Junior learns to live with diabetes

Sitting down at the lunch table, junior Hana Michael sets down her food to test her blood sugar, quickly jabbing her finger with a lancet for a sample of blood and inserting the sample into her glucose meter to calculate her current blood sugar.  The routine is practically automatic now. She’s been drawing blood from herself after every meal since she was about 5, when she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. 

Among diabetics, she considers herself lucky because she was diagnosed before the symptoms got too serious.

“I was going to the bathroom a lot, and I was drinking a ton a sugary fluids, while refusing solids. My mom began to realize something was wrong,” Michael said.  “She took me to my pediatrician who told us that I had Type 1 and needed to go to the hospital immediately.”

According to Michael, Type 1 diabetes is caused by to the human immune system going into overdrive and mistaking beta cells in the pancreas for viruses that need to be destroyed.  The antibodies attack the beta cells, eventually destroying the insulin-making part of the pancreas.  According to the American Diabetes Association, insulin is a hormone that is needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy needed for daily life.  Around 13,000 to 15,000 children are diagnosed with Type 1 each year in the U.S. alone.

Whenever someone with this type of diabetes, like Michael, ingests sugar, the sugar simply builds up in the bloodstream until the body finds some way to get rid of it, such as urinating or vomiting. 

After her doctor diagnosed her, Michael was rushed to Stanford Hospital, where she spent three days learning how to inject insulin and test her blood sugar.  A year later, she received her first pump.

“[A pump is] kind of like a replacement pancreas for your body, except it’s outside of your body.” Michael said.  “It gives you a continuous flow of insulin throughout the day.”

Before each meal, Michael tests whether she’s “high” or “low” on sugars and adjust her diet accordingly.  This way she doesn’t have to wait to feel the physical indications of the extreme levels of sugar, such as getting woozy, thirsty and irritable from being too high or getting shaky, sweaty, quiet and irritable from being too low.

This testing might sound difficult, but it only takes Michael about a minute or two to do.

“It used to be that I could just run around without worrying, and I’m still able to do that, I just have to keep a closer eye on what I eat and when I eat,” Michael said.

She said the disease doesn’t affect her education or activities much because she’s extremely careful.  For example, if she’s low on blood sugar after a P.E. class, she has some candy to increase her sugar level. 

A cure for diabetes is still in the research process, but Michael said that supporting the people who have it is a huge help.  She goes to a summer camp for children with diabetes called Camp Bearskin every summer.  She has been attending since elementary school and considers it like her second family.

“It’s funded by [the] Diabetic Youth Foundation, and it’s a camp for kids growing up with Type 1,” Michael said.  “It’s a sleep-away camp; so it’s like a traditional summer camp except there’s a lot more emphasis on diabetes education.”

Michael explained it’s helpful because the other campers can relate to what she’s going through.

“There’s groups where you can talk about negative experiences you may have had with diabetes,” Michael said.

By doing this, Michael and her camp friends can learn from each other’s experiences or offer advice.

“I’ve had friends who’ve had people who have come up to them after they found out that they had Type 1 and said, ‘You shouldn’t be [at this school].’”

Just as summer camp has helped to provide Michael with a support group, Michael taught another student in middle school how to live with Type 1 diabetes.

“Her second year in middle school she was diagnosed with Type 1, so I was put in charge [by the school] of explaining to her exactly how everything worked, like testing before every meal,” Michael said.

Michael wants to continue to promote education and research for diabetes. 

“There are lots of myths about Type 1 that I’ve encountered that I’d like to put an end to once and for all,” Michael said.  “There’s also a fair amount of ignorance about Type 1 out there.”

Michael thinks that there can be a potential cure for Type 1, but she’s not sure whether it will be in her lifetime.

“[Type 1] a burden I have to carry, but at the same time I’ve learned so much and developed so much self-discipline from having it.  I’m proud of that,” Michael said. “I’ve had it for so long that it’s become pretty much one of my characteristics.”