George R. Spatz
Amy B. Manning
Watching a road full of bicyclists wearing red and white leave the start line at the Chicagoland Tour de Cure brings up a range of emotions for Amy B. Manning.
The bike ride raises money for the American Diabetes Association to help find a cure for the disease.
It’s enough of a challenge to bike 65 or 100 miles for anyone, let alone for a rider with diabetes. That makes it all the more inspiring, Manning said.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for them,” she said. “Because an endurance ride like that, you have to check your blood a bunch of times and you have to make sure you have exactly the right amount of food with you.”
Manning, the managing partner of McGuireWoods LLP’s Chicago office, knows the blood-check routine all too well. It’s been a part of her daily life for the past 17 years as someone who lives with diabetes.
In the U.S., 29.1 million people have diabetes and another 1.7 million people over the age of 20 are newly diagnosed with the disease every year, according to the American Diabetes Association.
A team of 20 riders and 15 volunteers from McGuireWoods and the Association of Corporate Counsel rode in the ADA’s Chicagoland Tour de Cure on Sunday in Aurora.
Team McGuireWoods/ACC Chicago raised $12,866 this year. Last year, the team raised more than $11,000. The firm has been a signature sponsor of the event for the past four years.
Riders in the race who have the disease wear red jerseys with the words “I Ride with Diabetes” on the back and supporters yell, “Go Red Rider” to cheer them on.
“To see all of these people riding and all of the participants saying ‘Go Red Rider’ is just a very inspiring moment,” Manning said. “I say all the time that that moment is like my opportunity to see humanity at its best.”
Stepping out
Seventeen years ago, Manning was thinking of having children and went to see her doctor for a routine physical checkup. Shortly after the visit, her doctor called with her lab results.
“‘Your blood sugar is so high you should be in a coma,’” Manning recalled her doctor’s words. “‘This must be a lab error.’”
It wasn’t a mistake.
While researching information on diabetes, she was connected to the ADA and saw that their annual Step Out Walk was coming up. Manning said she wanted to do something to help in the fight against the disease and signed up.
From the time of her diagnosis just five weeks before the walk, Manning had been learning how to prick her finger to test her blood sugar levels, monitor her carbohydrate consumption and give herself shots of insulin.
It was a rough and scary time, she said, and being surrounded by others with diabetes and their supporters at the Step Out Walk was comforting.
“It was the first moment that I felt like everything would be fine,” she said. “That I would be able to have children, that I would be able to continue in my demanding career and that I was going to stay healthy.”
Manning eventually joined the ADA’s Chicago Community Leadership Board, which she chaired for two years. Her firm started sponsoring teams for the walk, and McGuireWoods partner George R. Spatz and his family did one of the events with Manning and her three children. Then, in April 2012, Spatz himself was diagnosed with diabetes.
“When he called me, I actually couldn’t believe it,” Manning said. “Now I sort of walk and ride for him too.”
After his diagnosis, Spatz said he asked his doctors a lot of questions about how he got the disease, how it would progress and if the disease is hereditary. The response he got to most of those questions was “we don’t really know.”
The first time he did the Tour de Cure, Spatz said he was still learning to live with diabetes and was frustrated about the lack of information. He remembers stopping for lunch at restaurant on the route and someone asking him questions about the disease when he wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.
Unlike Manning, Spatz said he didn’t feel like an immediate part of the diabetic community.
“By the end of the ride, after the ride, thinking about it, I had the same sense of, ‘well here’s a community that’s coming together trying to find these answers, trying to do something about it,’” he said.
‘Go Red Rider’
Spatz was the team captain this year and also served on the 2015 Chicagoland Tour de Cure executive committee. The ride offered five different routes at distances of 10, 20, 40, 65 and 100 miles that all had the same finish line so riders of all levels could participate.
Each route had rest stops along the way, which gave all riders a chance to take a break and the Red Riders time to check blood sugar levels.
Diabetes is a metabolic disease in which the body doesn’t respond properly to insulin, does not produce enough of it and, in some cases, is producing too much insulin. Insulin is a hormone that helps convert glucose into energy and plays a role in other cellular functions to maintain a healthy body.
Diabetes has no cure, Manning said, but it’s a manageable disease that requires careful insulin monitoring all the time.
One of the myths associated with the disease is that diabetics cannot consume sugar. The body converts sugars in carbohydrates into glucose, so diabetics keep track of the foods they’re eating and whether they need insulin or other medication to keep their blood sugar levels balanced.
“A piece of bread for some people with diabetes may actually make their blood sugar go up higher than a piece of chocolate will,” she said.
Spatz said research and technology have made it easier for those living with diabetes. Through his involvement with the ADA, he has heard stories of people who have lost function in their hands or other body parts from the disease and how in the past people had to reuse and sharpen their needles to give themselves injections. Today, there are disposable nano needles and small insulin pens instead of needles and vials.
Manning and Spatz said they’re proud that McGuireWoods sponsored the event and that so many of their colleagues participate.
When the firm raises money and asks people to join the team each year, Spatz said attorneys and staff tell him how they have a spouse, sister, brother, neighbor or someone else in their lives with diabetes and want to help.
“It’s amazing how it does grow that community,” he said. “It does feel very good personally to watch your co-workers and the people that you work with support something that means a lot to you personally.”
Manning and Spatz said one of the most moving things for them about the Tour de Cure is seeing diabetic children participate as “red riders.”
“Even though this is for me, because I am somebody with diabetes, I also feel even more committed to the cause because that little kid that’s three years old and wearing one of the Red Rider jerseys, what we’re doing is for him or her,” Manning said. “Because they have a long road with this disease.”