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Diagnosis: Diabetes
Children Get Diabetes Too
By Paul Hartwick
By day Jeff Hitchcock is a technology guru working for a digital media company. During his off hours, hešs the editor and Webmaster for a Web site that he created as a labor of love.
The site's not just any old self-built home page it's childrenwithdiabetes.com, one of the most comprehensive diabetes-related sites on the Internet.
"Diabetes is as much about information as it is about insulin," Hitchcock says. "People living with diabetes are eager to learn as much as they can about it, and about the research underway to find a cure."
Hitchcock knows plenty about diabetes. His 12-year-old daughter, Marissa, was diagnosed with diabetes when she was 24 months old. Providing medical care for a toddler, as any parent knows, is difficult. They can't always communicate with you. With Marissa, it was often a challenge.
"We often wondered if she was experiencing (low blood sugar) or just having a 'terrible twos' tantrum," Hitchcock says. "The only way to know is to check the blood sugar, so we tested her quite often. Overall, families make diabetes part of their routine. You have to. Life continues on, and you must learn to fit diabetes into your life to give your child as normal a life as possible. There simply is no other choice."
It's still is challenge for Hitchcock and his family. Marissa experiences dangerous middle-of-the-night blood-sugar lows. An insulin pump, following dietary regulations and frequent blood-sugar monitoring are parts of daily life.
The same goes for Renee Bernett's 17-year-old daughter, Melissa. "Even a simple suburban rite of passage (playing in a girls' softball league) was tainted by the specter of diabetes, as I anxiously chased after Melissa in-between innings, imploring her to eat another bite of her sandwich, because she hadn't eaten enough carbohydrates yet to balance her insulin intake," Bernett says. "She was mortified, and I was mollified by believing that whatever extremes I'd gone to would protect her from the ravages of this insidious disease."