Rebecca O'Donnell completed her second cross-country bike trip this past weekend, logging 4,400 miles from San Francisco to Southwest Harbor, Maine, with her parents and brother.
She did her first Trans-America bike tour as a 3-year-old sitting in a trailer pulled by her mom or dad.
This time she did it as a 16-year-old with Type I diabetes, a serious condition that requires constant monitoring and regular injections through a catheter attached to an insulin pump.
I'm frequently amazed by the apparent difficulties that some people can overcome to enjoy bicycle travel. In this case, Rebecca had the support of her parents, Deb and Mike, and younger brother, James. At age 12, the cross-country bike tour was no small feat for her brother, either.
The bike tour, dubbed “Rebecca's Ride,” raised nearly $9,000 for diabetes research at The Jackson Laboratory in Maine and California.
Placards
The O'Donnells left San Francisco on Memorial Day weekend, lugging their camping and cooking gear in trailers and panniers.
The Bangor Daily News reported that the O'Donnells carried placards on their bikes to announce they were “Riding for diabetes.” This helped put them in touch with people along the ride whose lives also have been touched by diabetes.
Treatment
Rebecca was diagnosed with so-called juvenile diabetes when she was 9 years old. As The Jackson Laboratory explains, the body’s immune system attacks and destroys cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, the hormone required to deliver blood sugar to the cells.
To combat this, Rebecca wears an insulin pump that delivers insulin through a catheter that she changes every three days, according to the Rebecca's Ride blog.
“This has been a great advancement for the treatment of diabetes. Until this development, a person with diabetes needed to stick to a strict schedule for eating and timing for the multiple injections needed throughout the day.
“Either method requires careful calculation of carb intake and ratio of insulin. For Rebecca, it is every 7 grams of carbs needs 1 unit of insulin. This is referred to as a bolus dose. Her pump also delivers a varied amount of insulin hourly, known as a basal dose.”
Regular exercise
Rebecca told the newspaper that the regular exercise she got on the ride helped reduce the need for insulin during the day.
Research for Type 1 diabetes is ongoing, and Rebecca writes that she hopes a cure for it will be discovered in her lifetime.
You can read about their ride at the Rebecca's Ride blog and The Jackson Laboratory website.
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