar will come
down to normal ranges.
And then seemingly out of nowhere, it does come down, hard and fast.
I'm lying in my tent with just hours to go before we're supposed to wake up for a midnight
start and push for the summit.
I struggle with what is happening as I inhale skittles and other simple sugars.
I only took a tiny bit more insulin earlier in the day, which seemed like it did nothing
at the time.
And now suddenly my blood sugar is plummeting, and I've awakened in a cold sweat, double
fisting glucose tablets and bits of cliff bar, which I'm eating like my life depends
on it.
Because in reality, it does.
Eventually my blood sugar comes back up.
I fall asleep for an hour and a half, and then it's time to wake up and go for the summit.
It's cold and the wind is whipping around us.
We are all just trying to focus on each step, not daring to think of how much elevation
lies between us and the summit, or how much colder it's about to get as we climb higher.
Hours pass, stop and go, stop and go.
Low blood sugars, high blood sugars.
Everyone has a different monkey on their back tonight it seems.
The group disperses according to pace.
I am somewhere in the middle I think, but I can't quite tell for sure.
About 1500 feet below the summit, the altitude finally hits me, and suddenly I feel like
I'm sucking air through a straw.
This is the opposite of fun.
The sun rises, and it is all I can do to take out my camera and capture Mount Mowenze profiled
in the distance.
Fighting for breath feels like the biggest priority, and nothing means anything besides
just taking the next step.
The summit of Mount Kilimanjaro is fairly nondescript.
I don't have any kind of mountaintop experience there, no life-changing moment.
All I can think about is getting down and wanting to breathe again.
So that's what we do.
On the way down, I'm still trying to make sense of this ascent.
The only conclusion that I can come to is that mountains in and of themselves mean nothing.
Mountains are optional.
The descent alone is mandatory.
That which we create out of the experience on the summit, the time on the mountain, the
relationships we build, and the enthusiasm we bring back down to share with others are
capable of changing the world around us.
It is our responsibility to find meaning in the challenges we face, both the inevitable
ones like diabetes, and the challenges we actively seek out, like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
Of course I still have to live with Type 1 diabetes every single day, just like the
rest of my teammates.
But by coming together, we've demonstrated that it's possible to go beyond the limits
of our diagnosis and thrive.
