Diabetics Doing Handball with Mikkel Moldrup

[00:00:07] Rob Howe: Welcome to the Diabetics Doing Things podcast. We've been telling the amazing stories of type 1 diabetics all across the world since 2015, and we have over a thousand years of living with T1D on the podcast. The interviews range from incredible feats to everyday victories, and we celebrate them all just the same. Thanks for listening, and if you want to get involved even further, just send me an email at rob at diabeticsdoingthings.com. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Diabetics Doing Things. We are telling the amazing stories of type 1 diabetics from all across the world. And my very special guest from the other side of the globe, staying up especially late tonight to talk to me, is Mikkel Møldrup, calling from Dusseldorf, Germany. Mikkel, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. And I apologize if I butchered your last name there. I did my best.

[00:01:16] Mikkel Møldrup: I will pronounce it one more time for all. It's Møldrup. Okay. And we're clear.

[00:01:23] Rob Howe: Great. I did not do you justice, so I apologize. Well, Mikkel, thanks for taking the time. We got introduced on Instagram, and right off the bat, I mean, you're a pretty incredible guy, and I'd love to learn more about you, and we're going to talk a lot about you and your handball career. But why don't you give us a little bit of introduction as to who you are and where you're from and how you came to be part of this type 1 diabetes family?

[00:01:52] Mikkel Møldrup: So, first of all, my name is Mikkel, typical Danish name like Michael in America. And I'm now 25 years old and currently based in Düsseldorf in Germany, where I play a second Bundesliga handball. I now live for seven years in Germany and Luxembourg, now three years in Düsseldorf before two years in Luxembourg and before that two years in Flensburg also in Germany and before that I still lived in Denmark and now it's seven years ago where I got my or where I heard I think about this time also in May it was 2012 2012, where I got my, what do you call it in English?

[00:02:51] Rob Howe: Yeah, your diagnosis.

[00:02:53] Mikkel Møldrup: My diagnosis that I'm diabetic. And I think the story is like, I read so many stories about people who got diabetic, and I think it's almost all the time the same. I was a young guy. I was at that time 16. And for two weeks, I felt sick and lost a lot of weight, had to drink a lot of water, had to go on the toilet 10 times in the night. and one day I said to myself, or I said to my parents at that time, I think I have to go to the doctor and maybe I will get some antibiotic home and everything will be all right again. And I went there and told the doctor my symptoms. And the first thing she said, I'm 99% sure you got diabetic. And my whole world turned around. Before I didn't know anything about it, I only had at that time I had one friend where I knew he also was diabetic, but I never asked. I never asked what because for me he was a normal guy like everybody else. So I had absolutely nothing. I didn't know anything about being a diabetic. Yeah, and that's where it started.

[00:04:17] Rob Howe: So for you, like most of us, when we get diagnosed and we're told we have diabetes, we don't know that much about it. In Germany, I know I've talked to some other people who were diagnosed in Germany or overseas. For you, what was your education like? Did you spend some time in the hospital? Did you go to a special hospital for diabetes education? How did they prepare you for life with diabetes?

[00:04:47] Mikkel Møldrup: At that time I was still in my own country. I was in Denmark and lived in Denmark. And I think it took approximately one hour than I was already in the hospital to get schooled in being a diabetic. learn everything and because we went for so long time on too high blood sugar level and they had to get it down again so I stayed for three days in the hospital and I got from the first second I got schooled in how to give myself insulin how to live with it and yeah so from the first day on I was introduced and had too many i learned too many things in too little time so it was also difficult because you are told so many things and now i don't want to talk the the doctors or the the nurses and say they don't do a great job because they do because but 16 years it was too much information in too little time and I had the feeling that my whole world was crashing down in one hour like they also said now you can't do this now you can't do that and it was difficult but the most important thing was that I had this friend who I write I wrote him directly after and he came to me at the hospital and he told how it really was to be a diabetic. You know, the nurses, the doctors tell how you should be as a diabetic, but he could tell me how is it to live as a diabetic. And I think that was the greatest thing and the greatest start as a diabetic because you You heard how it is and you didn't have to hear too much from doctors who say how it will be. That was important.

