Its late October in 2013. Its 40 degrees and we are playing at the University of Missouri. We find ourselves in Double Overtime and need a 40-yard field goal to take our first lead of the game. I go in to attempt the field goal, to potentially win the game, but what if my blood sugar is low? What if my blood sugar is spiking like crazy and it causes me to miss the kick? Even if I grab a Gatorade on the sideline, it’s too late. I can’t just ask to call a timeout and the play clock is running down.
I ended up making the kick and we won the game. But this thought terrified me through my freshman year of college while playing for the University of South Carolina. I was a true freshman and a diabetic trying to figure out how to do both at a high level. The thought always crossed my mind, “What if I go low and have to go out and kick a field goal and miss because of it”. Under the right circumstances, that could end my career. It’s not like I could just walk up to the head coach and ask for a 15 minutes break until my blood sugar rises back to normal. I knew that if I ever showed my diabetes as a weakness, they would never trust me again.
I realized that season that I had to get really serious about my diabetes if I wanted to continue to play and continue my career as a kicker. I was diagnosed with diabetes when I was 7 and had a lot of knowledge around what to do and how to manage it, but like most of us, life always gets in the way. Going through high school and some of college, the ability to keep diabetes at the front of your mind becomes harder and harder. Other things become more important and its easy for diabetes management to get pushed to the side. Friends, family, sports, college, grades, and having fun all start to become more important and it’s easy to just say, “I’ll just test my blood sugar later, I feel fine”. I think it’s very normal for us to do this because there are no off days with diabetes. You don’t just get to wake up one day and take a day off, it is an everyday struggle, so I think it can be easy to try and take breaks away from it in any way we can.
I do remember making the decision to take really good care of my diabetes when it came to football. I realized that if I ever wanted to take my career further, make it to the NFL and have a successful college career, I was going to have to put diabetes at the forefront of my life. I started testing my blood sugar as much as I could before and during practices and games. I tried to be perfect and make sure that I knew what was going on with my body so that I could be the best I could be. I took my routine very seriously, I ate the same things on gamedays at the same time. I would test my blood sugar about 10 times in the 2-hour window before the game. I found that the trick for me was keeping a good routine. As long as I could control my routine and eat the same foods, I could be in good control. I also found that I needed to treat my diabetes proactively instead of reactively. I stopped waiting to treat a low when it happened and started preventing myself from having lows during the game.
I have always told younger kids that diabetes won’t stop you from doing whatever it is you want to do in life, but there’s a caveat. YOU HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF IT! If you don’t control your diabetes, it can absolutely control you and control your life. I know that I wouldn’t be where I am today unless I made that decision back in college to take diabetes seriously.
