Climbing High

Before I begin, I want to wish everyone a Happy Valentines Day!

Today I competed in the Manhattan Plaza Health Club rock climbing competition located in New York City on 43rd and 10th. I have been climbing for the past two and a half years and have competed in several competitions, mostly for fun and to satisfy my competitive side.

Starting at 1:30 today, 90 competitors from beginner to advanced, young and old put their strength and endurance to the test for the next three hours. The climbing gym is smaller than average being that it is in a confined part of the main gym which is housed in an apartment style high rise in NYC.

I started the climbing day feeling well, energized and I checked in with a blood sugar reading of 75 while having lunch an hour before the competition with my girlfriend. After a quick warm up I started to tackle the harder problems.

After a hour and a half, I felt a little tired so a short rest was in order. I supplemented my decreasing energy with a power bar which happened to be a disaster in the long run. This will teach me to test my BG level before eating anything of significant nutritional value.

I continued climbing for the next hour and a half slowly getting more and more irritated from the crowds, small spaces and inability to finish problems. My legs felt heavy and I didn't want to climb anymore. I decided to leave early with my girlfriend because of the way I felt and we needed to attend a Bar Mitzvah later that night.

We arrived at Grand Central by subway 15 minutes before our train was supposed to leave. "Do you have my water bottle?" I received a Sigg water bottle as part of my Valentines day gift. "No, is it in your backpack?" Thrashing through my bag I couldn't find the bottle. I must have left it at the gym.

I wanted to explode, scream out loud my anger. How could I lose something I had just received that morning? For some reason I couldn't handle this thought or mishap or whatever you want to call it. Sitting down on the train I pulled out my glucose monitor and tested my sugar level. 495.

It's funny how much an out of whack BG level can affect your mood and body. If I checked my sugar before eating that power bar earlier, I would have found out that I didn't need it. Maybe a shot of insulin instead, or nothing at all. I was able to manage the lowering of my glucose within the next hour by injecting myself with Apidra insulin. Another life lesson learned through a simple misstep.

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Walking Small: Reliving the Holocaust

Spring in DC felt like summer in Africa. Temperatures were soaring and the soles of my shoes were getting up close and personal with the concrete in a sticky way. The couple of days away from the normal grind of classes were welcomed, no matter how hot it was.

Once a year, sophomores at the Green Mountain Valley School are treated with a trip to either New York City or Washington, DC. Since I had been to The City so many times before, I decided to go against the grain and check out our nation's capital instead. The trip from Vermont to DC was long, but I didn’t mind. I was escaping from Vermont, for young people a not so exciting state, unless if you are really into cows and Ben and Jerry’s. Our first stop on the trip was a gloomy one, the Holocaust Museum.

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"The Holocaust is the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims -- six million were murdered; Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), people with mental and physical disabilities, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi Germany."
(Source: USHMM FAQ)

The building looked like a concrete fortress on the outside surrounded by a moat of flowing street traffic. With the hot sun beating down upon our bodies, our school group rushed inside to the museum’s wonderfully accurate, cooled enclosure. The day was young and we were full of energy. Each of the three floors of the museum would provide our eager minds and bodies with the entertainment we would need for the next several hours.

I took it all in, and as quickly as possible. My attention span seemed minimal at best as I shot from one exhibit to the next. In what seemed to be approximately 5 minutes, I and a few friends had navigated through the three floors; it had all gone by in a blur. Considering that the rest of our group was only half-way through the tour, one more go-around seemed appropriate, so we started our sprint again.

Were we running? It felt like it as the exhibits passed by with blazing speed. The air is getting hotter in the building, maybe they had turned down the air conditioning to save money. My legs were tired from all this exercise. I had finished my walk through again before the rest of my group had even finished their first. I sat down on a marble bench near the entrance. The dome that enclosed the entrance was ever so slightly expanding before my eyes...

Had I fallen asleep? I think I'm dreaming. Feeling as light as a feather I levitate to my feet. My steps seem to slow in my dreamlike state. I'm not controlling my body anymore as some supernatural power floats me from one point to another. I can see people walking by me as I open the doors to another world. Everything is bright, hazy and feels soft to the touch. Am I dead? This place doesn't look like heaven...

And heaven it was not. The quick pulsating sounds of the ambulance brought me back to reality. Awkwardness stared back at me in the form of a paramedic. His eyes darted away as he checked my vitals. Not again I thought to myself. My mind had cleared, I know what had probably happened, I just couldn't remember how or why.

