Kicking diabetes out of the driver's seat

COEUR d'ALENE — 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.’”

And it hasn't slowed him down. If anything, it has motivated him to aim higher. Kimball is now the first and only licensed driver in the history of IndyCar to win a race at the top tier of the series, and he was back in the driver's seat six months after his diagnosis to claim a podium finish.

"I finished second," he said. "I remember standing on the podium, kissing that trophy, thinking, 'Not only am I the same driver that I was before I was diagnosed, I think I am a better racer because of my diabetes.' Each corner, each lap, each race, means more to me now than it ever has before."

Kimball shared his story of diagnosis, management and his careful return to racing with a full room of engaged listeners, many who also have diabetes.

Hailie Velasco, 9, of Coeur d'Alene, attended the event with her mom and best friend. She was diagnosed with diabetes when she was 8. She said she could relate to Kimball because she experienced similar symptoms before her diagnosis.

"I thought it was really cool," she said of his presentation. "It made me feel like I'm not the only one with diabetes."

"It was very inspirational," said her mom, Lyndsey Osborn. "Just how he was saying that it can't be perfect all the time, but if you manage it well, you're going to do good."

Kimball was preceded by presenter director Dr. Maria Rodebaugh, who discussed diabetes facts and information about care and services at Kootenai Clinic, which was one of the major sponsors of the event. She explained that diabetes causes blood sugar to rise above normal levels and that more than 26 million Americans have diabetes while millions more will develop it.

“Jokingly, in the endocrine world, we say there are maybe 26 million diabetics and the rest don’t know that they have it,” she said. “We prefer not to use the term 'borderline diabetes.' We don’t want to downplay the condition that precedes diabetes, it is just as serious and we take it just as seriously in intervening and treating and so we like to call it 'pre-diabetes.'”

Kimball, who races with Novo Nordisk Chip Ganassi Racing in the Verizon IndyCar Series, visits different cities throughout the U.S. to share his powerful message of overcoming diabetes. In 2012, he earned the Jefferson Award for Public Service as well as IndyCar's Rising Star Award.

"There is no 'one-size-fits-all' with diabetes management," he said. "You have to figure out how to make diabetes work in your life so you can do what you want, rather than changing your life too much to fit diabetes."