Cuba Bound

There was a time in my life -- sometimes it feels like a million years ago and sometimes it feels like yesterday -- when I would make a decision and run with it into a fire. Nothing could stop me or even necessarily slow me down.

It wasn't that I thought I was always right. It was that I didn't think period. Each day was a millennium and I was the sun at the middle of it all. It made for some rough going on occasion. But I wasn't looking back. I was going to live forever. Or die young. And neither gave me great pause.

Today, things are a bit more complicated. Oh, I'm still jumping off into the Universe in one way or another fairly commonly. I just published my second book. Myself. Which I'll launch in a few weeks (and it's already selling). I intend to publish a third before the new semester starts in the fall. I'm collaborating on a project to make money for my local African-American Heritage Museum. And this time next week, I'll be strolling along the seawall in Havana, Cuba, there to plan a conference for the fall of 2017.

But, while I appear to be bustling through my life in much the same way as I always have, the reality is that I'm anxious more often now -- and particularly since I was diagnosed with diabetes. The Diabetes Monster complicates everything. *sigh*

So I scanned the internet for input on all the disasters that could happen to me there. And the internet (with its bottomless promise to raise every terrifying likelihood) scared the be-jeezus out of me with a tale of woe posted by a young traveler last year. Her arrival in Cuba, vegetarian diet, lack of immediate funds, and diabetes combined to put her through a nightmare my brain latched onto for a minute like a millstone around my neck in an ocean of dark possibilities.

But the take-away for me was that I should (a) wear my medical bracelet (which I haven't worn since the first year I was on this journey); (b) make sure I have enough cash to have the funds I need to pay for food; (c) make a list of all my medications and their dosages, including insulin; and (d) carry with me the address of the Sociedad Cubana de Diabetes in Havana -- just in case. All of these seem pretty obvious, of course, but until I read the post online, I didn't think of doing any of them except for (b).

Thinking about all this in the middle of the night (when I would rather have been sleeping), I remembered that I'm better prepared to make the trip than she was and better prepared now than I was before I read her post. Plus I have friends in Cuba who won't abandon me to the elements -- or to my diabetes. And I also reminded myself that, as bad as her adventure went, she lived to write about it. So there is that. "Hasta luego!" ("See you later!")