Thirty Before Thirty

T-shirts, underwear, and medical letters in multiple languages. Sunglasses, camera, and an entire box of glucose sachets. Admittedly, my packing lists look a little different to most. I've spent a lifetime making sure I could effectively manage a medical condition while on the move. For me it's all I know, and it's easy to forget sometimes that my condition impacts on me at all. At least until I'm trying to work out how to jam 35 packets of white powder into my luggage...

I was born with a rare metabolic condition called MCADD. A potentially fatal condition that prevents your body from being able to fast. It means that if I'm sick or unable to eat for any reason, things can go wrong quickly. In times of crisis, packets of white glucose powder keep me alive.

At the time I was diagnosed, the stats were grim. 1 in 60,000 kids were born with MCADD and the majority of them wouldn't make it past the age of 2 or 3 without being 'compromised'. Born into a family who had already lost a child to the condition, what the future held was anyone's guess.*

As a kid, hospital admissions were frequent, I was the stuff of nightmares for school absence policies, and far more au fait with cannulas, tourniquets, and glucose drips than your average five year old. Unfortunately, I was also born with a horrendous case of itchy feet, which hasn't always made for the most compatible combination. As I've gotten older, I've found ways to make travel a huge part of my life and I suppose in many ways it's been my way of breaking boundaries, and ensuring that my condition doesn't hold me back. In the words of Anaïs Nin, 'Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage' and I was determined not to let my little world shrink to any smaller than it had to be, dictated by an illness I had had no say in. And so I learnt to plan for and mitigate risks, to think on my feet, and to be prepared for just about anything. While it might take some of the spontaneity out of adventure, it's made me a dab hand in a crisis, given me some hilarious stories, and made me a great expedition planner to the point that I chose it as a career pre-covid. In many ways it's what propelled me towards a love of adventure in the first place. Growing up with a serious medical condition made me more independent, more determined. It taught me that with careful planning, some forethought and a little adjustment, just about anything is possible.

But travel is also the place my condition is most visible. I wear a necklace that alerts paramedics should I take ill, I carry medical and customs letters in foreign languages, I once travelled around Mozambique with a value pack of Rice Crispies in my case just to ensure I wouldn't get stuck without food, and it's the reason I find myself crossing my fingers in the hopes that no one takes exception to the largest sugar fix they've ever seen, as my bags full of glucose powder go through security. Planning and packing for Thirty Before Thirty is a reminder that I'm incredibly lucky to get off as unscathed as I do with the condition I have, but also of how hard I've fought to get to the point that I could manage my condition while solo and a million miles away from home. Packing light on the other hand, is a challenge I've still not quite mastered...

*Thanks to advances in medicine and increased screening, the outlook for kids born with MCADD now are significantly better. Recent estimates put the incidence rate at 1 in 10,000-20,000 kids in the UK being born with the condition, and with good management the majority of MCADD kids will go on to live full and healthy livesRead more