No Days Off

by Max Domi

  More than that, I knew that I could have prevented the injury. Normally, it takes a lot for me to get mad, but when my blood sugar is high, it doesn’t take much. The night I broke my thumb, my blood sugar had been high. That’s not to say that every time I fight, my blood sugar level is high. But at times like that, the reality is that I have a short fuse. I had known I was high that night, but I hadn’t managed to deal with it. It wasn’t an excuse for my actions, but knowing that I could have avoided being injured for months on end was tough to swallow. It was a huge learning experience, and a mistake I told myself I would never make again.

  My parents and sisters tried to keep my spirits up during my rehab and recovery. It helped a bit—a simple text message from my mom about a movie she saw or something in the news always reminded me that there was a world outside of hockey. Sometimes, if she was with my little cousin, Devan, who was just a couple of years old, she would FaceTime me. Just seeing his smile always brightened my day. A few minutes of family time each day made a world of difference. I also took the time to work on myself and tried to strengthen my body and mind in order to make the most of a difficult situation.

  When I finally got back on the ice, it took me a while to get back into game shape. On March 2, 2017—my birthday, no less—we were playing the Sabres, and during the second period I went really, really low. I had given myself too much insulin earlier in the day, and by the time the second period came around I was crashing.

  At first I just felt tired. I figured I was still getting my legs back after my injury. Then it hit me that I was getting low. When I got on the ice, it felt like I was playing with a marble—I couldn’t keep the puck on my stick. As soon as I took two hard strides, I was absolutely exhausted. I kept the rest of my shift simple—anytime I had the puck, I just chipped it out, something that I had never done before. The shift felt like it was a minute long, but in reality it was only fifteen or twenty seconds. That’s when I said to myself, Holy smokes, this is not safe.

  I knew I was low, but I didn’t want to scare the trainers. When I got to the bench, I quietly told them that I was going low.

  I had never missed a shift in the NHL because of my diabetes, but that night in Buffalo was about as close as it got.

  “Can you pass me my drink?” I asked one of them. They passed me a special concoction that JP Major, one of the Coyotes trainers and strength coaches, had developed with Anne Peters. It was a specialty drink tailored to my needs. It was a blend of dextrose, a fast-burning carb to bring my blood glucose up; palatinose, otherwise known as isomaltulose, a slower-burning carb to maintain my blood sugar; and Gatorade powder, to add flavor and aid with an initial blood glucose spike. We often referred to it as “Max’s Secret Stuff,” in reference to the drink that Michael Jordan and the Looney Toons had in Space Jam.

  Thankfully, there was a TV time-out coming up. While I was sitting there on the bench during the break, I was still a little dazed as my blood sugar slowly climbed back up. I was so out of it that I let my eyes wander into the stands. Suddenly I spotted a familiar face—my uncle Dash was sitting just a couple of rows behind the penalty boxes.

  Great, now I’m hallucinating, I thought. But as my mind cleared, I realized that Dash was actually there. I started laughing to myself—the arena was sold out, my mind was foggy from my low blood sugar, and somehow I still managed to find my family in the crowd.

  Right away I started feeling better. I finished the rest of my drink, the TV time-out ended, and I was back to normal on my next shift. After the period ended, I went straight to the table of food in the dressing room—the drink had bought me some time, but I needed real food if I was going to keep my blood sugar from crashing again. The trainers stared at me for a few seconds and then started laughing.

  “Max, slow down,” one of them said.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, my mouth full of banana.

  The lifestyle of playing in the NHL pushes the boundary of living with type 1 diabetes. Exercise can cause blood sugar levels to drop, but it’s not an exact science—you can’t predict exactly how much your level will drop, whether it will be the same every time, or if it will happen during or after the exercise.

  I finished the game that night, but the effects of going so low took their toll on me, and I didn’t feel very well even a day later. We were playing back-to-back games, though, and the next day we were in Carolina. At that point in the NHL season everyone across the league feels the grind and is dealing with their own injuries. What makes you an NHL player is your ability to withstand the pain and find a way to mentally overcome those challenges.

