This giving season, Sharon Hanson, Red Deer AB, is stepping up to make sure other newly diagnosed families and kids like her son Logan, get the support they need from ICD’s empowering programs.
I believe people are driven to make a difference, an impact in others’ lives, due to a major event in their own lives. Our major event began with the phrase “Mom there is something wrong with my eyes” and ended with the phrase “Your son has Type One Diabetes.”
Until that day, the word diabetes had never entered our family or home. It did not run in our family. We didn’t have friends with T1D. We never spoke the words insulin, glucometer or Dexcom.
My son was a healthy, active 14-year-old. He was starting Grade 9; first year in high school. He was my athlete: football, soccer, basketball, tennis, badminton, handball, rugby, golf. You name it, he played it, and I was the full-time driver and overly supportive cheerleader in the stands. Our schedule in one word was chaos: practices, games, travel. We ate what we could, when we could but never at the same time twice. Schoolwork fit in when we found time between activities. It was go, go, go and then on September 6, 2021, we found ourselves in the ER. Now we needed a schedule. What he ate mattered – carbs needed to be counted, insulin injections with each meal. Our state of unorganized chaos got organized really fast and for any parent of a teenager who is reading this, you can imagine how open my son was to this after 14 years of never having an injury or needing medication.
I know every story is different but ours became one of denial, frustration and anger. My son did not want anyone to know: friends, teammates, coaches, teachers. He didn’t want to be treated differently. He didn’t want special measures taken for him. It took several months to convince him to wear a continuous glucose monitor. An insulin pump would be a visible flag that something was wrong. So many of the things that could have helped him with his journey were rejected for fear someone might “find out.”
As a parent, my nights of uninterrupted sleep ended. I found myself waking up once or twice a night just to check blood sugar levels on my phone. The cheerleader in the stands now spent the games watching blood sugar levels and hoping he had eaten enough beforehand to get him through to the end; double checking my bag for apple juice boxes in case he had a low at half time.
And then, at our second specialist check-up, my son noticed a postcard size notice on the bulletin board at the Diabetes Clinic. He walked over and took a picture while I scheduled his next appointment. At home, he showed me what he found. I Challenge Diabetes – Extreme Adventures. Funny that those two words “Extreme Adventure” would hit home with my athletic teenager!! I had never heard of the organization before but we went online and checked it out. My son decided the Assiniboine Adventure in the Rocky Mountains sounded fantastic and so we signed him up. My family was so excited because for the first time my son had landed on something where he had to be a diabetic and he wasn’t going to hide his condition.
But as time passed, his thoughts started to win out, and the conversation went from this is going to be great to what have we done? I remember having a pre-adventure call with Chris Jarvis, the ICD founder, and telling him he had to convince my son to go because I didn’t know where we were going to be if he didn’t.
I will never forget driving him up the mountain that morning to meet the Adventure team. He was nervous wondering what he had got himself into. I was nervous thinking it was the first time I had been away from him since his diagnosis.
I was about to leave my son with someone I had never met before and trust that he would take care of him for a week with no way of checking in.
Before the hike started, each hiker had to shout out their blood sugar and share what they needed to do before they started the hike. My son sheepishly fell to the back as he didn’t want to tell anyone his sugar was high. When they finally got to him, the group clapped for him and he realized in that moment that he was ok. Seven days later I went back to collect him and watched him race Chris with his double pack to the end of the trail as they had made a bet about who could carry the double pack the longest. Winner got McDonald’s!! The boy I drove off that mountain was not the same one I had dropped off. For the first time in a year, he felt normal. He had found a group that was dealing with all the same struggles and frustrations as him and he didn’t have to hide anymore.
Our most recent involvement with I Challenge Diabetes came this summer in the form of my son’s first summer job. He was going to be a Sports Camp Counsellor for the Western Canada Team. The sports part was easy; the being away from home, taking care of his own lunches and being a diabetes role model for young kids were all new challenges.
But I hope the kids had half as much fun as he did. He told me throughout the summer that the “littles” were his favorites. At one camp, he had a little girl who would hide his lunch and not let him eat until he took his insulin. Pretty cool to see the “littles” teach the big guy some new tricks! The other great part of his summer journey was he was back with his ICD people, some new faces and some old favorites. He was back in an environment where he could just be himself.
And four years later, do we have it all figured out? Not even close. This year has brought new challenges as my son graduated from Grade 12 and made the decision to move a province away for university. We are still in the process of transitioning from a pediatric specialist to a new endocrinologist.
He is learning how to fill his own prescriptions and not run short on Dexcoms. Mom’s figuring out that there’s not a lot I can do when a sugar alarm goes off and I am a five-hour drive away except pick up the phone and check in. Some days we nail it and others we feel like we are back at the starting line.
In the past, I have supported I Challenge Diabetes not only through my son’s activities but through donations and their fundraising events. This year, I have decided to step up as a matching donor. I am not doing this for the recognition or the donation receipt. I am doing this because I think Chris Jarvis and his team are an amazing group of individuals and I want to continue to support them as they continue to make a difference in the lives of so many young people. I am doing this because I hope that sharing even a small part of our story might help another young person or family who are starting on this journey realize that they are not alone. I am doing this so that other kids like my son can have the opportunity to feel “normal”. I am doing this because I want to make a difference. Thank you!