"I’m going to ask you a few questions, answer them to the best of your knowledge.", "Ok.", "What’s your name?", "Marc Epstein", "When where you born?", "February 25th, 1984", "What year is it?", "2000". There was one question that baffled me, an important one, "Where are you right now?", "An ambulance", "I meant, what city?", "Um...I don't know". How could I not know where I am? I thought long and hard, but the answer never came to me. The ride seemed short but stressful to the hospital.

I lay in confusion on the hospital bed for what seemed like hours. Would my group ever find me, would I be in trouble? Had I done anything absurd? I gave the nurses all the information I had about the school I went to, what my teacher's names were. They took the information from my medical alert necklace to call my parents and inform them of the situation.

Somehow, without my knowledge, the connections were made and my group was notified of my location, which I still was unsure of. When I was finally picked up by my caretakers, I was given the story of what supposedly happened.

More than likely, all the running around had put some strain on my blood sugar levels. I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast and by the time I had finished my second viewing of the Holocaust Museum it was already around 12:30pm. Combining this with the extreme temperatures outside threw me into a Diabetic reaction. One that made me lose all touch with reality.

I had wandered around the main entrance hall of the museum for a few minutes, and then decided to venture outside, never a good thing when you're in a drunken like state. After taking in the view, I decided to go for a stroll across 4 lanes of traffic. Fortunately a police officer noticed me before I was struck by a moving vehicle. He grabbed me, called for an ambulance, and then I was whisked away. The rest, is history.

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Walking Small: Dorm Room Crisis

My eyes open suddenly as I realize a wet, citrus tasting finger gently running over my lips. I can hear noises, talking, all around me. Several bodies watch in aw as one man tries to revive me while I lay in bed shaking uncontrollably. A rush of orange juice flows into my mouth, immediately coming back up as I gag for oxygen.

The stench of urine and vomit fill the air but he keeps working, trying, hoping. I have gained consciousness even though I have no ability to alter the events taking place. My life rests in the hands of a few relatively new friends. The paramedics would be arriving shortly.

I know what I have to do. I need to sit up on the edge of the bed, hold the juice glass in my hand and drink. My arms and legs won't cooperate, there is not enough glucose to manage them and they have run a muck. Strong hands push me down trying to stop the troubled limbs. Amazingly, in my current condition I am able to frustrate these hands with raw sporadic bursts of power. Seconds, minutes, what seems like hours go by, an eternity of pain and confusion...

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I was a sophomore in high school at the Green Mountain Valley School, a boarding school for the potentially gifted skier. This was my first Diabetic reaction since beginning the school 7 months prior.

There was considerable pressure on me to start regulating my blood sugar better before this incident. I had not been taking my insulin on a regular basis and resulted in an inflated A1C. On the phone, my parents were furious when they found out the results and threatened (for the better) to take me out from the school if I did not improve my blood sugar levels.

The phone call left a lasting impression on me. I did not want to go back home, my life here was fun and exciting. That night weeping in bed motivated me to drastically change my ways. Three times a day I was monitoring my blood sugar, logging the values, taking my insulin on time, feeling stronger and healthier each passing day.

Keeping my sugars at a relatively low level, opposite to my previous ways was not easy as well as dangerous. The boarding school involved rigorous physical training during the off season to keep us in shape for the upcoming ski season resulting in dramatic swings in my sugars, mostly towards the lower levels.

The climax came that one night during the spring sleeping in my bed (the lower of the bunk beds). My roommate, now a good friend, was sleeping peacefully above me. I can't recall all of the incident from my own memory. From my point of view, I woke up midway though the ordeal. My brother, who also happened to be going to the school at the time (a senior) and living in the same dormitory, filled in the remaining gaps.

Supposedly I had waken in the middle of the night in a sleep walk state exploring the halls. Screaming wildly, wetting my boxer shorts and arousing the rest of the dorm's inhabitants. From there I was forced to my bed by my brother and ski coach (who happened to be our dorm parent). The paramedics were called while my coach slowly but surely revived me to a somewhat normal state.

My mood following the revival towards the paramedics arriving on the scene was verbally grotesque. I believed that their knowledge of Diabetes was minimal at best and it frustrated me. My glucose level was affecting my mood severely.

It turns out that my blood sugar level at the time of the event was hovering around 16, just enough to keep my brain in somewhat working order. I was taken to the hospital by ambulance for observation (few hours). After, I was driven home and returned to classes for the day.

I felt awkward and embarrassed when a friend would come up to me and ask how I was doing. Instead of telling the truth, I brushed it off with an "I'm fine". I made believe the incident never happened and continued on with my schooling.

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