  You can always rely on your family when things get tough. Especially when it came to my dad. He’d lived it—the highs and lows of life in the NHL—and he knew how to guide me through it. He was always happy to help, but most of the time he let me come to him. He didn’t want to distract me from the games. Sometimes he wouldn’t even tell me beforehand if he was going to be at one. The only time I ever spotted him in the crowd was when I saw him in the stands in Chicago toward the end of the season.

  I was setting up for a draw in the offensive zone at the end of a TV time-out, and I happened to see him a dozen rows up on the same side as the benches. I was surprised to see him there—whenever he went to a game, he sat much higher up or in a box so that I wouldn’t accidentally spot him. I knew that if my dad caught me looking at him while I was on the ice, he’d never let me forget it, so I quickly brought my attention back to the play. Later, when I was back on the bench, I told myself I wouldn’t look over at him again during the game. I hated knowing where he was—it was such a distraction—but I managed to stay locked in on the play. I never told him that I saw him sitting there. He would have been mad at me if I had.

  “Don’t think about the crowd,” he was always telling me. “Nothing matters other than what’s happening on the ice.”

  I called my dad a lot toward the end of my second season. Because of my hand injury, I ended up playing only fifty-nine games that year. Even worse, we missed the playoffs again.

  I hated missing the playoffs but I really liked the core of young players we had in Arizona. As much as I wanted to win and be in the playoffs, I knew from my dad how hard it is to be a winner in the NHL. As long as we kept working together, I figured we’d start moving in the right direction.

  I went into the summer of 2017 determined to get into the best shape of my life so that I could turn things around the next year. But a few months into my off-season, I had another scary incident.

  I had recently switched from an insulin pump to insulin pen injections. My insulin pump looked a bit like an older generation iPod. It would clip onto my waist and hold a reservoir of insulin that lasted three days. That unit was then connected by a tube to a site, a little patch that looked like a Band-Aid and adhered to either my butt cheek or my stomach. The unit delivered short-acting insulin twenty-four hours a day. There was a basal setting—a drip that was automatically administered throughout the twenty-four hours—as well as a bolus setting, which I manually dialed in at each meal. The pump used the same type of insulin for both settings. The pump was supposed to be convenient and easy, but it had become too much of a hassle for me. Things like my sweat, the friction from my equipment, or the force from a body check could sometimes break the pump or throw off the tubing or the site. I found myself often having to clean up the mess that came with having a pump, which just led to more stress as I chased my blood sugar levels far too often.

  So, I went back to pen injections, which were a more burdensome process. I used two types of pens. And unlike the pump, each pen held a different type of insulin. One was a long-acting insulin, which effectively did the same thing as the basal setting on the pump. The other pen held short-acting insulin, so it functioned the same way as the pump’s bolus setting. At the end of each pen, there was a dial to adjust the amount of my insulin dose. Because the two types of insulin worked differently, they required two completely different do
sages. I usually gave myself forty units of the long-acting insulin every morning and about five to eight units of insulin before every meal. I knew that with the pens, every time I injected myself, I could control exactly how much insulin was going into my system, and I could guarantee that it would be delivered. In general, people with diabetes have the same control with pumps as they do with shots—it all depends on the person to give the insulin correctly.

  But one day, I was at the house of my girlfriend for a family dinner. It was a long, two-and-a-half-hour meal, and I got distracted with all of the food and conversation. We were talking and hanging out afterward, when I excused myself and headed downstairs—I needed to inject myself with some insulin to balance out the carbs I had just eaten.

  My first mistake had been not testing my blood and giving myself insulin before the meal. I checked my blood and saw that I was pretty high. I could feel it—my mouth was dry, I was irritable, and my mind was all over the place. I reached into my diabetes bag and grabbed the pen with my short-acting insulin—the one I always used for meals.

  I had the right insulin. But because I was distracted and the pen was the same thickness as my long-acting one, I dialed up the dosage to the usual long-acting insulin level. Then, without thinking any more of it, I injected the insulin into my butt cheek.

