"If You Can Dream It, You Can Do It" - Don Muchow Ran From Disneyland to Disney World with T1D

This month, Don Muchow became the first person to run from Disneyland in California all the way to Disney World in Florida. It's a pretty amazing story when you consider that when Don was diagnosed with type 1 back in 1972 they told him that exercise was too dangerous. He wasn't even allowed to take part in his school's gym class!

Don shares how he made the turn to ultramarathons and beyond and what led him to make this incredible coast to coast journey. He had to contend with COVID delays along the way and got a terrific surprise when he arrived in Orlando. Plus.. what's next? He's already thinking about another incredible goal.

Learn more about Don here

In our Innovations segment, a seven day pump inset? And

some of our favorites have a little fun with a donut demonstration.

Stacey mentioned a new link for Dexcom and Medicare this week. Find that here. 

This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider.

Check out Stacey's book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom!

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Episode Transcription below

 

 

Stacey Simms  0:00

Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario Health. Manage your blood glucose levels increase your possibilities by Gvoke Hypopen the first premixed auto injector for very low blood sugar and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.

 

Announcer  0:22

This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.

 

Stacey Simms  0:27

This week Don Muchow just finished an incredible run from California's Disneyland all the way across the country to Disney World in Florida. diagnosed with type one as a child, Don wasn’t an athlete in his early 40s. He decided to try working out but then he got some bad news. His eyes were in trouble.

 

Don Muchow  0:47

It was like a punch in the gut to get that laser retinopathy treatment after I had made the decision to be healthy. And I made myself a promise that if I could just have a do over, I will do it over and I just kind of not looked back since then.

 

Stacey Simms  1:06

He’s definitely not done. He’s 59 and he has yet another big goal. I'm so excited to share his story

in our innovations segment, a seven day pump inset and some of our favorites. have a little fun with a doughnut demonstration. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider.

Welcome to another week of the show. You know we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. If you are new welcome. My son was diagnosed with type one back in 2006. Right before he turned to my husband lives with type two diabetes. I don't have any type of diabetes. I spent my career in broadcasting and that is how you get the podcast.

My guest this week. Oh my goodness is Don Muchow. He made national news last week when he finished a coast-to-coast run. He calls himself a type one diabetic extreme ultra runner and Iron Man boy is he ever I wanted to read you a couple of highlights from Don's website. So here's what he did before the accomplishment we're going to talk about today in 2019, who ran across Texas he holds the fastest known time record for doing that. 2018 he completed relay Iowa which is 339 miles in 2018. Sioux City to Dubuque first ever solo finisher of the longest us relay first ever T one D finisher 2017 capital to coast race 223 miles, Austin, Texas to the Gulf of Mexico first ever to Indy solo finisher, and on and on and on, I will link up Dan's website over at Diabetes connections.com and in the show notes, and do yourself a favor because that wasn't even a quarter of the list of stuff that he has accomplished.

And as you heard, he was not always an athlete. His story is even more amazing. When you find out that when Don was diagnosed in 1972, he was told no exercise too dangerous with type one, not even gym class, he was not allowed to take gym class, I will let Don tell you how he overcame that type of thinking to become the incredible athlete that he is now and he has great advice for those of us who want to be more active but are not ever going to run across Texas, let alone across the country. And that is coming up in just a moment.

But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario. Bottom line you need a plan of action with diabetes we have been very lucky that Benny’s endo has helped us with that, and that he understands the plan has to change as Benny gets older you want that kind of support. So take your diabetes management to the next level with Dario health. Their published Studies demonstrate high impact results for active users like improved in range percentage within three months reduction of A1C within three months and a 58% decrease in occurrences of severe hypoglycemic events, try Dario’s diabetes success plan and make a difference in your diabetes management. Go to my Dario.com forward slash Diabetes Connections for more proven results and for information about the plan.

Don, thank you so much for making some time with me. I really appreciate you coming on.

 

Don Muchow  4:26

Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here.

 

Stacey Simms  4:28

How are you feeling this morning?