[00:07:05] Rob Howe: Yeah. And I think that right there is something that a lot of us deal with, right? Is that your doctor tells you one thing and maybe that's correct from their perspective or maybe from a medical perspective they say, hey, well, you shouldn't do this or you need to think about something this way. But when you talk to someone who is living with type 1 and is a friend or is a friend of a friend, they can kind of tell you the real story of what it's like. Do you remember something specifically that was different that your friend told you that they kind of gave you hope and made you at least a little bit more relieved that you were going to be okay?

[00:07:50] Mikkel Møldrup: Yeah. I remember because I was like 16, I would say so, my youth was just starting. In that time I had to see many things before I got grown up. and he like told me it's not some of the first things he also told me is like of course you will eat an ice cream and of course you will could eat all you want to eat you just have to take care of what you eat and you have to live in another way and I had that feeling that the doctors told me like you will never to take it to the extreme you will never drink a beer or you will never could drink a normal Coca-Cola again and he said like you will have to learn to live with it and that was the most important thing for me that he showed me like this

[00:08:59] Rob Howe: yeah because it's so extreme right Right. And there's a lot of don't do this and you'll never do this. And I think a lot of people take that personally and maybe take it as a challenge. But, you know, in some ways, it's just that the doctors are doing their job and they're giving you, you know, rigid guidelines to try to make sure that you get off on the right foot. But when you're 16 years old and you say, you know, you're never going to drink a beer, then, you know, as you start to get older and you realize that, oh, well, if I have a beer, nothing really happens, you know, or, you know, maybe I need to give myself a little bit of insulin or I want to do this. And I think as your priorities change, so do the decisions that you make. So for you as well, I imagine, you know, you being a professional handballer now, I imagine handball and other sports were a big part of your life. Were you ever worried about continuing to play with diabetes?

[00:09:58] Mikkel Møldrup: Of course. That was also one of the first things where I thought because I was like 16 and I played still, I was still a youth player. and I thought now I can't play anymore. Now it's the end. And I think I quickly made a picture of a diabetic. It's like that's an old person who didn't eat well, who didn't live well. And I had a picture in my head where I thought, okay, now it's the end of this is my last day on earth. on that day. But quickly I learned how to know my body and also to use the diabetic in a positive way. Like for me, I always say people, diabetic is not a sickness. For me, it's a healthy sickness because you learn to live healthy. It was one of the first things you learn to something I never before looked at, but how you eat, how much you eat. The first time I turned the package of how many carbohydrates there was in one Coca-Cola. Before that, I I never would have looked at this. So for me, I always say it's good to be diabetic because I also tell a lot of people, maybe it would be better for you if you also were diabetic because you learn so much about yourself with diabetes.

[00:11:51] Rob Howe: Yeah, I think counting carbs and understanding what foods do to your body and understanding how exercise affects you, All those things are positives, you know, so you can make the best of a bad situation. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I want to focus a little bit on the conversation of handball, if that's OK with you. Yeah, of course. So in the U.S., and we talked about this a little bit before we went on the air, handball is not as popular as it is overseas. And I remember when I was trying to play basketball overseas and was in that kind of world, the handball world is really the second biggest sport in Europe behind football or soccer. And then basketball is really like number three. So talk a little bit about handball. I know you mentioned now you're playing in the Bundesliga in Germany, which any soccer, football fans and basketball fans will know as well. So tell us about handball What's the best way to explain handball to an American who's never heard it before?

[00:13:03] Mikkel Møldrup: Yeah, handball is like a mixture of a lot of different sports You play seven against seven And you play with the ball in the hand And you have to get the ball in the goal so easy as it is and the sport is a lot more what can I say it's a contact sport and I always compare it to all the other biggest sports like football like basketball you can also compare it to volleyball, it's the only sport where you have physical contact and you play like an attack and a defense but you run all the time so you will always be when you run in the attack you have to run back in the defense so the field is like in basketball so you are not split in an attack and defense and it's a lot of things happens in handball I don't know how to say it in English but you it's not like a football game where sometimes you will look and it's up 1-1 or 1-0 it's like there is goal all the time so for the fans it gives so much more it gets more exercised when you look at the game because there is always defense action then it's attack action and all the time things are happening in handball.