  As I did, I was talking to my girlfriend, who was outside the bedroom door. Just as I was about to pull out the needle, I looked back. I was shocked to see that I had dialed up my short-acting insulin way too high. In fact, way too high didn’t do it justice—I’d given myself over thirty units of short-acting insulin, when all I needed was five!

  Within three seconds of realizing what I had just done, it hit me that I was in serious trouble.

  I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to figure out a plan. I knew I had a bit of time before the insulin hit me. First things first, I had to decide whether or not to call 911. That much short-acting insulin could kill a person.

  Luckily, my blood sugar was already high; it was at fifteen because I had waited so long after eating to inject myself with the insulin.

  “Can you get me some apple juice, please? ” I asked my girlfriend.

  She could tell right away that something was wrong. She brought me a juice bottle, and I sat down on the couch and chugged it down.

  “Can I please have more?” I asked. “A lot more.”

  At that point, my girlfriend could tell something was seriously wrong. I could see she was scared.

  “Please do not panic,” I said to her. “I need to stay calm. If I’m not calm, my blood sugar level is going to plummet.”

  I kept drinking as much juice as possible while I called Anne Peters. Anne had become something of a second mom to me, and she was always calm under pressure.

  “Max, this is unexpected,” she said when she picked up.

  “Anne, I’ve really screwed up,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  I filled her in on what had happened.

  “That’s not good,” she said when I told her how much insulin I’d injected. “Did you call 911?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “If you vomit or you begin to pass out, you have to call 911 so that the paramedics can get you to the hospital immediately. For now, you need to eat as many long-acting carbs as you can. You’re also going to need a shot of glucagon,” she said, referring to the same type of injection that the Tookes had given me when I’d gone low and unresponsive when I was their billet.

  My glucagon was at home, so I ended my call with Anne and dialed my mom.

  “Mom, I’m coming home,” I said.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I injected myself with way too much insulin. I need as many different types of carbohydrates and glucose as possible.”

  “I’ll get it ready. Get here safely.”

  When I walked in the door to my mom’s place, I felt the insulin beginning to hit me, and it was hitting me hard. I knew I had to stay calm, otherwise it would only make things worse. My blood sugar level was crashing. I started guzzling juice while my mom called Anne to update her.

  I had just eaten an entire dinner at my girlfriend’s family’s house—a massive steak with sweet potato fries, salad, vegetables, and then two gluten-free cookies topped off with some berries. I had been completely stuffed, but I knew that I needed an insane amount of carbs to counter the overdose of insulin that I’d accidentally given myself. There was no way to get the insulin out once I’d put it in, so it was a race between the insulin taking effect and the sugar I was ingesting getting into my bloodstream to counter it. Somehow my stomach found a way to make the room that I needed at that moment.

  I crushed orange juice and apple juice. I had chocolate cake and pasta. I followed that up with chocolate almond milk and a slice of toast with peanut butter and jam. I ate and drank all of that within an hour of getting home.

  At the same time, my mom was getting the glucagon needle ready. No matter how much I ate and drank, there was a chance it wouldn’t be enough sugar to counteract the insulin, so we wanted to be ready. We were managing an emergency situation, and we wanted to be as safe as possible as we tried to avert the worst possible scenario.

  Not many people ever give themselves a shot of glucagon. Usually, by the time it’s needed, the person with diabetes is unresponsive and unable to give the shot to themselves. And even if they were, glucagon shots are no fun—they hurt, they often make you vomit, and they’re only supposed to be used as a last resort.

  I kept eating and eating—ice cream, honey, maple syrup, cereal, any sugar or carbohydrate we had on hand. The entire kitchen counter was covered with food. While I ate, my mom timed the intervals between each blood test with the glucose meter, and she recorded a reading every five minutes—if I had to go to the hospital, she wanted to be able to give them my exact readings. My sisters were there, too, ready to call 911 if needed. I hoped I could eat enough to keep from passing out. I could barely choke down the food as I focused on not being sick. If I was, it would have been a disaster—my body wouldn’t be able to digest anything or absorb the sugar from the food, and I would have to go to the hospital immediately. At one point, my numbers plunged and we were ready to call the paramedics, but a few minutes later, they slowly started to climb, and I began to feel a little bit better.