 

Don Muchow  4:29

Oh, hungry and tired. Oh

 

Stacey Simms  4:33

my goodness. You know, I'm not sure where to begin because there's so much to your story. But I guess let's start with my biggest question. And I always have this for people who are ultra athletes and do these incredible incredible feats. Can you tell us why you would do something like this? When did the idea enter your brain that this was a thing you wanted to do?

 

Don Muchow  4:55

We started thinking about the run about three years ago. And our primary objective was to get the word out to other type ones who are living with the disease. That while exercise can be justifiably scary, because low blood sugars can lead to seizures, and consciousness, even death, the long term complications from avoiding it entirely as I had done for the first 30 or so years, since my diagnosis are really pretty awful, I wouldn't compare it to the remote possibility of a trip to the ER for incredibly low blood sugar. And it's a snake in the room that you have to face. You can't ignore it, and you can't freak out about it.

 

Stacey Simms  5:42

You said we and our there what Tell me about your team. Before we go any further.

 

Don Muchow  5:47

I often tell people somewhat jokingly that I just do the running. And my wife and crew chief Leslie does everything else. That's actually pretty close to true. I started calling her mission control. Once we got started, we got closer to the Space Coast.

 

Stacey Simms  6:01

That's great with a run like this. And well, I want to talk about, you know, other feats that you have done. And you already mentioned, you went so long without regular exercise. There's so much to this story with this run. What did you think because you started this mean, COVID really threw you for a loop, we'll get into that. But when you were starting out what was the plan,

 

Don Muchow  6:22

we had spent probably about a year getting the route laid out so that it was safe enough to do, we were conscious of the fact that some people might want to do that same route again. And the last thing we wanted was for someone to die trying. When we started thinking about sort of putting feet on the ground, we went out and scouted the route in the car and made sure that I was comfortable with a train and with the route that I would be running. And we still run into obstacles, but it sort of helped us get our mind around the idea of what it would be like to run across the country. Wow.

 

Stacey Simms  6:58

What kind of things do you look for when you're scouting it out? Is it roads? Is it towns to be able to drive on?

 

Don Muchow  7:05

You're right on all three of those. We wanted a route that I could run that the van could drive as well. Wouldn't be much use, especially with type one, if I ran 100 miles of trail in Arizona, and there's no way to find. So we wanted a route with wide shoulders, relatively low traffic that the van to drive most of when we were in metropolitan areas that had bike trails. That was the one exception where we just kind of let me run on the trails because they had always pop out to CBS or gas station or something like that.

 

Stacey Simms  7:39

And why Disney to Disney was that geographic? Are you a fan?

 

Don Muchow  7:43

I am a fan. My wife and I are both big fans. Disney has been credited for saying something about how If you can dream it, you can do it. And that seemed like a sort of an anthemic statement, but really the the actual route from Disney to Disney was a bit of a happy accident. We originally planned to run from basically from LA to the Space Coast. And a friend of mine said, Oh, well, so you're running from Disneyland or Disney World. And I you know, I didn't have that idea. But that is brilliant. We decided to switch it up just a little bit to do the Disney Disney piece inside the transcontinental run.

 

Stacey Simms  8:18

Very cool. Oh, that's great. So you started out I remember when you put your feet on the ground and got going. And at that time COVID was not really a thought. When did you realize that you were going to have to make some changes

 

Don Muchow  8:31

that occurred to me in I think it was about end of the second week of March of 2020. When we were making a restock stop, and big spring, Texas, and we stopped at Costco and they were out of water and out of practically everything else we needed. And we began to get Inklings that it was going to be impossible to resupply the van and we were looking at lockdowns in my hometown. And we thought about, okay, well can we make it to Dallas. And if we did, you know, there will be facing an empty refrigerator. So we decided to kind of be planful about how we were going to sort of pause things and pick it up when it got safer to do so. We had to pause on March 22 or 24th. I don't remember exactly what we picked up again on September 24. ran for about a month and had to pause again because the numbers east of Texarkana were looking bad. And then we finally resumed the last third of the run and on March 2 of 2021 and made it to the coast.

