aching body, icy winds and a sore heart

I never did do the 2009, 2010 or 2011 Ride events, but here I am, back again training and fundraising to to do the 2012 event. I've been bold and put myself down for the 160k ride, however some days I wonder if I'll ever get fit enough. I'm about 15k heavier now than I was in 2008, and battling a lot of depression as a result of an absolutely terrible few years. I've had awful things going on in my extended family and in my personal life, and it seems the only way I can outline it is to do a chronology. It has been a battle to keep training and at times I have stopped completely for months at a time.

September 2008 My sister has bowel cancer. The shock waves ripple through the family. She is treated and recovers, but it's a warning to us all.
October 2008 My brother Chris has had to leave his wife as she has become violent to him. He is suffering from both Haemochromatosis and Type 1 Diabetes. He moves in with me, initially to look after my house and cat while I go off ot Spain & Morocco for a month (see the 'Its something else' blog).
December 2008 I meet a man I like very much, however he is depressive and this makes for an uneasy start to the relationship.
January 2009 Chris & I volunteer at the AAC ride in Bright. While we are away my cat is run over.
July 2009 Someone rear ends my beautiful 12 month old car on the freeway when the traffic is bottle necked. The car is a write off. He is uninsured, I am out of pocket by $3000, the gap between insurance and pay-out of the finance on the vehicle.
I spend the next 3 months cycling and taking the train the 30k's to work while I pay off the $3000.00
August 2009 I ask my brother to move out, he is not managing his illness or behaviors and life has become intolerable with him in the house. I feel awful, I have thrown my own sick brother out! Within a month my older sister with whom he has gone to live, says"Oh I see why you were having trouble dealing with Chris."
September 2009 Mum has a fall and breaks the top of her thigh bone. She drags herself into bed, gets up in the middle of the night & puts a pack of frozen peas on her hip to try and stop the pain, but won't call anyone until the next morning, she calls Sal, just as she gets to work. Mum has hte hip pinned and recovers.
November 2009 Chris has become very ill with severe back pains, we take him to hospital where they x-ray him and discover multiple old fractures along his spine. We think they are probably from all the falls he's had off his bike when he has had hypos.
December 2009 Chris has sclerosis of the liver and liver cancer. The hospital starts a radical new form of treatment where they inject the chemotherapy chemicals directly into the lesions. Chris spends Xmas on the couch at Sal's to ill to move. In January they tell him that they will have another go. I go to the AAC on my own, my friends and I plan to ride the Petit Oppy in March.
February 2010 Chris is not recovering.
March 2010 I sit with Chris as the doctor tells him `It's probably time to start seeing your family. If you want we can arrange to take you outside in the sunshine" The next morning I go in to see him and he says to me, "Now I don't want you to cry...."
He resigns himself to dying and we spend March and April continuously with him. I have stopped riding. He dies on April 6th 2010.
April 2010 The pain in Mum's hip has come back and become so bad she shrinks into a tiny little old lady, unable to do anything. Her surgeon is on holiday overseas, and nobody will do anything for her.
I have a lump of grief stuck in my throat. I start seeing a counsellor. Work is toxic, I wait out the days until they make me redundant.
June 2010 I finish the job and find a new one. I take a week off between jobs and go bush with my 2nd brother, photographing sheep and shearing sheds, it's a wonderful escape. he has been recovering from a late diagnosis of Haemochromatosis and slowly getting back to work as the treatment begins to thin the iron out of his blood.
July 2010 Mum has a hip replacement. We all take turns with helping the medical process. The operation is a great success.
December 2010 My 2nd brother, Andrew, suddenly becomes more ill. Within a matter of weeks he is gravely ill, in hospital before Xmas, sent home over the Xmas break & back in by new year.
January 26th 2011, My 2nd brother is taken into ICU with pneumonia. He doesn't come out until March. Andrew receives his donor liver literally at the last moment. He was sedated for 5 days before one became available. The doctors told his wife on the Tuesday that he had about 2 days to live. The liver became available in the very early hours of Thursday morning, the 10th of February. The day before I had attended the funeral for a workmates Father and as I sat listening to the Latin service and looking at the Altar, it came to me that this wasn't about my brother, my brother would live.
March 2011 I ride the Petit Oppy with a team of wonderful friends. When Andrew became ill, I told myself that if I kept training, he would live.
It took until late April for Andrew to be allowed home. He had suffered massive damage to his kidneys, with finally only 12% capability remaining.
August 2011, My sister has a 2nd bout of cancer. I can't stop crying as she goes through all the testing. They tell her is is very treatable, but it will be a long haul.
September the 8th 2011, Our Mother dies suddenly, unexpectedly. My sister calls me at work, they have found my Mother on the floor beside her bed, unconscious, not breathing. When my sister sms's me to let me know they have Mum in the ambulance, stabilised but very sick, I see a vision of Mum sitting up in bed with a cup of tea and light all around her, saying to me, " I don't know what all the fuss is about, I'm perfectly alright." I know she is dead.

