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“It was a shock” hearing the diagnosis for the first time, Wilk said. “Your whole world just kind of crashes around you. We were told, and from then on it’s a blur. Your kid is hysterical because he finds out he’s going to have finger sticks and get shots every few hours.
“It’s a horrible feeling to know what your child is going through.”
Yet there are bright spots. Wilk marks as a highlight, the day Cameron got his insulin pump, meaning his insulin injections could routinely enter his body on schedule.
Nelson said about 60 percent of his young patients are on insulin pumps, which deliver the greatest control in maintaining normal blood sugar values.
“I have put a 9-week-old on a pump,” he said.
Another highlight for Cameron came with a continuous glucose monitoring device that helps keep a closer eye on his blood sugar levels. Wilk acknowledges those advances and is thankful. She also knows, it could be worse.
“If my son has to have a chronic illness,” she said, “this is something we can live with. It could be worse.”
Because families are often devastated and overwhelmed with the disease, Nelson said his practice employs a host of people who can help, from counselors, to ChildLife specialists who help children adjust to needles, to the nurses and physicians involved in direct health care.
“It’s pretty intense the first month,” Nelson said. “That’s why you need a multidisciplinary approach, the more heads available helps us fiugre out the best way to meet each patient’s individual needs.”
Research advances
Those with Type 1 diabetes have heard the “five year” statement — that diabetes will be cured in five years — from researchers, health care workers and all sorts of other well-meaning people.
Yet the five years comes — and goes — and no cure. Then another five years, and nothing.
“You can’t say that around my son,” said Campbell Manning, about Neil Manning, 19, who has been dealing with juvenile diabetes for 10 years. “He doesn’t want to hear it anymore.”
Manning, executive director of the Western Carolinas Chapter of JDRF, heads off to work each day with one of the best jobs in world, she said. She spends her days trying to raise money to cure the disease that afflicts her son.