 

Stacey Simms  9:40

Wow. And pardon my ignorance here when you're marking an event like this or a feat like this. Is it days, hours just miles done? Are there differences in how you market and how if somebody's officially marking it

 

Don Muchow  9:52

mentally I'd look forward to the next big town. Whatever comes actually the next town of any sort. You Usually what that means is, you know, gas stations, lodging, that sort of thing. And when you're out there in the middle of nowhere, that takes on a special significance. In terms of documenting the run, we originally set out to document it more thoroughly when we thought that there would be records that we might bump up against. When we found out that on this particular route that no one had actually done Disney the Disney before we relaxed a little bit, but still kept marking our progress, we have a live GPS tracker that kept track of where I was, every moment, I have two GPS watches that have my workouts recorded. And we also have the recommendation of an organization called fastest known time, timestamp selfies next to unique landmarks. So in terms of marking our progress, very, very hard to cheat on a route like that if you have to be at a certain place at a certain time, and the only way you can get there is to run. So we documented our progress. using those tools. I

 

Stacey Simms  11:03

guess what I also meant was in terms of the time break that you had to take because of COVID do you count just the time running then for your you know, the way you clocked it,

 

Don Muchow  11:13

we did taught up the time total time we spent running believe between the two Disney's It was 88 days, and it was 90 coast to coast records organizations, especially fastest known time, care about the entire time it took you especially if there's no starting gun, that's typically where people like fastest, sometimes calm pick up. It's elapsed time. So if you're visiting the bathroom, you're still on the clock. If your technique picking the lunch break, you're on the clock, we realize that while this might be the fastest known time from Disney to Disney, since it's the first, it'll be a record that's easy to break for anyone that serious about it. It really will only take them about three months to do it at my pace, and many people are faster than I am. So we take comfort in the fact that we drew some attention to type one and exercise. And that this was a bit of a bit of a media event because it was the first Yeah, definitely helped us get the word out.

 

Stacey Simms  12:10

And I don't mean to take anything away from it. I'm just trying to figure out so do you have to count it on February to April? Or do you just count the time running? I guess would you have to count the COVID break?

 

Right back to Don answering that question. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Gvoke Hypopen  and our endo always told us if you use insulin, you need to have emergency glucagon on hand as well. Full blood sugars are one thing we're usually able to treat those with fast acting glucose tabs or juice very very low blood sugar can be very frightening. Which is why I'm glad there's a different option for emergency glucagon it's Gvoke Hypopen. Gvoke Hypopen is pre mixed and ready to use with no visible needle. You pull off the red cap and push the yellow end onto bare skin and hold it for five seconds. That's it, find out more go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Gvoke logo. Gvoke shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma visit g vo glucagon comm slash risk. Now back to Don. And he's talking about how the timing of this amazing run is recorded.

 

Don Muchow  13:21

Personally, I count the whole time. It is what it is.

 

Stacey Simms  13:24

I have a few more questions about the run itself. But I want to go back and talk to you about you mentioned the 30 years you spent not really exercising, it's hard to believe but when you were diagnosed, you were told it was too dangerous. Is that really a factor said tell us about that.

 

Don Muchow  13:41

I was diagnosed in 1972. And people who are considerably younger than me may not realize that glucose meters weren't invented or weren't publicly available until the early 1980s. My first glucometer was this massive brick shaped thing that I got, I think it was either 1982 1983 prior to that, really the only way of telling what your blood sugar was not what it is. But what it was, was with a urine test and all that really told you as past history. It was justifiable given the circumstances, that if there was no way other than a trip to a hospital to have a glucose test done, that if you couldn't tell how low your blood sugar was, and you were feeling awful and faint, and you know, on the verge of passing out that maybe it wasn't so good to do things that cause a drop in blood sugar problem was that, you know, after 30 years, glucose meters had been around for a while at that point. And I didn't change the advice I was following. So that's on me. But I think a lot of people even with glucose meters are justifiably scared that if they can't stay on top of a severe drop in their blood sugar that maybe this is not for me to do. We face challenges during these long runs. And because I'm type one, like a lot of you out there, you know I gotta face the same challenges and Many of them aren't easy, but I just keep thinking about the turn, I almost took down the road to being visually impaired and having circulatory problems. And I'm just so glad that I went ahead and face those risks. Wow.

