And he\u2019s lived by those words ever since. Dan and his wife, Gisela, are world-class adventurers and have never let Dan\u2019s type 1 slow them down\u2014although it has thrown them a few curveballs along the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned the hard way that being prepared with Type 1 means having duplicates of everything\u2014and I do mean everything<\/em>,\u201d Dan says. Twenty years ago, he was in Haiti, when the only vial of insulin he had fell on a ceramic floor and shattered. A Haitian engineer Dan somehow secured a vial of insulin. That\u2019s when Dan came up with his \u201cduplicates of everything\u201d motto.<\/p>\n Years later, Dan and Gisela traveled to Cape Horn, at the tip of South America, where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet. He thought he\u2019d packed duplicates of all his diabetes supplies. But he hadn\u2019t considered the possibility that his insulin pump would fail when he landed in Lima (on his way to catch a flight to Buenos Aires, where the ship to Cape Horn was waiting). When Dan got to Buenos Aires, he dashed to four or five pharmacies; the last one sold him a glucose meter and test strips. He spent the next three weeks using insulin pens. Now he never leaves home without an extra pump, a meter, and plenty of test strips.<\/p>\n More recently, Dan and Gisela decided to climb Mount Everest\u2014a grueling, 19-day endurance test. While they were in Katmandu, their guide reminded them to take medicine for altitude sickness. Three days in\u2014climbing 3,000 feet a day\u2014Dan\u2019s blood sugar spiked tremendously, and he kept taking more and more insulin. By Day 7\u2014at around 18,000 feet\u2014one of his fellow travelers lent Dan a satellite phone and put him in touch with a doctor from Istanbul, who figured out that the altitude sickness medication was interfering with his blood chemistry and suggested that Dan take only \u00bc the original dosage. Problem solved!<\/p>\n Think Mount Everest is Dan\u2019s most strenuous Type 1 travel story? It\u2019s not. A couple years after that trip, Dan and Gisela went to Uganda to see the Silverback gorillas. \u201cUganda was much more demanding from a climbing perspective,\u201d Dan says. \u201cThe climb is vertical. You\u2019re on your hands and knees, grasping at saplings. We climbed for six or seven hours. After all that, we could only be with the gorillas for a total of 45 minutes. But it was worth it!\u201d<\/p>\n Dan and Gisela\u2014each with their own reindeer and sled\u2014have also tracked the Northern Lights 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden. Next up? They\u2019re climbing Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps.<\/p>\n You can be sure of two things: They\u2019ll have a great time, and Dan will have duplicates of everything he needs to manage his diabetes!”<\/p>\n Meet our T1D Champion, Dan Hood. Dan was diagnosed with T1D 44 years ago. Read Dan’s full story below! “Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 41 years ago (as an adult), Dan Hood made one vow to himself: \u201cI understand that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1317,"featured_media":9836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"publish_on_app_meta":"True","iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":"","bt1d_storytelling_post":false,"bt1d_storytelling_more_posts":[]},"topics":[41],"class_list":["post-9835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","jdrf_topic-national-diabetes-awareness-month"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.breakthrought1d.org\/greaterwesterncarolina\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/127\/2024\/11\/Hoods-Mount-Everest-1-scaled-1.jpg\")
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