Thank You for visiting my Tour De Cure Web Page!

My name is Cate Logan. In January of 2016, I was 10 years old. For the previous month I had been feeling bad. I had headaches, blurry vision, was constantly thirsty and I had to pee all the time. (Parents - Please write those symptoms down - they are not a bladder infection).  My poor brother could not do anything right! I was swimming on my swim team, and racing on my ski team and going to school, but was just not feeling well. It was the MLK holiday weekend. It was a powder day at Winter Park, and I was having a blast free skiing with my race team. My mother was worried that I had been up to pee three times the night before, so she decided to call the doctor to see if I could get an appointment for the next day. The doctor's office was closed, so the call went to the Children's Hospital after hours nurse. The nurse listened to my symptoms, and told my parents to take me to the emergency clinic at the base of Winter Park! That turned into one of the longest nights of my life. I was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes (T1D) and my family rushed me to Children's Hospital in Aurora to begin my treatment.

The next week was a whirlwind of all day doctor visits, training, and education of what living with T1D for the rest of my life meant. This was not in my plan for the week. I am an incredibly healthy, athletic, smart child. I am not over weight, I eat well, and generally take good care of myself. No one in my family had ever been diagnosed with T1D before. Suddenly, I found I needed to count the carbs in everything I ate, take 4-5 shots of insulin a day, and prick my finger to take a blood glucose reading 5-10 times a day every day. 
 
Fortunately for me, organizations like the ADA have raised money through the years that has funded research for better treatments, and hopefully some day a cure for my condition.  I currently wear an insulin pump, a device I change out every two to three days that delivers small doses of insulin all day every day, kind of like a non T1D person's pancreas does.  When I eat, I still have to calculate the carbs, but can use the pump to deliver an insulin bolus to cover the meal.  I also wear a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) that takes measurements of the Interstitial fluids in my sub cutaneous fat that correlate with my blood glucose levels (I even know what all this means - ask me;-)  While imperfect, the CGM has become accurate enough that I have been able to reduce the finger pricks to 3-5 times a week!  In July I was finally able to migrate to the Insulet Closed Loop system that uses Artificial intelligence algorithms to use data from my CGM to control my pump.  While this has reduced the need for me to get up in the middle of the night several times a week to drink apple juice, or bolus with extra insulin to correct low or high blood sugar values, it is no perfect.  Modern insulins have become much better and I am able to keep my blood Glucose levels in an acceptable range 50 to 60% of time most days!  For comparison, my range is 70 - 140 milligrams per deciliter (there is a unit most people don't use very often ;-) while non T1D people maintain a range between 70 and 100 regardless of what they eat or do.  I will take daily excursions to 40 and 300, even with constant vigilance.  Fortunately, my endocrinologist (do you have one of those?) tells me that if I can maintain my BG levels as well as I have so far, I should not have any long term degradation of my life.  Thank goodness that my parents have good health insurance as it is quite expensive to manage T1D!

I am still a competitive swimmer (I went to High School state on two relays this year ).  I crashed my bike in the second race of the mountain bike season last fall and broke my collar bone.  The crash was partly attributable to low blood sugar:-(  As I was racing varsity,a nd was picked as team captain, this was unfortunate, but I still had fun cheering on my team mates for the remainder of the season while my shoulder healed.  The 22 season is starting as I write this, and I am looking forward to my last season of High School racing!  I was elected CO-President of the Winter Park Junior Ski Patrol for next year and really enjoy helping people on the mountain (and occaisionally pulling rank and cutting the lines in my Ski Partol vest;-)  I love school and am maintaining a straight A GPA While achieving varsity letters in two sports (Mountain bike racing and swimming).  I have also started a Road Cycling team which now has two seasons behind it.  Summer swim team was a blast a always and I succeeded in medaling at state in 5 events. I am starting to shop for colleges as I will be applying this fall!  Still, Dad has to get up at midnight and at two in the morning to give me insulin or apple juice several times a week as I sleep through my alarms.  He says I need to figure that out before college as he's already gone twice and does not plan to be my room mate when I leave!  Life is a continuous experiment with how much to eat and how much insulin I need to offset the carbs depending on what level of exercise I plan.  Every day is a new day.  (At least I get to walk around with Smarties and a cell phone in my pocket at school ;-)
 
Did you know a child is diagnosed with T1D every 30 minutes in the US? Or that the rate of T1D diagnoses is increasing!

I can only hope that along with continuously improving treatments (better CGM's and better pumps, and closed loop systems), research will eventually lead to a cure for my disease.

Please join me and my family in this year's Tour De Cure (our 7th) to support the American Diabetes Association in its efforts to fund research towards a cure of Diabetes, and in its efforts to support people like me who are living with Diabetes. If you can't ride with us, please consider making a meaningful donation to the ADA to support this effort.

We plan to get togheter for a ride on September 5th for a century ride, and I have signed up to ride at least 1,030 miles this year!  Dad thinks I should shoot for the 3,000 mile mark!  Maybe I will;-)  My biggest ride so far this summer was only 25 miles.  Connor and I rode wiht some friends and coaches to the top of Mount Antero;-)

Thank You for taking the time to visit my page, and I look forward to riding with you in September, or thanking you for a donation to my ride.

Sincerely.

Cate Logan