 

Stacey Simms  15:15

Do you remember what it was that made you think I've got to move forward with exercise? I've got to change this. Yes, please, please tell me what you answer that the first thing you did wasn't a marathon.

 

Don Muchow  15:27

Not a marathon. It was in 2004. I had gone to see my retina specialist who had been monitoring proliferative retinopathy and my left eye. And it had come to the point where he recommended a laser retinopathy treatment, I think those are deprecated. These days, I think they use an anti inflammatory injection now. But back then the recommended treatment was laser treatment of the blood vessels in the eye that were leaking. And it left me with a blind spot. And I asked my retina specialist at the time, well, what does the future look like for me? And he basically said, Well, I'll have more blind spots if you don't do anything. And I had already made a decision that year, that after finding out was short of breath going up the stairs, that I wanted to be healthy, signed up for 5k turkey trot, and it was like a punch in the gut. To get that laser retinopathy treatment. After I had made the decision to be healthy. I made myself a promise that if I could just have a do over, I will do it over. And I'm just kind of not looked back since then. I actually have a little bit of a concern that for many years that once I got to the point where I finished a run across the US that I would turn around and go Okay, now watch, and and not run anymore. But I've taken up swimming. So hopefully that'll help.

 

Stacey Simms  16:51

And I'm trying to do the quick math, you're done. But how old? Were you in 2004?

 

Don Muchow  16:55

I think I was in my early 40s. I don't know the exact age, I think it was 42. But I'm not sure about that.

 

Stacey Simms  17:02

I only asked because you didn't change your mind when you were 22. Right, you didn't start exercising at a super young age. I think 42 is still very young. But it's not, you know, you're not a kid, if you're making decisions a little bit later in life. And the results are phenomenal. I mean, I just can't believe that,

 

Don Muchow  17:18

I actually think it was something of an advantage to start once I had a gray beard because I have lower expectations of myself. And I think as you push the distance, it's good to remember that not everything in life is achieved by going all out. I progressed slowly to longer and longer distances, probably around 2011, I had gotten used to running marathons and I realized that wasn't getting any faster. There was an ultra, I think it was a 50k in Fort Worth that came up on the radar. And I thought to myself, well, that's only five miles longer than a marathon. Let's try it. I did find it. There were only 400 people in that race that signed up. I think it was like 25,000 or something and signed up for the marathon, but only 400 for the ultra. And it was kind of a nice feeling to realize that, you know, the bulk of the work was behind me. And really now it was just seeing how far I could go. And I began to realize that, you know, if I sort of run my own pace, which is relatively slow, that pushing the distance was a more interesting challenge to me than trying to run faster and risk injury.

 

Stacey Simms  18:27

By the way, as a mom, I have to say, is that a Dexcom? Beep You good? We need to take care of any.

 

Don Muchow  18:33

We're good. I have lunch just a little while ago. So it's probably complaining about that.

 

Stacey Simms  18:39

I'm sorry to be if that's a rude thing to say.

 

Unknown Speaker  18:41

No, no, no, no, it's we're all tribe.

 

Stacey Simms  18:45

Thank you. So let's talk. I have some questions from my listeners. But let me ask you a couple more Disney questions. There's this great video of you finishing at Disney World. What was that like? And did you know that they knew you were coming and we're going to be celebrating like that?