[00:14:51] Rob Howe: Yeah. Yeah, and I think I watched it for the first time really in the 2012 Olympic Games and spent a great deal of time. And that's because when I lived in – for a period of my life, I was an intern at the United States Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs, Colorado. and I was living on campus at the United States Olympic Training Center. And for a time, the U.S. national handball team had a mini camp for some of their athletes who were recovering from injuries, so they were working their way back in. And at that time, I was in really good shape. I was young and was playing basketball at a pretty high level, just had gotten done with college and was trying to catch on in the pros. And so they invited me to the camp, and I had never played handball before, and I just remember how physical it is. And it's a true contact sport. We talked about this earlier, but basketball is almost non-contact by comparison. It's almost lacrosse, basketball, volleyball, and baseball combined into one. yeah yeah so what's the you know with your with your diabetes do you ever run into any problems or challenges or what are some of the things that you've had to think through

[00:16:17] Mikkel Møldrup: as a type 1 playing professional handball um you have first of all you have to live with that you sometimes have to put your blood sugar a little bit higher a lot of people who don't do so much so much sport and then you have to live with that before the training or before the the exercises you have to to eat a little bit more or you don't have to take so much insulin because you will burn like if you're doing every other sport you you go running or something else You burn a lot of energy and sugar when you're doing your sport. So I always put me a little bit higher for the games. But I think it's also psychological. Sometimes I say if my blood sugar isn't on this level before a game, I will not play good. so for me it's very important that I have it in in in precisely this level where I want to be but that's the only thing like every other diabetic I have to have sugar in my bag and I have to have orange juice with me in the bag but that's all and then the most important for me is to be honest and to be open about my diabetes because if you start to say no I'm fine and don't look at me the people don't react and for me it's important that everybody knows I don't go when we have one professional game I will not shake hands with all the opponents and say, watch out because I have diabetes. But it's important for me that my teammates also know what can happen. But it never happened. But, you know, it's important that I'm secure that they know about it. But otherwise, I always say diabetic don't control my life. I have to control the diabetes

[00:18:52] Rob Howe: I think you brought up a really good point about honesty and sometimes especially as athletes and competitors we want to try to tough it out or we want to try to act like it's not a big deal and I think a lot of times even myself like in situations that even aren't high stress I'll try to focus through a low blood sugar or delay treating something if it's not convenient. Sometimes I have to stop myself and remind myself that I just need to take care of it, and then I'll be able to move on. For you, what are those situations where you're forced to be honest about how you feel, and how does it help you?

[00:19:35] Mikkel Møldrup: For a game day, I'm always prepared. I know what will happen, but I know from other diabetics, if you come in a situation which you didn't expect, then we have the problem. And it's like when the trainer didn't say, today we lose the game in the weekend, and this Monday we will only run. And normally I would think we wouldn't run. But when you're not prepared for that, the teammates have to know, okay, he is not prepared for it, So it can be, okay, now we have to drink some more orange juice. Now we have to eat something more before I can deliver the product that I want to deliver in sport. And that's the only – for me, it's like if I can't control the situation, that's the problem. That's my biggest problem.

