A Breath



My friend Zach wanted to be on my blog so we took a picture with our blue sheets (what we fill out when we are going to miss school) for the National Qualifier and Youth Leadership Lincoln which for the both of those we missed Monday and Tuesday.



Wow what a week it has been! It all started last Friday when my club volleyball team and I headed down to Kansas City to play in the Show Me National Qualifier. We had a lot of fun and I will miss my coaches and team as the season has wrapped up. I cant believe club started 5 months ago. It is possible that I may never play volleyball again but we will see what the future holds. We played three games Saturday, three games Sunday and one on Monday then we headed home.

Tuesday I had Youth Leadership Lincoln all day and our focus was on community non profit services such as the Lighthouse, The Arc, and Clinic With a Heart. All these are wonderful organizations and have each had a huge impact on our community. I met a philanthropist who is a volunteer that fundraises money for various groups. As he talked about his projects one being raising 1 million dollars to bring the Special Olympics to Lincoln he also mentioned how felt one day that he should do something for JDRF so he signed up to do the walk independently. After the walk he wanted to know what the most a single person had raised for JDRF and if I recall it was something like $6,000 he wanted to set a new record and raised over $22,000 just because he felt like it. haha. Amazing! He now has an award named after him that is given to the highest individual raiser in the Lincoln JDRF Chapter. 

Wednesday I went out running in my neighborhood and met a nice man. He asked me how old I was and I said 16 (for those of you flipping out right now that I was talking to a total stranger...It isn't that uncommon here and I was totally safe) he was probably young 30's. I am really bad at guessing ages. Anyways he told me about how when he was my age he could do 5 minute miles and now he was required to work out cause he is in the military. He said that he wished he would have kept exercising like he did when he was my age so that he would have it a little easier now. I hope I still have the will power to get out and run when I am his age. Around this time it hit me that I have my 3rd half marathon the 1st of the month. SCARY! I feel that I have been more focused on volleyball than running. But we cant go back so I am going to face this one the best I can. The one thing that scares me most about running here in Lincoln is that I know how far things are and its scary when we drive out the course cause it seems to be so lonnnngggg. This is something that I haven't faced with my other halfs since they were in places I didn't know anything about so everything was new. Please pray for me this week that this half goes well :)

Thursday. Well Thursday was the day we left to go to Iowa city for my endocrinologist appointment. Before we left though I got a letter in the mail that said I had been accepted into National Honor Society. So that was exciting. We left for Iowa City around 5 and got there at 9:30 ish so a good long boring drive that provided me with some much needed sleep. Friday we got up and went to my doctors appointment at the University of Iowa. Nothing special happened they said I had a good A1c and that was about it. The best part of the day was when I got to follow around one of my doctors research partners. She was doing research on what causes birth defects in people with diabetes children. What was being transferred through the placenta was it the glucose, amino acids ect.  She had found that it was the glucose and she made rats pregnant and since they have two different ovaries that their babies grow in they also have two different blood supplies going to each ovary. So on one side she would infuse glucose and make its bloodsugar 400 and it would not transfer to the babies on the other side which is fascinating. This allowed them to see what caused the birth defects. The next step is for her to test her theory on how to prevent this which happens to be taking fish oils and seeing if this has an affect on stopping the birth defects. This was much more in depth and a lot more fascinating when she explained it but what they are doing in the research lab was amazing. This was only one little experiment in my doctors lab with about 6 more going on in his. Along with his lab there were about 3 more doctors with there own labs all doing research on DIABETES. I could go on and on about different studies that they were doing but like this one it would probably bore you. The doctor I shadowed showed me some other very cool things that I don't think most are allowed to see. She was also a NICU doc and took me up to the level 3 NICU. The babies there were the size of my hand and I was allowed in to see one of the little boys who was born so early that most hospitals wouldn't have tried to save him. When you see pictures of babies in the NICU you say oh they are tiny but when you see them in real life its incredible how small they are. I started to tear up a little. Right after we walked out of the room we found out that he was getting open heart surgery done. I think this was God's calling to me that I may work as a nurse practitioner in the NICU. I also received a letter in the mail that I had been selected to attend a 10 day camp at John Hopkins next summer the price was a little much but still awesome that I was nominated by someone.

If you survived this atrociously long and somewhat boring blog props to you :)