  I didn’t get to sleep until the sun was almost up. I kept feeding sugar into my system, and my mom kept monitoring my blood sugar levels. The next afternoon, I came downstairs and sat beside my mom in the kitchen.

  “You don’t look great,” she said, giving me a hug.

  “Do you think I should work out today?” I asked.

  “Max, are you crazy?” she said. “Absolutely not.”

  “Okay, how about if I try to skate tonight, at least?”

  “No, Max. You were lucky. Hopefully there is never going to be a next time like this. But if there is, please just go straight to the hospital,” my mom pleaded.

  “I promise,” I said.

  I slowly recovered over the next couple of days. I was grumpy and tired—it felt like I’d run a marathon and was recovering—but at least my blood sugar levels held steady.

  I couldn’t believe I’d make a mistake like that. I had been living with the disease for a decade—surely I should have known better? I had made injection mistakes before, but nothing ever that bad.

  I was always in the moment, but I was also a forgetful person. It’s one thing to forget your jersey when you’re packing your hockey bag as a kid. But when it comes to health, those sorts of mistakes are the kind of thing you can’t afford to let happen. I’d let my guard down, and I realized what a huge mistake I’d made. I could have killed myself with that injection screwup if I hadn’t had help. Once again, my family had my back.

  My blood sugar levels were a little harder to read for the next few weeks, too. Later that summer, I was hanging out with my sisters at home. My mom was out getting groceries
, so we decided to order a pizza.

  “What kind of pizza do you want, Max?” Carlin asked.

  “I don’t want pizza,” I snapped, looking down at my phone.

  Carlin and Avery exchanged a look that I didn’t see. They could already tell what I was too distracted to know—I was snapping at people, which meant I was going low.

  Carlin knew that I was hungry and needed to eat something, so she ordered anyway. A few minutes later, everyone heard a massive bang. That bang was me; I had fallen trying to walk up the stairs.

  I had realized I was going low, so I was on my way to get some juice from the fridge when I wiped out. I got up and somehow made it to the fridge, hoping to get some ice cream. That’s when I fell again.

  Carlin came running over and found me sitting by the fridge, my head bleeding. She calmly started talking to me to see how I was feeling, and then Avery came running. Carlin got me sitting upright and had me hold a towel to the cut on my head. Then she gave me the ice cream that I was trying to get in the first place.

  “Thanks,” I slurred.

  I was conscious, but not totally with it at that point. As I started to eat some ice cream, I slowly started to come out of it and become more normal. Five minutes later, it really hit me how low I’d been. I was thankful that my sisters were so smart and calm.

  “Thank you both so much,” I said to Carlin and Avery later that night, once I’d recovered a bit. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  By the end of the summer, I had fully recovered. I was ready to put the past year behind me. The season had been a tough one, and the summer had thrown a lot at me. Once again, it was determination, resilience, and my support network of friends and family that had carried me through the tough times. All year long, my priorities had been out of whack. I’d lost sight of what was most important to me: managing my diabetes.

  My health had always been my priority, but those two incidents were a wake-up call, and they put things in perspective for me. I could see that I’d been playing with fire more than I should have. As a person with type 1 diabetes, one mistake can potentially cost you your life. Everyone makes mistakes—it’s impossible not to. It’s moments like those when you rely on the team around you for support. There’s no shame in asking for help. I realized that, no matter how prepared I thought I was—I could be a professional athlete, I could manage my condition—it didn’t matter; I was still learning from my mistakes on a daily basis. I was lucky. Lucky that I’d had help when I needed it. Lucky that I had such incredible support around me to help me when I made a mistake. I was grateful for that, and it was a reality check. But now it was time for me to get back on track.