This Saturday Paul and I will be walking in the JDRF Walk for A Cure in support of our 6 year old niece Maiya.My sister in-law, Maria, wrote about Maiya's story and I am posting it here for you to read. If you are able to make a donation, however small, we would really appreciate it! Here's a cute photo of Maiya and Stanley when we first brought Stanely home!
Support Maiya Lester in the 2007 Walk to Cure Diabetes
Maiya was diagnosed with Type 1, juvenile diabetes on November 10, 2004, shortly after her 4 year old birthday.
It is a day we will never forget and clearly remember as if it happened yesterday. She has come a long way since day one.
She went from 3 to 5 shots a day to 2 shots a day and is currently on the insulin pump. With the insulin pump, we change her site ( the area that is attached to the tubing that goes inside her body via needle) every 2 days. This means she still needs to endure the pain of needles and in addition she now checks her blood sugars about 10 to 11 times a day or more.
The insulin pump has brought back some normalcy into our life, if you can call it that. Now she can sleep in more often on the weekends, eat when she wants to and sometimes doesn't have to eat if she doesn't want to.
We are learning more and more about the pump each and every day and how her body reacts to it. Being on the pump is not as easy as it seems for a young child. She has to wear the pump 24/7, can only take it off for certain things like showering, or swimming, etc... She can only be disconnected from it for 1 hour at a time.
Yes, she has to sleep with it and it took her a while to get used to. We face daily challenges every day. It's not just physical but emotional as well.
This year we had decided to take a more quiet approach about raising money for the walk. We had fallen into our daily routine and life our new life with the pump.
Yesterday, something happened that made us change our mind about taking the backseat attitude. When Maiya woke up her blood sugars were a bit high probably due to the pasta we had the night before. We weren't too worried about it since we had seen this before.
After breakfast, we did our usual morning check and for the first time since her diagnosis our meter read HI. In our meter if it reads HI this means the blood sugar is above 500 and our meter cannot read the number that goes beyond 500. Her blood sugar should be between 80 to 150.
I tried not making eye contact with Maiya and showing any emotion so she wouldn't be upset. I did a second test and at that point the meter read 450 only a few points away from when she was diagnosed. My heart started pounding and inside I felt panic and was worried of what could happen if I didn't do all the right things. I had to remove the site, give her a shot immediately and put in a new site.
As you can imagine, having to put a highly sensitive 6 year old through this was emotionally draining. After a few hours her blood sugars were back to normal.
As I was going through the motions and trying to hide my fear, anger and frustration it hit me again. This disease is here to stay until we find a cure. This disease is like a fire, so intense and unpredictable. When it catches onto something it comes on at full speed. If you don't know what to do at that moment and you don't act quickly the consequences can be fatal. Her life is in our hands. WE NEED YOUR HELP TO RAISE MONEY FOR THE CURE THAT IS GOING TO CURE MAIYA AND ALL OF THOSE AFFLICTED BY THIS DISEASE.
As parent's of a child living with this horrible disease that shortens the lifespan and causes great damage to the body we cannot be silent. We must speak up and be heard for our children.
Please help us raise money to find the cure for Type 1, diabetes. Please make a donation no matter what the amount. Everything counts. We want to thank you in advance for your support.
Sincerely,
The Lester family
Follow this link to make a donation: http://walk.jdrf.org/support.cfm?id=86645483