[00:20:35] Rob Howe: Yeah. Well, and sometimes controlling what you can control is the only way to not only control your diabetes, but also just live your life, right? You can only, there's a certain amount of things that are in your control. And if you can plan for them, you're going to be better off. It all just takes that extra discipline. It takes that extra mindset. I think that's why I would recommend people, you know, not even just people with diabetes, but all kinds of people playing sports, because there's only a certain amount of things that you can predict. And you either have to be prepared in your training, or you have to be prepared in you know what you take with you or how you approach things and i think you're you are better equipped to deal with small obstacles uh if you have a background in sports do you feel

[00:21:23] Mikkel Møldrup: that's the same way uh i think uh this thought had driven me uh to who i am also yes um and i also So through the sport or through my life as professional sportsman, it also, if we go back to diabetic, it has helped me from the first day that I do a lot of sports. Of course, I also have days where I'm only lying on the couch. I would lie if I said I do sport every single minute where I can. But for me, sport is getting me through the day also as a diabetic, if you know what I mean.

[00:22:19] Rob Howe: Yeah, I do. I think when I think of the things that drive me through, I think that determination comes from inside and wanting to be normal and wanting to be healthy and wanting to enjoy my life. And I think my approach to diabetes sort of fits within that. It sounds like you're sort of the same way. Yeah, yeah. So for you, tell us, living in Dusseldorf, which is not your home country, does that change the way that you have to treat your diabetes or any issues with health care or does your team help you with that? How does that work?

[00:23:00] Mikkel Møldrup: yeah that was also I think from my parents they was concerned about how will he now do it in another country with other health care with other rules but from the first day on you know I always say diabetic is an individual sickness. I don't want to call it sickness, but it's an individual, so you have to control it for yourself. Of course, always the different doctors can say something else, but so long you can control it yourself, it's the best way. When I went to Germany, I had the same insulin, I had the same blood sugar testing device, and I kept this for the last seven years also. So I could get the same insulin in the different countries where I was. I don't know if it's because it's in the EU, but I didn't have any problems with it.

[00:24:23] Rob Howe: at all. Well, that's good. No. And I think a lot of people I think are just, uh, especially in the U S are just curious as to, you know, what diabetes treatments are available if they're traveling or if they're going backpacking in Europe and, uh, they have to go to the hospital. They, they want some sort of, you know, at least assurance that everything's going to be okay. And I think what I hear most often is what we talked about earlier about always being prepared, but that if something, you know were to happen and you're not in your home country that usually there is a um you know at least good and safe protocol to help you through whatever challenges you may run

[00:24:58] Mikkel Møldrup: into yeah yeah that's also it's like this and now we have diabetic in the whole world and sometimes you only think in my city i where i'm prepared of everything i i can only be but in if you you You can travel, like if you're diabetic, you can travel all over the world. You don't have any, what's called in English, it's like there are no boundaries for your diabetic at this stage. I don't know how it was for 20 years ago or 30 years ago. Maybe a different picture, but today I have the feeling I can go where I want to.

[00:25:44] Rob Howe: well and you bring up an interesting point you know 20 years ago 30 years ago the last few i've interviewed a few type ones on the podcast recently that have been living with type 1 for 58 years and hearing about how interesting and exciting and wonderful their lives have been so far just gives me a lot of hope for people like you and me who have only been living with the disease for the last decade or a little bit more. And we have amazing technology in front of us. We have ability to travel. We have ability to get treatment wherever we are in case of an emergency. And for people who didn't have those luxuries, to still hear that they were doing awesome things really gives me a lot of hope. And so I really agree with you. There are no boundaries. Sometimes you do feel like the only diabetic in the world and that you can only stay in your one place. but getting out of your comfort zone and experiencing the world and seeing what else is out there, I couldn't recommend that more.

[00:26:49] Mikkel Møldrup: That's also, I always said that, and one more time I will say it, you choose your own diabetic way to live. I always told people, like, I'm not sad that I'm diabetic. and I would also not say, I would never say I'm happy, but over the years I became happy with being a diabetic because sometimes I always say don't let your, it's directly translated, but don't let your head hang down. You always have to look up and you can be sad that you're a diabetic now, but you can be glad that it's not worse. Being a diabetic is for me and it's no problem. But for the other person, it can be the worst thing in his life. But you always have to look positive at it. And I think that brought me to who I am today. or it put me to who I wanted to be because I always looked positive on being a diabetic. And sometimes I also say, how can you be so negative when you're not a diabetic? It's like, don't be negative. I'm the one who's sick. and all this like small problems what we have in our everyday life.

