Greatest challenge
31 May 2002

Diabetes knocked tramping and climbing instructor Chris Owens for six, but he learned to cope with it without losing his passion for the outdoors. He talks to JOHN HENZELL.

On the Friday, Chris Owens bought a set of touring skis for the coming winter, but the next day he was knocked for six by the first proof that he had type-one diabetes.

"There was about two hours on the weekend when everything was going through my head.

"I just looked at my touring skis and thought, `What am I going to do with these?'," he recalls.

"On the Monday I had an appointment with a doctor for a blood test, and on the Tuesday I went to the diabetes centre and was having the full monty: I had a needle and was injecting insulin."

At the time, the outdoors was his passion. Besides heading into the hills with friends, he also worked in product support at Macpac and taught avalanche skills, rock climbing, and alpine tramping safety for the Mountain Safety Council.

Now he assumed he would be restricted to day trips. It was, he can admit two years down the track, "pretty small thinking".

A steep learning curve followed as he learnt about a condition he had had only a notion of before.

He was fortunate, however, that his partner, Donna, was a professional researcher, and that his younger brother, Neil, was a registered nurse who had developed the same rare adult-onset type-one diabetes 10 years earlier.

Neil has coped with his condition so well that he has become a youth worker, helping those who develop diabetes as children. "He felt for me hugely," says Chris. "He didn't want this to happen to anyone else, but he bent over backwards to explain that although you have to do things because of the diabetes, that shouldn't really stop you from doing things you want to do."

Among the things Chris learnt was that his condition is not preventable and was not triggered by bad diet or bad health.

Nor, if managed properly, does it make blindness or amputation late in life a serious risk.

Managing the condition was one thing, but Chris wanted to be able to continue his passion for the outdoors, so more research followed, including piggybacking on the skills built up by Idea 2000, an American- based group of mountaineers with diabetes, who had scaled peaks such as Aconcagua in the Andes.

He was also in a position to benefit from Neil's combination of his personal knowledge of him and the type of diabetes.

"Neil knows how far I go. I can be away for two or three days carrying a big pack, walking through snow, and sleeping out.

"A doctor wouldn't know that, and if it wasn't for Neil, I think it would've taken us a long time to work that out," he says.

"I also knew about an alpine guide, Johnny Morgan, with diabetes. How more extreme physically can you get than being an alpine guide who works all over the world?

"About a month after being diagnosed with diabetes, I was using my touring skis at Mueller hut above Mount Cook Village."

He also found himself breaking new ground. Just before his diagnosis, Chris and Donna had bought flight tickets to go on a backpacking tour of southern India.

"India is really the deep end of the pool, and we thought about changing to a soft option like Spain, but then we talked with the specialist about it. He said there was no reason why we shouldn't go to southern India.

"We were away for 5½ weeks, from Delhi right down to the south at Cochin. We did the backpacking thing rather than staying in hotels with fridges, so the hardest part was finding a little cooler container to keep the insulin cold.

"We found one on the Internet that operates through evaporation – really ancient technology – and that worked really well.

"We spent a long time researching that. We both got a stomach bug for one day, but I didn't have any problems with low blood sugar.

"That opened a lot of doors, and I've sent details about the cooler to the guys at Idea 2000.

"I've since lent it to a doctor with diabetes who went to Bangladesh."

Chris even returned to instructing for the Mountain Safety Council, once he had convinced himself that he would not become incapacitated while in charge of a group.

Some aspects of his previous life, though, are gone forever. He had fulfilled a long-held dream of working in Antarctica by spending a season at the American base at McMurdo Sound, but he accepts the diabetes will probably prevent him returning to the Ice again.

"The main thing is that I can't be spontaneous, like I used to be. If the people at work say they're going mountain biking in the afternoon,

I can't say that I'll be ready to go in minutes," he says. "Now I have to plan a meal and check my blood- sugar level and always take spare food. I'm cautious because I don't want to be a burden.

"I don't have the leeway other climbers have. I can't miss out on meals. If I'm late from a climb or trip, I have to have plenty of food, more than you would normally eat.

"Every time I go away, I show the person I'm with the GlucaGel hypo kit, which raises blood sugar levels, and tell them that if I black out, they should inject it into my thigh and I'll come round in about 10 minutes.

"But to get to that level you have to be doing something wrong."

Climbing trips of more than a week away from civilisation are out without lots of preparation.

"I've had a lot of support from Donna. She's never said that she thinks I shouldn't go on a trip or shouldn't go skiing, but she will ask if I have an extra sandwich, or she will put more food in my pack.

"She doesn't worry because she knows I'm super cautious and afraid of getting caught out unprepared.

"This isn't a life sentence, but you have to plan ahead."

For further information about Idea 2000, see www. idea2000.org