A Science Project, a Scare, and a Greater Understanding
by gloria yee
Gloria Yee, RN, CDE is a certified diabetes educator at the Diabetes Teaching Center at the University of California San Francisco. Her clinical focus is diabetes technology. Gloria has type 1 diabetes.
My 13-year-old son has a keen interest in hair gel, would prefer to sleep in instead of watching Saturday morning cartoons, and is rather oppositional – all normal teenage behaviors, I’m told. But recently, Max has really thrown me for a loop. He decided to do his 8th grade science fair project on diabetes, so he’s testing his blood sugar.
Max does not have diabetes. I do. I am well aware of his risk for developing type 1 diabetes. I remember when he was potty training, he left a puddle of urine on the floor. I freaked. Now he is testing his blood sugars seven times a day – before meals, after meals and at bedtime. I instinctively yell out, “What’s your number?” after each test, something I don’t recommend to those living with people with diabetes. I try not to panic as we wait for the beeping of the result. One morning before breakfast, he said, “Hey Mom, my sugar is 247.” My world stopped. I was quiet for a moment and then said, “Why don’t you go wash your hands and check again?” I tried to be calm. Time slowed down, and everything was a little hazy. Max washed his hands. He checked his sugar again. “It’s 77,” he yelled nonchalantly. I exhaled, unaware I was holding my breath.
The name of the science project was “Got Insulin?” The hypothesis was: Even with advanced insulin therapies such as basal/bolus insulin treatment with insulin pumps, subjects with type 1 diabetes will have higher blood glucose levels than subjects without diabetes. To test this theory, two people without diabetes (Max and his partner Liova Marcelos) and two people with type 1 diabetes (my friend Kyle Rose and I) tested blood sugars. Abbott Diabetes Care donated meters, test strips and software. After many weeks and many pricks in their fingers, the conclusion was as follows:
“Our experience was insightful. After consistently testing our blood sugars 6 or 7 times each day, our fingertips were painful. We also had to learn how to calculate how many carbohydrates were in each meal we ate. Although it may have been hard for us to do all this for this project, we learned that people with diabetes have to do this every day and much more - such as taking their insulin, planning their meals, planning for exercise, and taking care of their insulin delivery device. For them, there is no break.”
“We learned not only about diabetes, we learned about living with diabetes.”
As for myself, I learned a tad of what it may feel like to have a child with diabetes. Max and I both gained a greater understanding and a greater humility.
