Ten Years Later (19 page)

The neuropsychologist also helped stock Diane’s tool kit for her personal life. He
suggested that her family should offer up more cues and reminders throughout the day.

“ ‘Mom, we have to leave in thirty minutes,’ ” Diane mimics, “where normally, Mom
wouldn’t be anywhere close to being ready, or Mom would be late because of my problems
with time. That’s why I burn stuff all the time. I put something in the oven, then
go outside to fill up the horse tank or something, and come in and, boom! Burnt.”

The doctor also explained that mental fatigue is a significant issue for a brain-injury
victim. Grouchy behavior is the brain’s way of signaling,
I’m done for today
.

“I’d be go, go, go all day with the kids and coaching and I’d come home and I’d say
to Scott, ‘Why am I so irritable? Why am I so grumpy?’ I remember saying that to him
for years. And the kids would see it. They’d see Mom being short, and that wasn’t
me.”

Diane’s more than seven years of therapy with the neuropsychologist have helped the
Van Derens better understand her limitations. Family calendars, dozens of sticky notes,
and backups to the backup reminders are vital.

“If I don’t see it I’ll forget about it. I have it here,” Diane says, pointing to
a large calendar, “then I have another note on my fridge in case the calendar gets
a little overwhelming for my head, and then I have another reminder on my phone alarm.”

When her kids’ birthdays roll around, she places notes throughout the house and in
the car to remember to call. Simply recognizing that she needs help at times was an
essential tip for Diane from the doctor.

“He told me I shouldn’t be afraid when I see somebody to tell them, ‘I have a brain
injury; I need some help.’ I never used to say that.”

Diane jokes about the days when she didn’t write things down and, as a result, would
ask a dozen people for directions in a city she’d traveled to for a speaking engagement.

“When I was in Chattanooga, a guy in the audience raised his hand and said, ‘Do you
remember me? I’m the guy on the bike you asked for directions!’ ” She laughs, “I’d
get to know half the city when I’d go running before a speech in town.”

The same year Diane began working with the neuropsychologist at Craig Hospital, she
met Barb Page, who is now one of her dearest friends.

“When I look at her,” says Barb, “it’s like you see molecules just bouncing off each
other. That’s how I see Diane—her brain, her muscles, her being. It’s just hard for
her to sit down and relax, ever. She is in constant motion in her head and in her
heart and in her body.”

Barb was working in 2004 as the executive director of the Craig Hospital Foundation.
She met Diane when they both were involved in coordinating a philanthropic tour of
the hospital. An early bond developed between the two because of Barb’s familiarity
with the challenges of traumatic brain injuries.

“She wants to believe she’s capable of doing more than she can do,” says Barb, “and
she’ll beat up on herself. And I’ll say, ‘Diane, you’ve lost part of your brain. You
can’t compensate for everything.’ ”

Over the years, Barb has become Diane’s sounding board, and also a voice of reason.
At seventy-two, Barb says she can offer Diane motherly advice.

“I often say, ‘When you go to X, Y, Z city, you are not to rent a car but instead
take a taxi.’ It’s things a mother would do in many ways, but she usually listens
to me.”

Usually, but not always. Barb says the same steely determination that makes Diane
an elite athlete can also get her into trouble.

“She flew to Atlanta to be part of a meeting seventy miles away, and I said, ‘Diane,
you cannot get in a car and make that drive by yourself.’ Well, her hardheadedness
came into play and she did it. And it took her an hour and a half to find a highway
that’s ten minutes from the airport.”

Diane admits, “She knows me much better that way than I probably know myself. With
a brain injury, we can be impulsive and we can be . . .” She snaps her fingers twice,
signaling urgency. “She helps me pause and think,
Y’know, you’re right
. And the beauty of the friendship is I don’t have to hide anything; she understands.
I can be more open and share things with her.”