[00:28:33] Rob Howe: Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing how the things we tell ourselves affect us and how the way that we talk to or the way that we view situations can really hold us back. And I think, you know, the lately I've been trying to, you know, adopt the the practice of being purposeful about things that you do automatically, whether that's breathing or that's eating or that's walking and just taking notice that you're that you're doing them and that you're in that moment that you're alive and that there's so many things going on just to get you from your front door to your car and to your office or wherever you're going. and what an awesome treat that is. Because I think too many times we just drift through and we never really move with purpose. And you can find a lot of, that can cause a lot of unhappiness. And I think the biggest thing for me and that I would tell anybody living with diabetes is that you have so many things to be grateful for, that you're not alone, that you have this great community, that you have amazing role models and people who have gone before you to look up to. And there will be tough days, but at the end of it, you know, you can just say, you know what, in spite of this, I still am great. I'm still awesome. And I still have a lot of things to look forward to.

[00:30:01] Mikkel Møldrup: That's important. Yeah. Say I'm awesome. And don't say I'm sick. And I always tell, like I do at the hospital here in Düsseldorf, I'm like a contact person for the young people who got diabetic. And I gave them my number so they can always call me if they have any problems or they have anything where they want to talk about. because my doctor asked me if I could do this. So they also could have a great experience with talking with one who, what can I say, who is happy to be a diabetic. Yeah, it's important.

[00:30:50] Rob Howe: In that same vein, I always ask this question on my podcast. And I think for somebody who has traveled a lot, like yourself, it'll be, I'm really interested in your answer. So imagine that you are in an airport and you're at your gate and they're about to close the door to your gate and your flight's going to take off. And for whatever reason, you can't miss the flight. You need to be on board. But you bump into somebody who is either recently been diagnosed with type 1 or is struggling with their life with type 1. What's the one thing that you tell them in that 30 seconds before you jump on the plane?

[00:31:33] Mikkel Møldrup: be happy be happy that you are still alive that you are breathing that that you that you can talk and that that you that you are still here and that you have such a little thing like called diabetic and it's that it's not what can you call it it's not like you will not die from this how can you say it you will live on and diabetic is not so bad as many things

[00:32:13] Rob Howe: it's not and I think finding that perspective whether you're not diabetic or not I think choosing happiness is the best the best way to go in my opinion yeah definitely definitely well mikkel i apologize for for mispronouncing your not only your last name but also your first name at the beginning of this episode uh but uh fortunately i think i hopefully i was able to make up for it um if if anybody on our in our listeners or in our social media wanted to get in touch with you what's the best way to find you and connect with you online

[00:32:53] Mikkel Møldrup: I'm like online at all places they can find me on Facebook they can find me on Instagram Instagram you can send me a direct message all over and it doesn't matter what at what time maybe in the middle of the night I will not answer but I will answer so quick as possible and I always said to myself because I also met a lot of people who didn't feel well with their diabetic and sadly to say that the friend who told me so lot about being a diabetic live with their life as as diabetic he is not at us anymore and and he is not alive at this time so for me it's one of the great thing is to to to tell all like he told me at that time to tell how the life goes on and because we can talk like for hours about how psychological diabetes also can be and I always say that of course your your body is not working anymore like before but the most important thing is to stay clear in your mind and and to to accept your illness or your what you can call it. So contact me anytime. I will be there and I'm glad to help all the people I can help with their diabetic.

[00:34:45] Rob Howe: Well, thank you so much for reaching out and for coming on and being such a great role model for people with type 1. I'm looking forward to seeing what you continue to do. especially playing sports and playing handball. I think your story is super inspiring, and I'm glad. I've got another reason to get into handball. Of course. Yeah, thanks for that.

[00:35:11] Mikkel Møldrup: The next time you're in Germany, always come to Dusseldorf.

[00:35:16] Rob Howe: You are invited. Well, thank you. I'll take you up on that. Of course. All right.