In the eighth grade, I wrote a Modern Woodman speech on my hero. As far as I know, that’s still the topic for that particular school’s speech competition. I picked Carl Brashear and in retrospect, that makes little sense. I spent more time drooling over Nightcrawler than I did military personelle, and for good reason. I’ve found heroes of history and mythology and writing since then, heroes of the faith and heroes of resistance. Joseph Campbell would chime in and say that we need heroes because heroes leave the comfort of society, learn the lessons of various trials and bring back the insight needed to change us. He’d say we need greatness, not fame–that our worship of celebrities and our marginalization of heroes wounds society. Because of that, I keep looking for different kinds of heroes and I’ve found another one–one worthy of a rewrite of history. I hereby change my Modern Woodman speech:

My wife’s my hero.

At fifteen, they diagnosed her with Type 1 Diabetes. Most people put some sort of illness blame on type-oners because of how many type-two patients develop the disease due to life habits. These two diseases, though linked in their outcome, could not differ more in genesis. Type 2 develops when, over the course of time, your body begins to resist insulin–that peptide hormone that converts the sugar in your blood into energy. Type 1 can happen at birth. See, your insulin comes from the Beta cells in your pancreas, it’s one of those involuntary body processes like breathing or farting that you and I take for granted until the day they stop working. Needless to say, her beta cells went on an indefinite strike and ever since, Tara has had to work as a manual pancreas. Unlike all other chronic illnesses, 90% of diabetic care comes from the patient. Count it–ninety. Often people roll their eyes or point fingers at a diabetic when his health takes a turn for the worst. In reality, most people never realize when a diabetic goes to the restroom to change their injection site or notice when they draw blood to check their BGL. I mean it when I say that Tara does her pancreatic work manually. This started out with shots and transferred to button mashing her insulin pump for the high score. Well… not the high score. When her sugars go too high, it stresses out her blood vessels. When they go low, it stresses out her brain. One way, she could end up in a coma or lose limbs or eyes. The other way, she could end up in a coma permanently or damage her brain from seizures.

Sound like fun?

Now you or I, especially the majority of the readership here who seem to bend toward the literary and aesthetic, we trend toward a sedentary lifestyle rather than an athletic one. In short, we nerds and geeks might find it hard to get up and run. Ask us to run a mile and we might interpret that as putting our MMO character on auto-travel while we go grab corn dogs from the freezer. Ask us to run a 5k and our entire body revolts. Tara, though not of the MMO group, fits in with us chair-oriented folk. To run a 5k would earn applause from the rest of us.

But Tara enjoys all the wonderful benefits of Type 1 Diabetes–benefits like going for days on end feeling like throwing up because she ate too many cookies (“too many” meaning one bite), benefits like waking up in the middle of the night gasping “I’m… I’m… diabetes” and hoping my awoken-out-of-dead-sleep-mind both hears and interprets this as “Your wife is low. Get your butt out of bed, grab a glass of milk, the Oreos and then get started on the peanut butter toast.”

These Type-1 perks lead to drastic energy loss during strenuous exercise–after all, your body feeds and operates on sugar. When I ran cross-country in grade school, they normally told us to eat a full plate of spaghetti the night before the race. For Tara, substitute “feel all day like throwing up, inhaling water, and taking a power drill to my head for the headache” where you see “spaghetti.” One diabetic compared this whole experience to running a race while wearing chain mail. Another way to put it is, “how many of you nerds feel like running a half-marathon right about now?”

Yesterday, my gorgeous bride saw the fruit of three months of training. Three months coming in everyday and saying, “Lance–I ran for a minute today,  the most I’ve EVER RUN in my LIFE!” and “Lance–I ran for five minutes today which is the most I’ve EVER RUN in my LIFE!” and “LANCE I RAN FOR TWENTY MINUTES!” Three months of training despite the upper-respiratory infections circulating Schaubert Abbey for the past eight weeks. Three months of training, of dragging her inner nerd around the block kicking, screaming, begging for an alternative.

Three months of training despite diabetes.

Yesterday, my wife not only finished her first 5k, let alone first athletic competition of any kind, she also placed sixth in her age group:

There’s not a prouder husband alive. There’s also not a husband whose inner nerd has been put to more shame by his wife’s inner nerd. I’m proud. I’m inspired. I’m glad I married such a persevering and overcoming woman in a world full of assault, whether physical assault or emotional assault or the assault of an immune system on one innocent pancreas. She never stopped. She never will.

She’s great, and knowing her influences my life far more than any celebrity. Tara Schaubert–my hero.

(Go to the comments and congratulate her!)

Notes:

Picture 1: You can tell I’ve got windswept hair. This one’s right after the race. She normally prefers clapping to touching after she runs due to the sweat, but I didn’t care. I picked her up off her feet in a big ol’ bear hug.

Pic 2: That’s her after the Mother Road marathon. Her shirt’s caption? “One Tough Mother Runner”

Pic 3: The start. 

Pic 4: My buddy Ryan’s kid (we’ll call him Shark Fin) showed up with a duck call trumpet and a shirt that had letters ironed on by his mom: I love Tara. Me too, Shark Fin, me too.

Pic 5: Results from her first.

Pic 6: Two lucky numbers surrounded by two prime integers that add up to a dozen. Good numerology suggests she’ll do well. Photo taken by T.

Pic 7: Photo taken by T. 

Pic 8: The end of the race. If you’ll look closely, you’ll notice Tara at the front of the pack, hauling tail and kicking butt.

Unless otherwise noted, all photos taken by Momma Balu. Thanks, Mom & Dad for coming. Also Ryan & fam. Also you, BG.