You don’t understand, I could never…

Last Updated on April 4, 2023 by PowersToTravel

From Antarctica to Iceland, Australia to Africa, I’ve visited six of the seven continents of the world.  (Update 11/17/2017:  I have been to all seven!)  I am not a wanderer, but a well-prepared explorer.  My eyes are open to the unique wonders of the world around me and as well as to the challenges I face as a diabetic in the jungle, in a zodiac or even in a safari tent.

I am an insulin-dependent, Type 1 diabetic, that is, a juvenile diabetic.  I am sixty years old and have been a diabetic for, oh my goodness, fifty-three years now.

As a child I was unable to go on a Girl Scouts overnight without ending up in the hospital with hypoglycemia.  Even as a teenager,  I wondered if I would ever be able to live my own life.  Would I be forever tied to my parents?

My condition stabilized over time with self-awareness, new doctors, new dosages and in more recent years, with advances in technology.

However I somehow never shrugged that old, limiting mindset.   “You don’t understand, I could never…” was my first reaction to every new experience.     Much as I enjoyed travel, I limited it to much the same places, year after year.  I felt comfortable with the familiar.

However, one day eleven years ago, I sat in a restaurant opposite an unknown man who soon would become my husband.

“I love to travel,” I announced, ready to share my love of Scotland.

“Oh, me, too.”  Both he and I seemed  anxious to establish common ground, “I’ve always wanted to go to Africa,” he said.

My heart dropped.  I wonder if he heard the thump.  “Perhaps we are not as compatible as I had hoped,”  I thought.    I love to travel to Scotland, Norway, Iceland – cool, mountainous places with fresh breezes.  I would always encounter a bit of rain from time to time to be sure, and a few chilly breezes, but clean freshness nonetheless.  Africa to me was a steaming, impenetrable hot jungle filled with groping insects with long hairy legs and voracious snapping jaws.  I envisioned gorillas around every tree trunk, and germs everywhere.

As a diabetic, fighting infection and digestive difficulties could easily land me in a hospital, and oh my!  an African hospital?  In that instant I feared this man stealing my health away from me as he fulfilled his dreams.

“You don’t understand,” I said, “I could never…”

It is amazing how that simple phrase, which characterized so much of my life, has changed over the past several years to “Where should we go next?”

We have been on safari to Africa, wandered among the blue boobies in the Galapagos, slogged through jungle mud in Laos, and even chased an ocelot in Costa Rica.  Our travel has taken careful planning, and constant attention to what is most important.   My husband challenges me at every turn to look at each constraint as an opportunity.

My goal is to inspire you to look beyond your own personal challenges, to not hide behind those words “I could never”  and to see the world.

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