 

Don Muchow  19:00

I knew absolutely nothing about it. We actually were talking just before at our last aid stop before we ran up to the Magic Kingdom about what would happen when we got there. We had thought okay, well, you know, we don't want to serve the Disney guys, we, you know, we realized that's private property, not officially part of the run because we had made a rule for ourselves that we would not run on private property. And when we got to the contemporary zero security guard said, Oh, are you the runner? And my first thought was, oh, guy, we're gonna get escorted off the property and they knew we were coming. And I said, Yeah, I'm the runner. And he said, Okay, well, hang tight. We got some friends waiting for you at the gate, ran over to the gate. And there were probably two or 300 Disney cast members waiting, all cheering. There were people lining the run up to the gate. And when we got there, most of aliquot the president of Walt Disney World presented me with a custom Mickey Mouse cat that said Disneyland The Disney World and escorted me into the park and said, have fun, do what you want to do, we'll pay for it. Wow. And I had an ice cream cone. And I wrote, it's a small world. And I had 50 more miles to go. So I went back and finish running. But it was the most magical time in the world. I just can't thank those guys enough. That was this awesome surprise party.

 

Stacey Simms  20:20

Do you know who told them? I mean, we

 

Don Muchow  20:22

all knew your guy, some sneaky person, I don't know. Actually, I actually have many, many months ago at contacted Disney media relations to see if anyone had run from Disneyland Disney World. And then they kind of went radio silent for a while. I suspect that what happened was that they waited for a while to see if it looked like it was going to finish. And then when it looked like it was actually going to happen. They're like, Okay, this is something noteworthy, and let's be there, and let's make his dreams come true. It was amazing. Finish the second finish line on the coast and Indialantic was almost as awesome because I really mostly expected my bio dad and his wife to be there, my brother and his wife. And you know, we'd all take some selfies and celebrate the fact that we got there. And there was a bit of a crowd and make the deputy mayor of Indialantic was there and had swag and other things. If somebody brought me a Red Bull. And I needed that. So it was it was pretty awesome. To have the two finish lines was kind of a bonus.

 

Stacey Simms  21:26

And just to be clear, when you said after Disney World you had 15 miles to go. Is that the same day that you did this? Yes,

 

Don Muchow  21:33

yes. The same day. Our plan was to stop in Kissimmee. Right at the turn to 192, which has toward the coast. I think we finished that day at 31 miles. You know, originally, when we didn't think there was going to be much of a fuss at Disney, we were hoping to do more like 3436, something like that. But we actually got in about 50k that day, and I was pretty happy about that.

 

Stacey Simms  21:57

The next question from my facebook group is about how did you manage blood sugar along the way, I know there must have been lots of ups and downs and things like that. But can you give any advice especially for the athletes who are listening in just on you know how you manage such a, an endurance feat?

 

Don Muchow  22:15

A couple of things. One is that it's important to be aware that while cardio can make you insulin sensitive, pushing it to the point where stress becomes a factor, the stress hormones can actually reverse that effect a little bit and make you a little more insulin resistant. I like to tell people that that's your body pumping you full of hormones and energy so you can run away from the cheetah. So that's an effect to be aware of my wife, Leslie, who managed all the food, made sure I got enough calories every day did a good job of watching my sugars on Dexcom follow. So generally speaking, when I got to the van, she knew what kind of fuel I needed and had it ready. In terms of using the settings on my T slim Tandem pump, I had to run it in sleep mode most of the time, because I was fairly insulin sensitive during the day and unless blisters or heat were bothering me, the biggest challenge was keeping my sugar up. I found that even in exercise mode, it was those teeny little too much. So I would say if you're going to run 100 milers, 200 miles, that sort of thing. Think about sleep mode, and not just exercise mode. That was something we had to do.

 

Stacey Simms  23:32

The same person wants to know how many pairs of shoes you went through.

 

Don Muchow  23:37

If you count just the ones that I wore out, it would be seven, I had a custom pair of shoes equipped with velcro all the way around the top and sand Gators. Same with the ones I use in the Mojave that I put put on for the beach. So that would be the eighth pair. So eight pairs of shoes, including the ones for the beach.

