The Marathon Mom
by james s. hirsch
Some stories have a Hollywood ending, but those are so predictable. This story has two.
It begins sometime last year, in a Boston suburb, when a group of parents with diabetic children meet to discuss with a magazine reporter the increase in kids diagnosed with the disease. One of the parents is Ray Allen, the Boston Celtic All-Star, and his wife, Shannon; their son Walker was diagnosed in June of last year.
Ray talks about his efforts to inspire others, just as he had inspired Shannon to run the Boston Marathon for a second time. Shannon says she had raised money for a different important cause in 2008, but next year, in 2009, she’d raise funds for the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, where Walker receives his care. In fact, she would be captain for a team of runners for Joslin. They’d run for the kids. They’d run for the clinic. They’d run for the cure.
Who’s in?
Hands start to rise.
Neither my wife nor I attend that meeting, but our 8-year-old son goes to Joslin, and we hear about the marathon challenge. Sheryl had run the Boston Marathon in 1997 and had wanted to do it again. Now she has the reason. With more than a dozen other parents and friends of Joslin, she’ll join the Joslin team. Everyone is supposed to raise $5,000. One small step for the Joslin, one giant leap for the cure.
The training will begin in the dead of winter, five long months before the April 20 race..
* * *
I have a theory that if they ever find a cure for diabetes, it will be the parents of diabetic children who find it. I don’t mean that the parents will be in the labs, doing the science. But they will be the ones raising the money, making the phone calls, writing the letters, urging the politicians, and holding the scientists accountable.
I’ve spoken to quite a few parents over the years and recognize their singular contributions. There was, for example, the mother in the 1960’s who, fearful that her son would have a bad low, would drive to his school and park on the street during his recess. She would just watch him, each day, to make sure he was okay. Before home glucose monitors, urine tests were used to determine approximate blood sugar levels. So what to do with a diabetic baby? Mothers would squeeze the baby’s wet diaper to get the drops.
Parents with a very young diabetic child are understandably reluctant to leave the child with a babysitter. One couple wouldn’t hire a babysitter for five years, so when they wanted to see a movie, the father went alone on Friday night, the mother went alone on Saturday night, and they talked about it on Sunday.
Sometimes parents must go to extraordinary lengths to treat lows. One mother who couldn’t get her hypoglycemic 5-year-old daughter to eat or drink had to speed to a corner store, in the snow at night, so the girl could choose something to consume. She chose chocolate milk but still balked at drinking, so the mom asked if she wanted to go to an empty parking lot and spin “broadies” on the snow and ice. The girl agreed but would only drink if her mother spun the car, so the night wore on, with the car skidding crazily across the slick asphalt. Spin, drink. Spin, drink.
* * *
These thoughts cross my mind as I watch Sheryl do her training. Like most of the Joslin runners, she is no longer in her 20’s or, truth be told, her 30’s. She normally runs on the weekends, but for several months, she wakes up at 5 a.m. three times a week, bundles up, and runs before going to work. Then she does a longer run – 10, 12, 14, 21 miles – on the weekend. Her stamina builds..
But she suffers nagging injuries – a problem with her hip, shin splints, blisters. She worries that the hip will force her to stop. She goes to different doctors and trainers, accumulating medical bills, looking for answers. But there are no answers, except to say she isn’t 40 any more and she isn’t even 45. She meets with one running specialist who works on her form and gives her some advice on tackling the steep climbs. “Don’t look at the top of the hill,” he tells her. Too daunting. The despair alone will stop you. “Keep your head down,” he stresses, “and take one step at a time.”
Shannon Allen announces she can’t run the marathon. She’s pregnant. Their third child. A boy expected. She will cheerlead instead.
Sheryl soldiers on in the cold and wind. Her improved running form seems to work. She has to spend money for her entrance fee, appointments with doctors and trainers, some medications, sneakers and running clothes while also writing letters and sending emails for her fund raising. All in all, a huge commitment in time, money, and emotion.
The weather begins to warm. The snow melts away. In the days leading up to the run, Sheryl begins to feel increasingly nervous. Several Joslin runners have already had to drop out because of injury. Sheryl pulls a hamstring during a workout, and she wonders what body part is most vulnerable. The night before the run, the Joslin invites all runners and a guest to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant – quality carbo loading. But Sheryl declines. She doesn’t want to experiment with unfamiliar food. We go to Bertucci’s.
She can’t sleep, so on the morning of the race, she wakes up at 4:15 a.m. The kids and I are going to take the train to the finish line, but we don’t have a train pass, so in the pitch black Sheryl drives to the train station, buys a pass, and comes home.
A friend in town who’s also running the marathon picks Sheryl up at 7 a.m. and drives her to the starting line. The elite runners start at 10 a.m. Sheryl’s group starts at 10:30.