In 2005, the trail miles began to increase exponentially for Diane. She’d also signed
on with the North Face as one of the company’s sponsored endurance athletes and speakers.
The running world knew nothing of Diane’s struggles with brain damage, not even the
North Face. When she first began competing, Diane tucked a seizure pill wrapped in
foil inside her hydration pack, just in case.

“I didn’t want to be treated differently,” Diane says. “I didn’t want to be judged.
I didn’t want to incite fear in a race director. I knew I was responsible for me.
I wanted to prove myself as an athlete.”

But in late 2005, the death of a little boy brought Diane’s personal story to life.

She was working with a foundation in Breckenridge, Colorado, that raised money for
adults and children with disabilities. At a winter fund-raiser, Diane was approached
by a family after she delivered the event’s keynote speech. The Nelsons told Diane
that their six-year-old son suffered from seizures and that he was a possible candidate
for the brain surgery that had helped Diane.

“I met Hunter,” Diane says, “and he was so precious. I tried to tell his parents what
it felt like for him to have seizures, and I encouraged them to have the surgery.
They told me they were good friends with Garth Brooks.”

The country music superstar had arranged to fly Hunter to a facility where he’d be
put through the same electroencephalogram test that Diane had undergone to determine
the focal point of his seizures. The surgery could change his life, as it had hers.
But on the day of the scheduled flight, there was heartbreaking news.

“I got the phone call that Hunter had died,” Diane says softly, “and that’s the morning
I was driving up to the Teva Mountain Games in Vail, trying to hold it together.”

The night before the plane was to pick him up, Hunter suffered a seizure and suffocated
in his sleep. Devastated, Diane began to feel a plan unfolding in her mind. Here she
was, surrounded by the top athletes in the world, at a well-known annual event covered
by the mainstream media, sponsored by a global company. Now was the time. This was
the way to honor the kids at camp years earlier who’d asked Diane to tell the world
they were just like everybody else. The plan came together when Diane’s name was announced
as Female Runner of the Year.

“I was standing up there onstage holding this trophy,” Diane describes, “and that’s
when I shared. I just pictured Hunter and it was just time. A little boy had just
lost his life to a seizure and that’s when I stood onstage and said, ‘I want to dedicate
this trophy to little Hunter Nelson.’ I said, ‘Ten years ago today I couldn’t even
take a bath alone, because if I had a seizure I could drown. I’m here now today, running
all the hardest races in the world, because of surgery. I’m here and Hunter isn’t.’ ”

Now the world knew. This elite athlete was the incredible woman she was despite the
challenges she’d been dealt. Her close friend Richard, whom she told of her seizures
that very first ultra race, defines her not as an ultra runner, but rather as an ultra
lifer. He says adversity fuels Diane’s passion for excellence.

“Many of us look at things and we might have an inner conversation about why we want
to achieve that thing, but then we also have
a whole committee of voices in there about why we can’t achieve it. All the excuses
kick in:
Oh, I haven’t trained, I don’t have the right equipment, I don’t have the time,
or
Poor me, I have a foot injury,
” says Richard. “But with Diane, she has plenty of reasons. She could make excuses,
but she never uses them. Instead, she says, ‘Okay, this is what happened to me, I’m
gonna succeed here, even though I’ve been given an extra challenge.’ She leverages
what other people may call a handicap in a way that gives her strength. There’s a
flame inside her that won’t go out.”

In addition to five other ultramarathons in 2005, Diane decided to compete in her
longest race yet: the Iditarod Trail Invitational. You’ve probably heard of the Iditarod
or have watched teams of sled dogs pull their mushers across the endless, barren miles
of Alaska. The race Diane signed up for didn’t allow dog power. For the Iditarod Trail
Invitational, Diane had to pull her own sled, packed with forty pounds of supplies
and survival gear. The course spanned 350 miles through frozen tundra. Temperatures
reached 60 degrees below zero, and the winter daylight was brief. When Diane told
Scott she was going, he was angry. They had not discussed her decision as a couple.
He felt a maddening mix of being disrespected and being afraid for his wife.