 

Stacey Simms  23:59

Oh my gosh. And if you could briefly and I will I will get you out of 1030 I promise. Just a couple more quick No worries, we

 

Don Muchow  24:06

can run a minute or two. Okay. Okay, NOT HAVE NOT HAVE NOT a half hour

 

Stacey Simms  24:09

Oh, no, no, no, no. Um, another question here is what did your training schedule look like? How do you train for something like this,

 

Don Muchow  24:17

um, I have a hilly 50k route that I typically do training runs on. I borrowed it from some cycling friends of mine who wanted a route with a lot of hills in it. And I typically try to go out and run that in every kind of weather that I could. During training, I would take I would take the rest day in between training days, but every once in a while I would run three or four days in a row, you know, do the same 50k route. Generally speaking, I didn't train above a 50k distance because I didn't expect to do more than 35 miles a day on the transcon I'm for Texas. We train a little bit longer per day. And for Iowa, we were training like 15 miles a day. But there's just no way for me that I could keep that kind of keep up a distance beyond 35 miles a day for 100 days.

 

Stacey Simms  25:15

When you're doing something like this, do you try to eat the same stuff all the time? Do you? Are you able to bury things? How does that work for you,

 

Don Muchow  25:23

um, I tend to gravitate towards some things that I liked. We also paid a lot of attention to trying to get things into me that had protein so that my muscles could rebuild a little bit better overnight. So we ate a lot of hummus, a lot of yogurt, chicken salad, that sort of thing. I got to a point where I didn't want hummus. Yeah, we ran out. We ran out, we ran out a chicken salad before I hated it.

 

Unknown Speaker  25:54

Yogurt

 

Don Muchow  25:57

with I'll see hydrated attempted to taste kind of pasty to me. But we would start putting those little mandarin orange cups that you can get at the grocery store, we would put those into yogurt to make it a little a little wetter. And it was a great fuel source. I mean, it's protein, fat, a little bit of sugar. So we I had a lot of that. If I needed carbs, we you know we'd throw in a Oreo or another butter or something like that. But we really paid attention to trying to get the calories and to me. I went through about probably 4000 5000 calories a day. Wow, if any less than that I was losing weight.

 

Stacey Simms  26:39

Did you did you have to treat lows along the way a lot of them or were you able to kind of manage by what you're eating. And with the sleep mode, as you said,

 

Don Muchow  26:49

I'm most mostly we managed by eating in sleep mode. We didn't run into a lot of lows on this run. And by that I don't mean to suggest that we had a lot of highs. On the days that were upwards of 35 miles. I tended to have more persistent highs until I went to sleep. And then of course my sugar's dropped very rapidly at that point, we had had previously had a run in with a severe low back in 2019. When I ran across Texas, there was a section between Kermit and Odessa that was very stressful to me. And my sugars had run high the whole day as a 41 mile stretch. And I basically kind of burned up my glycogen was under fueling because my sugar was running high from stress. And then that night when I went to sleep, my sugar dropped to 20. And for anyone here who's not from the US, that's probably one millimolar something very close to that, and, and was wavering in and out of consciousness. And my wife had a glucagon rescue kit that she used on me and I God knows how many carbs for my sugar, what came up. We learned to be careful about that and pay a lot of attention to whether the highs were due to over fueling or stress. And if it was stress, we treated that very differently than we did. You know, overeating. Stress, we typically found that dosing Just a little. And actually taking on food even though my sugar was high, was the best way to get my body to sort of calm down. Otherwise, I would just run high until I fell asleep and then I dropped like a rock.

 

Stacey Simms  28:38

I'm laughing with this question, because we debated in the group. But this question came up. Ask him what he's going to do next. I do have another?

 

Don Muchow  28:50

That's a good question. Um, I have been, I've had my eye on solo swim around keywest. That's not as amazing as it sounds from a type one perspective. My good friend Karen Lewin was actually the second type one to solo swim around keywest. I don't remember the name of the first one. So but I would be joining a club of people I'd be very happy to be a member of that's a 12 and a half mile swim. During the COVID pause, I switched to swim training because I needed to do something to break up the run training a little bit it was getting monotonous without knowing when I started again. Yeah. So I've got that swimming on my mind to do after this. But at the same time, I think I need to take some time off, recover. Just relax and sort of let my body sort of recalibrate to what normal life is like.

