Plan B in the DOC

A key aspect in any person's life is learning how to adapt. Change happens, and we must always be ready for it. The same can be said to those of us in the Diabetes Community.

Life is all about adapting to change, especially when your Living With Diabetes.

Sure, I love it when a plan comes together (A-Team tv show quotation here), but rarely is it Plan A that materializes from concept to reality. No, it's hardly ever the first plan that gets carried out. More often than not, we find ourselves having to be all like MacGyver and come up with new plans on the fly.

So was the case in my own Indiana D-Life recently.

An exciting, Hollywood-style meetup was planned between myself and Cherise over at Diabetic_Iz_Me, as we both work within a few minutes of each other in the city. As she's new to the area, I offered to head over to her side. With her recent Cupcake Baking Adventures, I'd decided that a gift from The Flying Cupcake was in order. Maybe something with bananas, or a Hoosier favorite.

Well, that plan didn't materialize. The cupcake store is not easy to find, in the advertised location. A busy work morning meant I had little time to drive around searching for this cupcake bakery that was just too hard to find, so I scrapped that plan and proceeded to our meeting spot - at the lunchroom on the campus of Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).

Of course, there's more than one lunchroom on the campus and as the meeting time arrived, we found ourselves talking on the phone from different lunchrooms. Luckly, they are nearby so Cherise walked over to where I had situated myself next to a sugar-free gum dispenser. We greeted and said hello, but soon realized that this particular lunchroom was swarming with college kids as it was indeed the lunchhour, and there was no quick way to get food. Luckily, Cherise had a MacGyver-style Plan B - she knew of another lunchroom.

So, we walked and talked and made our way to McDs. Though they skimped on her 10-piece chicken McNugget order, it was a quick but productive meet and greet over the lunch-hour. We chatted about various things, and whether to bolus or not for lunch based on all the walking we'd done, and before we parted ways to return to work she asked if I was planning to attend the American Diabetes Association's Tour de Cure in Indianapolis on Saturday.

I'd thought about it, but hadn't made any plans. Along with my previous reading of Scott's blog about being a Red Rider, Cherise pursuaded me to volunteer. That was the plan. A phone call to the ADA organizer had me helping out at the registration starting about 5:30 a.m. the next morning.

But a "glucoastering" effect that evening and into the morning hours derailed those plans, and I found myself bouncing from the 40s, to the 300s, back to the 40s throughout the next day. No volunteering, after all. Guess I'll have to wait to ride or volunteer in the 2011 Tour de Cure. Oh well.

This glucoaster ride zapped my energy and took away any desire for blogging, and it was a challenge writing this one. I thought about changing up plans and posting some future-scheduled ones already on tap, but ultimately decided against it.... Plans had already changed too much for me and some consistency was needed.

Life happens. Plans change - diabetes or not. This was just one of those times where they changed a lot, and I had to make due. Good thing there was at least one backup plan in place, spontaneously-realized or not. It happens. It Is What It Is. We move on. One plan at a time.