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Kicking diabetes out of the driver’s seat

Kicking diabetes out of the driver’s seat

Via Coeur d’Alene Press

Open-wheel race car driver Charlie Kimball remembers when he first noticed something wasn’t quite right with his body.

“Things started to go off track throughout the summer (of 2007). I started making mistakes that weren’t typical of me as a driver,” Kimball said Saturday afternoon, speaking from a podium in The Hagadone Event Center. “I was spinning off, I was crashing. I remember telling my dad that I felt like I was running as fast as I could, but I was stuck in the mud.”

The No. 83 Chevrolet driver was thirsty, exhausted and he couldn’t seem to get warm. He wasn’t aware that he had lost 25 pounds until his doctor had him step on the scales.

“After the doctor convinced me that his scale wasn’t broken, I thought, ‘OK, there’s maybe something going on here,’” he said.

Kimball’s endocrinologist gave him news for which he wasn’t prepared — he is a Type 1 diabetic.

“I didn’t know what the doctor was going to say about my racing. I said, ‘OK, Doc, I’m a professional driver, am I ever going to drive again?’” Kimball said. “To me it seemed like someone had hit ‘pause,’ on my life, or at least super-slow motion … my whole world depended on what the doctor said. It seemed like forever. Then he looked up at me and he said, ‘I don’t see why not. There are incredible people doing amazing things with diabetes all over the world … it shouldn’t slow you down.’”

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