Maple Grove Teens Put Type-1 Diabetes to the Test

Battling diabetes brings local kids and parents together.

By: Bobby Hart | From the issue: November 2011

Photo: Marshall Franklin Long

Elizabeth McIntyre (left) became a force in the fight to find a cure for type 1 diabetes as a volunteer for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation after her daughter, Kailey, was diagnosed with the chronic disease at age 9. Kailey, now a freshman at Providence Academy, is coping with the challenges the disease presents to growing teens, and Elizabeth is leading a local support group for parents of children with type 1.

When it comes to being a teenager, sporadic highs and lows come with the territory. But for a group of young teenagers in Maple Grove, that territory can be dangerous ground when those highs and lows refer to blood glucose (or sugar) levels.

Type 1 diabetes is a chronic autoimmune disease in which a person’s immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells in their pancreas. Insulin allows sugar to move from the blood into the body’s cells, where it’s turned into energy or stored for later use. Without insulin, sugar remains in the blood and cells are deprived of energy. In this state, the body will wear down until it goes into shock, a comma or worse.

To break down the carbohydrates they eat, type-1 diabetics must manually inject insulin through either a needle several times a day or a pump they wear attached to their body. The danger with manual insulin is if there’s too much in the blood stream, hypoglycemia (or low blood sugar) can cause a person to feel weak, lose consciousness or worse.

Thus, a balancing act must be maintained between the highs and lows with the right dosage of insulin and sugar in the bloodstream. And in a teenager’s body that’s still growing and going through changes, that bloodstream is rarely consistent.

“Unfortunately, what worked one day, isn’t always what works the next with diabetes,” says Elizabeth McIntyre, support leader and lead trainer for type 1 diabetes with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. McIntyre started volunteering with JDRF when her now 14-year-old daughter, Kailey, was diagnosed with type 1 at age 9. “Kailey’s need for insulin, like our need for oxygen, can change at a moment’s notice—and in the teen years, the exception becomes the rule even more often.”

McIntyre is JDRF’s family network chairperson for the Minn-Dakota chapter who leads a support group for parents of type-1 diabetics in the Maple Grove area. Attendance at these meetings isn’t a problem. While one in 500 people under the age of 20 in the US have type 1 diabetes, that ratio is a bit skewed when looking at a rare sample of teens in Maple Grove.

A Built-in Support System

Erica Haff, diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2005 at age 7, was different than most students at Maple Grove Junior High last year. But she was far from alone. Erica was one of five seventh graders that came to MGJH with type 1 diabetes in 2010, and one of nine in the school by the end of the year. “She’s always known that there are kids like her,” says her mom, Carol Haff. That’s because at one point, Erica was joined by four other type-1 diabetics in her grade level at Basswood Elementary.

Contrary to what the rather large sample size this local age group may suggest, type 1 diabetes isn’t contagious. And contrary to what some of Erica’s classmates have thought, it wasn’t caused by eating too much sugar or any other health-related behavior, which can be the case for type II diabetes. The cause of type I, once better known as ‘juvenile diabetes,’ is unknown, but it is believed to be associated with a genetic trigger.

Erica is now part of a type 1 diabetes a support group at MGJH, while Carol attends the support group for parents led by McIntyre. Groups like these exist because of the challenge managing diabetes presents to both a child and their parents. Shannon Coughlin, another member of the parent group, remembers the fear that struck her when her daughter Meghan was diagnosed with type 1 at age 7.

“It was horrible because I don’t have the perspective I do now,” she says. “When I talk to a mom of a kid with a new diagnosis, I tell them, ‘It will be okay. You guys will figure it out and you’ll manage it and you’ll get back to normal everyday situations.’ But when you first hear it and don’t know anything about it, you go from 0 to 100 with complete information overload. All of the sudden you have this daily 24-7 responsibility, and if you get it wrong, you’re potentially putting your child in danger.”

For the kids, the support group is a place to simply be around others who are going through the same thing. “We don’t talk about it overly a lot, but if something happens, we can understand how the other person is feeling,” says Meghan Coughlin. “You just feel like you’re not alone.”