At our annual international young adults activity this weekend we were pleased to have three guests from Italy. One of them, Marco Tanzi from Parma, proved to be a really good trooper.

I met Marco and the other two at the Cologne-Bonn airport on Thursday morning, and then we drove approximately one hour to the activity site, at the outskirts of the scenic Eifel region in Germany southwest of Cologne. The rest of the group was not scheduled to arrive until mid-afternoon, so our first planned meal was a late light lunch to be followed later by a regular evening meal.

Upon our arrival at the activity site, Marco asked me when we would have lunch. An understandable question, since he and the other two Italian guests had gotten up at 4 a.m. to catch their flight from Milan to Cologne. I said that it would probably be ready around 2 p.m. We offered to take them into town to have breakfast, but they declined.

The group started to arrive and we had our late lunch. Later that evening I understood why Marco was very interested to know when we would have lunch. He told me that he has diabetes and depends on a daily injection of insulin. We were all concerned that the long delay between his meals might have affected his overall condition.

And it had. That night Marco (in the picture with activity coordinator Jesmina Allaoua from Germany) was on the verge of lapsing into a hypoglycemic condition because his normal amount of insulin for the day proved to be too much for the amount of food he had eaten. He woke up in the night and drank some orange juice with water, which helped. The next morning, though, his glucose level was much higher than normal, so he asked me for help. Would I be able to arrange a flight back to Italy for him two days early so he could get his blood sugar level back to its normal stable state? It was obvious that Marco was not pleased for having caused us – as he saw it – extra work. I really think he wanted to stay, but we all agreed his health was more important.

So we got the flight booked and I drove him back to the Cologne-Bonn airport after lunch. He took the afternoon flight back to Milan and made it back to his home in Parma that night. When I got back to the activity site from the airport, one of the young adults asked me:"Did you know that today is Marco’s birthday?" I and most of the group had no clue. Well, Marco, here’s a belated happy birthday to you! And looking forward to seeing you at next year’s activity!