There are more than 26,000 entrants. Sheryl’s number is 23,550 – add them up, she tells me, and they equal 15. She says her birthday is February 15, so it must be a good omen. I sense desperation.
The weather is pretty good -- cool and cloudy, but a stiff headwind. Friends and family of Joslin runners meet in Wellesley, on a church parking lot, to cheer runners on. We’re about 15 miles past the starting line. Yes, the elite runners are part machine, part gazelle, who inspire awe, but the real drama lies elsewhere. There are the blind runners, who traverse the course holding the arm of another; or the wheel chair racers pumping with their arms; or the man with no legs but two flexible prosthetics that allow him to run all 26.2 miles. Others dress in costume, in Speedo bathing suits, in shirts inscribed with the names of fallen loved ones.
Jay Hewitt, a tri-athlete with type 1 diabetes, is hired by Joslin to run the marathon, looking for our runners to give them encouragement. When he reaches our group, he looks not the least bit winded. He asks if anyone has a glucose meter. Even for an experienced runner, a marathon can cause your blood sugar to go crazy. I give him my meter. He pricks his finger, squeezes a drop of blood, and puts it on the strip.
He’s 102.
Show off.
Shannon Allen arrives and hugs everyone. She is very pregnant. In the evening, the Celtics have a playoff game against the Chicago Bulls. The Allens live nearby, and Shannon is walking to the market to buy Ray chicken thighs, which she will cook for his pre-game meal.
Runners are there for all kinds of causes – cancer, heart, liver, AIDs. It seems that every body organ or cell group is represented. We cheer on the Joslin runners, but Sheryl is late. She said she’d be by at 1 p.m., and 1:30 passes. Did she stop?
No, she’s running toward us and we see her. She’s in a long-sleeve baby blue shirt and gray tights. She waves to us, gives us hugs, and we take her picture. She appears to be hurting.
But what the heck. I want to tell her if she hurries, she can catch Batman and Robin, about two miles in front of her.
Joined by another family, my two kids and I make our way downtown on packed trains. We meet Sheryl’s sister and husband near the finish line. We wait. Each runner has a computer chip attached to his or her shoestring, so we can somewhat track Sheryl’s progress. It’s past 3:30 and she’s still moving. Then I see, in the distance, the baby blue shirt. We wave and scream and cheer her on. She waves with both arms and yells out and is crying with tears of pain and joy and love. Yes, she is hurting.
The announcer calls out “Sheryl Hirsch of Needham” as she crosses the finish line in five hours and 32 seconds. She was more than three hours behind the Kenyans, but we’re proud of her. When we see her next, she is draped in a silver wrap given to all runners to stave off hypothermia. She says the run was much harder this time, and on several occasions she thought she wouldn’t make it. “When I was at Newton-Wellesley, I wanted to take the T in,” she says. But she kept going. She knew what was at stake, she knew the many sacrifices that other parents have made before her, and she knew who the real heroes are. They are the high-spirited diabetic children who bring lightness and joy to those around them.
* * *
The Celtics lost the first game in the series and face a must-win game on the night of the marathon. Ray Allen, the Celtics’ second-leading scorer, had a miserable first game and only has two points in the first half of game two. The Bulls are young and fast, and Ray isn’t 26 anymore and he isn’t even 32. At half time, Celtics coach Doc Rivers tells his team, “I need a volunteer who will step up and score.”
That volunteer is Ray Allen, who shakes his shooting slump. He is probably the greatest three-point shooter in NBA history, and he once again looks like it. With other Celtics injured or struggling, he stages a virtuoso shooting performance and keeps the Celtics in the game. With less than a minute and down by one, he tips an offensive rebound to a teammate, gets the ball right back, and swishes a 3-pointer.
The crowd goes crazy, but the Bulls, down by two, answer with a field goal to tie the game. Down to the final shot, the Celtics set up a play for Ray. He rubs off a screen and receives a pass beyond the 3-point arc. In one motion, he shoots the ball as a taller defender leaps to block it. Ray somehow sees the basket, lofts the ball over the defender’s hand, and makes the basket with 2 seconds to go. Pandemonium follows. Celtics win, 118-115.
Maybe it’s the marathon mojo. Maybe it’s the glycemic Gods. Maybe it’s the chicken thighs. But in one of the great shooting halves in Celtics’ history, Ray finishes with 30 points – a fitting climax to a day in which he inspired a group of parents and friends to run for his child, and ours.
* * *
Sheryl raises more than $7,000, and the Joslin group raises more than $100,000. Sheryl takes a shower, changes, and we head home. She’s a little bit sore but nothing that some Advil and a glass of wine won’t heal.
I don’t know if they’ll ever cure diabetes, but no matter how daunting the challenge or how steep the hill, parents will give their last breath to make it to the finish line. Words to live by:
Don’t look at the top of the hill.
Keep your head down.
One step at a time.