The sad lump is back. It is so hard to motivate myself to train and fundraise. The thought of having to get up and battle with an aching body, icy winds and a sore heart is too much. I don't know how I'm going to do this.

Leave of Absence

This Blog is in abeyance for a few months whilst I recover from all the fundraising. I will start up again when I start to pump up the fundraising for January 2009.

Until then, if you want to keep up with my state of mental health, you can visit me at
http://itssomethingelse.blogspot.com/ Cath S

Raffle Winner

David Johns, Cath Stephensen and Liana Moore at DavidJohns Gallery.

Sunday afternoon saw a very happy Liana receiving her photographic artwork from David Johns at David's delightful gallery in Railway Place Fairfield. The whole affair was extremely serendipitious (can I use that word?!) as not only is Liana a keen cyclist from a family of keen cyclists, she is also an Art Historian! So the story of the photo being taken from a hot air balloon as part of a project documenting aspects of the local environment within 6k of the gallery, and then being printed on special canvas that is made by the same family who made the original canvas for the first hot air balloons, caught her fancy, as it did mine.

This brings to a close the fundraising cycle for 2007's Ride for a Cure. But don't despair, I've already started on next years fundraising work, so stand by for more from the blog.

The Things you see while out on yer bike!

For privacy reasons, I couldn't publish the picture of the guy who built and owns this `bike'. He told me that he built it as his way of getting people to think about global warming and to think about recycling. The item in the middle of the bike is an oil heater and he told me that he was concerned that people just throw them out and don't think about the fact that the oil ends up in the stormwater system and then in the bay. So he built the bike to show that even oil heaters can be recycled! He told me that since he built it he has had 4 people come up to him and tell him that it made them stop and think about recycling and now they contact the council to find out how to recycle things.

And YES he can RIDE the bike!!!!

HbA1c's, cholesterol and blood pressure!

February and August are `Endo' months for me. The twice yearly checks that uncover all the lies I've been telling myself about my BGL's. `Endo' is short for Endocrinologist, the type of specialist who looks after Type 1 diabetics. Most diabetics have a bit of a love/hate relationship with their Endo's and one of our very clever members in HypoActive made up a postcard advertisement for the group featuring faux advertisements such as "Lost: Log book. REWARD! Endo appt next week." and "Free to good home: Endocrinologist." Part of the reason we hate them is that they expect us to bring in meticulously kept log book records detailing all our blood glucose tests, (4 - 8 times a day) dietary intake and exercise. Ho Ho Ho - how many people do you seriously know who could maintain such a log for more than a week. Not only should we keep such a log, but we should also actually read and analyse it and use the analysis to improve our diet and exercise habits so that we can get our BGL's to flatline as much as possible. Ah gee if only there were an easier way! THERE IS! but I'm not sure that I like it..... It's a blood test called an HbA1c - someone did tell me what it stands for once, but I can't remember, so don't ask me. The HbA1c measures markers that stick to your blood platelets and is able to give an average measure of your blood glucose over the previous three months. No more cheating or making up the entries in the BGL log :-( They know it all. My endo likes to keep a pretty thorough check on me, so for good measure he also requested a cholesterol test. I came through OK, with a BGL of 8 and an overall cholesterol of 4.3 and blood pressure of 100/70 and no leakage of protein in the urine test. (sorry I hope that's not `too much information!') I thought my BGL might have been a bit lower, but then I remembered that you're supposed to have fasted for 12 hours before they do the blood test, & I ate about 7 hours before it... shhh don't tell the endo! Anyway, apparently I'm still alive, so now it's off for the annual round of eye checks, dental checks and financial checks (needed after paying for all the aforesaid specialist appointments etc.) Which reminds me, I need to take out travel insurance for my trip to Spain & Morocco later this year - more about that later!

Post Ride

We had a great result for the Raffle Draw. 1st prize of the fabulous David Johns photograph `The Path 1’ goes to Leanna Moore. This result tickled me pink, as Leanna's Dad is Peter Moore of Abottsford Cycles, and Peter is one of the great supporters of cyclists and the whole cycling movement. I've ridden quite a few rides where the extended Moore family have been in attendance, always gregarious and ready to lend a hand to everyone. The Path 1, with it's cyclist firmly in the middle of a straight path looking up at the sky seems to me to be typical of the straightforward attitude of this cycling family. Congratulations to Leanna, and I hope she has as much pleasure from the photograph as I do from knowing it is going to a cycle friendly home!

2nd prize of the gorgeous Andrew Chapman photograph `Elms at Sunset’ goes to Carol Iwanow. Carol owns Blue Heeler Boots in Qld., and is a valued supporter of the fundraising campaign.