“That was a tough day. It was winter and we live four point eight miles from Sedalia,”
says Scott. “I remember putting on full Gore-Tex and gloves and a hat and I walked
to and from Sedalia in the middle of the night. I think I came home at three thirty
in the morning. I just couldn’t process it.”

Scott was conflicted. He loved that Diane followed her heart, but he wanted her to
take her common sense with her. He’d joined her often enough during races to know
that she had fantastic instincts and an innate ability to make solid decisions under
pressure. It was the things Scott couldn’t control, like Mother Nature, that scared
him. Once he accepted the fact that Diane was going, he began to
research the Iditarod Trail Invitational. He found the controllable risks to be generally
minimal. There would be a large support team and there would always be other competitors
along the route with Diane. Scott was on board.

Diane, serving as musher and dog, began the long haul of pulling a sled across 350
miles of unforgiving tundra. She covered fifty miles each day, trying to complete
the race in seven days while battling hurricane-force winds and hostile wildlife.

“The moose are huge in Alaska, and that’s the first time I’ve ever had to sign a waiver
that if a moose kicked me, the race people were not liable.” Diane chuckles. “And
I thought,
A moose? C’mon
. But if you run across a moose, they’ll stomp you, they’ll attack you, they’ll kill
you. They’re very aggressive animals.”

Sure enough, it was a moose that took Diane out of the race. Not the animal itself,
but the deep hole left behind by a moose as it walked through the snow. While navigating
a steep embankment in the dark, wearing a headlamp, Diane accidentally stepped into
a moose hole. The weight of her sled yanked her body backward, causing a groin pull.
The next aid station was eighty miles away, so Diane was forced to painstakingly drag
her strained leg with one hand and her sled with the other. When she finally hobbled
into the aid station, which consisted of a tarp, she tried to rest her leg. Her ankle,
which she would learn later was stress fractured, was so swollen she couldn’t cram
it back into her boot. Diane was forced to pull out of the race at 260 miles.

“That’s when I said, ‘Screw it. If I’m gonna do this again, I’m gonna do something
harder, colder, and farther.’ ”

That would be the Yukon Arctic Ultra 300, billed as the world’s coldest and toughest
ultra. Scott was apprehensive but once again took a deep breath.

“If you can see her eyes light up when she talks about the Yukon and the welcoming
people and the crisp bitter cold and the sun,” he says with a lilt in his voice, “and
the way the stars reflect on the snow . . . I understand the appeal of all that. It
just brings her alive. I just . . . worry about her.”

Diane’s mother has also struggled with the adventurous spirit of her daughter. Scott
says he came up with an analogy for her mom that also comforts him. He pictures an
aviator who blazed her trail in the sky.

“I can just see the scarf blowing back in the wind and her looking out of the plane.
Amelia Earhart was born to fly. She probably didn’t stay home and sew socks or make
beef stew a lot, and we wouldn’t expect her to. Clearly, Diane has carved out this
niche that she was intended to be in: inspiring other people; using her ability; being
connected to the North Face, which gives her this chance to represent
a company in a positive way and influence young girls about things that they can do;
and she relates to people about overcoming obstacles. So, I struggle sometimes and
get frustrated when I don’t get enough Diane time, and yet I’m part of something that’s
even bigger.” He adds, jokingly, “But sometimes, I would like to come home and have
beef stew for dinner.”

In 2007, a decade after her brain surgery, Diane was thriving. The operation had given
her the freedom from worry and harm she’d so desperately wanted for herself and her
family. That year, Diane spoke to three different groups about hope for beating epilepsy
and how to manage the inevitable challenges of life. On the ultramarathon circuit,
Diane’s feet did the talking. She ran seven grueling races, besting her former finish
time in the Hardrock 100 by three hours.