I wrote in an earlier post about recently fulfilling an almost lifetime dream of owning a two-seat convertible sports car. In its current iteration, this dream manifested itself in a charcoal grey mica Mazda Miata. I’ve had it for almost two month now, but haven’t driven it a lot, relegating it to weekend driving when the weather (and my schedule) was amenable to top-down touring. I told myself that I would only drive it for pleasure, so using it to commute to work or to run errands to Home Depot was out.
Well, today was a day for pleasure driving, but pleasure driving with a purpose. I joined a club of Miata owners, and today they had what is called a “poker run.” It’s kind of a motorized scavenger hunt, where you drive around, following a predetermined route and try to find landmarks, solve puzzles and collect playing cards along the way. At the end of the run, we would meet up at a restaurant for a late lunch and the team with the best poker hand would be awarded a trophy. I was the driver for our team and Lynn was the co-pilot/navigator. We started out strong, but we missed a few turns and had to circle back a bit. I didn’t think it was a lot, but as the day went on it became increasingly clear that we weren’t going to make it to the end-point by the agreed upon gathering time. This caused me a great deal of stress, because I was afraid everyone would be gone by the time we got to the restaurant. One thing I stubbornly refused to do was to call the organizer to tell him we would be late or to ask for directions. If I had, we might have gotten there a few minutes earlier but my sense of accomplishment would have been lessened.
Yes, we were about an hour late, but the good news is that we weren’t the last ones to arrive. As we walked into the restaurant, two last cars pulled into the parking lot behind us. We completed the course, answered all the questions (although I don’t know if we answered them all correctly) and collected all the cards for our poker hand. Alas, three tens did not win the prize. Another team with an ace-high full house took home the trophy. Also, the not-so-great news is that many people had left or were leaving by the time we got there. Insert frowny face here.
To add a little more adventure to our day, my continuous glucose meter decided to go offline about halfway through the run. I had no idea really what my blood glucose level was other than to go by how I felt. I felt good, if stressed, for most of the run and only started to feel low near the end. When we arrived at the restaurant, I made a beeline for the rest room and did a finger-stick to test my glucose level. It was 56, which is pretty low, so I gobbled some glucose tablets and hoped that my meal would arrive quickly. It didn’t, but the glucose tablets tided me over until it did arrive. I hate my diabetes! It’s not so bad when I’m home, as it’s easy to treat it with insulin or food, but when I’m out it’s not so easy to know what my glucose level is all the time, and it’s not always easy to treat my highs or lows. Before we got to the restaurant, Lynn advised me again that I should tell people when my CGM alarm goes off that I’m not getting texts, or stepping out to send texts or make phone calls, but that I have diabetes and I have to deal with these alarms because my blood sugar has a mind of its own sometimes. Luckily, the alarm did not go off in the restaurant, so no explanations were necessary. We met some nice people, had a good meal (we were both starving by this time), and we look forward to future Miata gatherings.
Overall, it was a good day. When I think back about where I was a year ago and how lucky I am to have the health that I currently enjoy, it seems petty to complain about wonky glucose monitors or having to deal with diabetes. Plenty of people have diabetes, just as plenty of people have cancer. There’s no great reason why I am doing better than someone whose cancer is not responding to treatment, so I need to appreciate what I have and not focus on the little frustrations.
Speaking of my health, tomorrow I go in for scans and on Tuesday, I get the results. I have no reason to believe that I won’t get another good report. Lynn asked me again if I was nervous about those scans and I am, but just a little, surprisingly. Just based on how I feel, I should get another good report, but you never know. Melanoma is a sneaky bastard. I’m glad I had today, just in case.
The title of this blog post was inspired by Mazda’s old marketing slogan. The full slogan was “Zoom Zoom, Today, Tomorrow, Forever.”
You better believe it.