3rd prize of the fascinating photo-documentary book `Campaign’ goes to James Grahame, a co-worker of mine with a Scots background, so I'm going to have to give him some political history lessons as we browse the books wonderful photographs, ranging from the days of Billy Sneddon to the recent campaign 07!

Don't forget, if you want to know more about any of these wonderful photographic artworks, check out the links to David and Andrews websites on the right and make a date to visit Davids lovely gallery.

I'm starting a new campaign for the 2009 Ride next week, kicking off with a Valentine's Day Card game to pick the Queen of Hearts.

1.1 MILLION Dollars aka The Ride Report

WE DID IT - WE HELPED RAISE 1.1 MILLION DOLLARS!!!

Cath & Abbott team mate Michael

So here we are at THE RIDE. What's this Ride thing all about? Is it like a race, a competition or what? What have all these months of dodging magpies and car doors been about, anyway?

For participants, the Ride for a Cure is probably one of the best kept secrets around. Ride participants have had to individually raise $3500.00 to be allowed to participate. In return for badgering you to buy raffle tickets attend Comedy nights, Trivia nights, Sausage sizzles, buy sugar free choclates and simply part with your money, we get to contribute to one of the great research efforts in Australia. The money raised goes to support research aimed directly at finding a CURE for Type 1 Diabetes and is spent on research being undertaken in Australia. In return for our hard work in inventing ways to get you to contribute, we get to ride 35, 80 or 160 kilometres of some of the prettiest country in Australia. We also get to join in the celebrations as JDRF announces the fundraising totals for this year and celebrates and commends the volunteers who have contributed personal time and energy.

On a personal level, I find it humbling that so many people, who do not suffer this disease themselves, will dedicate the majority of a year of their lives to raise funds to find a cure for me and the other 140,000 Type 1 Diabetics in Australia. It is heartwarming to see the riders who wear an armband, with the photo of a child on it and the words `I'm riding for Amy' or whatever the name of the child is that they know personally.

After flying into Adelaide courtesy of Qantas, I and the other Melbourne participants, (consisting mainly of BORAL people), were greeted with handshakes, hugs and kisses by Katrina and Mike of JDRF. Soon we were at the beautiful Novotel hotel, Barossa. JDRF goes all the way in making sure we are organised and looked after. I had nominated on my registraion form, that I was prepared to share a room, and it was with some trepidation that I entered my assigned accommodation. My room mate turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip, and we shared plenty of time and laughs over the next few days.
The 80k course ran South from the Jacobs Creek Visitor Centre, through Rowland Flat (flat & windy), Lyndoch to Williamstown, (hilly & windy) then East to Springton, (cross winds & rolling) North to Angaston, (fabulous tail wind & downhill! whoopee!) West to Nurioopta (flat & cross winds) and back South to Tanundra (windy) and the Jacobs Creek Visitor Centre. What a cheer went up as my new friend & I rode in! I had a flat rear tyre about 7 k out of Williamstown and managed to get a perfect image of my chain wheel in grease across the WHITE front of my new sponsors jersey. I did manage to change the tyre very competently, but I just can't get that hand pump to get it up to more than 40psi. Mike from JDRF came by and got it up to 75psi while his partner phoned the wonderful Bernie Jones Cycle Mechanics who arrived in their mobile unit, complete with foot pump and cheerful attitude, and had me spinning on my way within minutes. It took me another 20 k to catch up with my riding partner whom I had sent ahead. What joy that section through to Angaston is. I'd do the whole ride again, just for that lovely bit of road with it's gentle descent and the wind behind your back! Someone said that the JDRF crew and the supporters are the world's best Cheer squad and it certainly felt like it as we came up the incline to the Jacobs Creek Visitor Centre and were welcomed with clapping and wolf whistles and microphone announcements. I think the only other time I have been so welcomed was on an Audax ride, the `Oppy', where a Brass Band oom pah pah's you into the finish line.

The ride is about CELEBRATION. Celebrating the effort throughout the year, celebrating friendship, celebrating the fact that you are alive and healthy and capable of doing such a thing.

So off to the Novotel and a quick shower then down to the pool ...

Yeah I'm SERIOUS! There is nothing better than floating away those aches and pains, helped along by a glass of the Barossa's finest. Then it was time for the big party - a 70's style event, complete with fluoro table decorations and a 70's band at the Tanundra Chateau. Some of the guys got completely carried away with the 70's theme and I know the privacy act says I should get their permission to publish their photos, but some how I don't think it's a problem this time....
The food at the Tanundra Chateau was absolutely top notch as were the staff that looked after us. We all partied on into the wee hours and on Sunday were treated to winetasting and lunch at the National Wine Centre in Adelaide, before being shipped home again courtesy of Qantas to face the cold hard world of work, while dreaming of our next adventure in the Barossa.

Please consider joining me on next years best kept secret - Raise $3500.00 for JDRF's research to find a Cure and come and ride & party in the Beautiful Barossa!