 

Stacey Simms  29:46

And I have to ask you mentioned they said Disney World. Come on in and do whatever you want. It's on us. He had an ice cream cone and you did small world, small world on why

 

Don Muchow  29:59

I have some real Very pleasant memories, from my childhood of riding that ride. It's always been there. And it's quiet. And one of the things that I found on the out on the run was that I would get something a friend of mine called it sympathetic nervous system overload, basically being two or three feet from traffic. for hours on end, I got to the point where I was kind of jumping at loud noises. So we really loved It's a small world. And that was one of the reasons we chose that. And it was our favorite ride anyway, so

 

Stacey Simms  30:38

I love it. Hey, before I let you go, any advice for people listening who are you know, they're running five K's or they're maybe just starting exercise with type one. And, you know, not planning to do what you've done. But a little nervous, but a little excited about exercise. You know, what do you tell people like that.

 

Don Muchow  30:59

Um, if you have a bad day, it's just a bad day. Don't kick yourself for mistakes. Don't kick yourself for things that don't go the way you expect, um, look at it as a chance to learn something. Even bad blood sugar Day is a chance to alter your plans, change something in the way that you manage your sugars during exercise. But above all, don't give up. I said

 

Stacey Simms  31:23

that was my last question. But something else just occurred to me, Don, have you ever gone back to the doctor, or anybody from kind of your previous life?

 

Don Muchow  31:32

I have. And things have been stable so far, we're going to kind of thoroughly check things out to make sure nothing's changed after the run. But we'll see how it goes.

 

Stacey Simms  31:42

Yeah, but they've got to be so excited to see what you've done.

 

Don Muchow  31:46

My endocrinologist is pretty excited. I'm hoping to see him here in about a month or so. And we'll check in with each other and see what we can tell from the numbers. Well, Don, thank

 

Stacey Simms  31:59

you so much for spending so much time with me. I really appreciate you coming on. Congratulations. And I got to tell you, I think what you should do next is is rest stop and put your feet up for a little while. But I know that's not going to happen. But thanks for being here.

 

Don Muchow  32:11

That sounds like a great idea. I'm happy to be here. And thank you so much for your time.

 

Unknown Speaker  32:20

You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.

 

Stacey Simms  32:26

More information about Don in the show notes or Diabetes connections.com linked up to all of his amazing accomplishments. I'm still a little speechless. What a thing to do just to think of doing these incredible goals and getting them done. I know that people like Don will say, well, it's just a matter of training, and then you put one foot in front of the other. But my goodness, it's pretty amazing stuff. Innovations coming up in just a moment. We're gonna talk about what looks like a pretty big move from Medtronic in terms of longer where pump in sets.

But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And I get a lot of questions about Dexcom coverage for people on Medicare. You know, why not? It's not as though you stopped needing a CGM, the minute you turn 65. The good news is that the Dexcom G6 continuous glucose monitoring system is covered for Medicare for patients who meet the coverage criteria. If you have either type one or type two diabetes, and intensively managed insulin, you may be covered. To find out more about what that means. And if you qualify, check out dexcom.com backslash g six dash Medicare, you're going to want to talk to your doctor and you may even be able to get your Dexcom supplies at the pharmacy saving time and money. Learn more again that link I'll put this in the show notes too. It's dexcom.com backslash g six dash Medicare.

 

Innovations this week, one medical story and one donut story. Let's do the medical one first, interesting news from Medtronic, they have launched a new line of what's been called insulin infusion hardware. They've launched this in Europe, that basically doubles the time you can wear it so you know, if you were an insulin pump, you know, as you listen, you have the inset on your body. It's the way a tube pump will connect to the Omni pod has this too. It's just a little different cuz it's kind of hidden in the mechanism. But they all have this way that you insert a needle the needle comes out and the catalyst is under the skin with the adhesive and the connector part above the skin. I used to describe it looking like a tiny nicotine patch with a bump on it. They last about three days. You're supposed to change them every two to three days to avoid infection and scarring and clogging and that stuff, but Medtronic says that they have one that will last seven days.

And we talked about this when I spoke to Medtronic Sean Salmon back in oh I want to say October of last year was the fall of last year. He mentioned this. He said that the tubing set is what he called it would go from two to three days to seven days. And he said the way they were doing that I'll link up the episodes you can listen again, is that it has to do with the way that they filter insulin. Through the inset. He says that the preservatives in insulin are what causes the site reactions and the clogging and that kind of thing. And they found a way, you know, obviously, it's proprietary didn't go into too much detail. But they found a way to work around that. This is really interesting. I'm surprised this didn't make a bigger splash. This is a huge deal. If it works as well as we would hope to be able to where your pump on your body for longer without scarring or issues or that kind of thing. So European friends, if you're using it, you hear about it, talk to your endo about it, let us know how it goes. And we will wait for more information on the Medtronic seven day inset.

And the other story I wanted to bring you in innovations is the I don't know if it's a medical innovation, but it sure could be helpful that fabulous people at TCOYD take control of your diabetes released a video that many of you sent to me and it was just fantastic. I wanted to share it, it is how to eat three donuts and stay in range. And this is Dr. Jeremy Pettis, Dr. Steve Edelman, and they basically have a demonstration. But it's really a kind of comparison of how they would each do it. And they show you they eat three donuts they take you through, they're using a Dexcom to kind of show the results. It is a Afrezza the inhaled insulin, kind of versus timing of traditional insulin, I won't spoil the whole thing. It's fun to watch, I think they do an incredible job as always, of breaking down kind of complex thoughts and making them user friendly, I'll call it and they have such a great sense of humor, I really, really enjoy their stuff. So if you haven't ever watched any TCOYD videos, they have a ton of them. And their conferences are always a really good time too. So I will link that up in the show notes. But I would imagine you could Google how to eat three donuts and stay in range. Probably it'll pop up pretty easily.

Before I let you go, we did have our quarterly endocrinology visit. I always thought about putting it off because there's really nothing going on. Right now we're kind of in a groove or just re entering some parts of life. Knock on wood is you're listening this my whole family is vaccinated. Benny is two weeks past his I think I'll be past two weeks past my last one when this episode goes live. Yeah, it will be. And Benny has really re entered more of the real world very recently, as I've mentioned before he got a job. He's back with the wrestling team. He's not yet going to school. He's staying virtual, but he's back on the high school team. And you know, we've had some blood sugar issues as you would expect whenever you're going back to a sport after a long time not but he's managing them really well. So that I only share the endo appointment because he of course, we've known this guy for 14 plus years. He's taking his family to Disney World for the first time. And that's later this year. And that's what we spent mostly we've been talking about.

 

You know, my tips and tricks for Disney World, we'd have that episode last week, but his kids don't have type one. So it wasn't that relevant anything to have to listen to the podcast episode. And I realized I haven't been to Disney, you know, since COVID. Certainly. And I know that there have been some changes. So I'm fascinated to see that apparently, Fastpass plus has been eliminated during COVID, which was like my lifeblood when I go there, you know, I get this well in advance, listen to how excited I'm sounding just talking about it. But I get him in advance and we refresh 600 times a day and get all the rights we want. I mean, it's really, there's a science to it a little bit of madness to it, too. But it sounds like I'm gonna have to relearn everything. Because it sounds like they're gonna make a lot of changes when they you know, they really start opening up more, although disney world has been open really for months and months and months. But you know, when they start letting the bigger crowds back in, so that was fun. I love our endo. I feel really fortunate that we have the relationship with Him that we do. And the visits are now me kind of sitting in the corner. You know, me I stay, I can't stay quiet. But I do very little. It's really just a conversation between him and Benny and I feel really fortunate about that.

Alright, classic episode coming up later this week. As always, thank you to my editor, John Bukenas, from audio editing solutions. Thank you very much for listening. Hey, do me a favor, share the show. If you enjoy it. You think this is good information. If it's valuable or helpful to you in any way. Please tell somebody else in the diabetes community about it. Word of mouth is the best way to spread the word about podcasts and I really appreciate that. All right, I'll see you back here in a couple of days. Until then, be kind to yourself.

 

Benny  39:35

Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged.