SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 News)- For thousands of kids in Utah, their choice of food could cause serious illness and even death. They have type 1 Juvenile Diabetes.
ABC4's Barb Smith introduces us to Brooklyn and Tyson Weeks, a brother and sister who have had to learn to cope with the auto immune disease. Brooklyn and Tyson both have Juvenile Diabetes. Brooklyn was diagnosed with the disease first after her parents noticed the symptoms, their mother said "she had been losing weight and drinking crazy amounts of fluid. She would stand at the refrigerator with a big glass and fill it up every ten minutes and keep drinking and drinking."
When Tyson started behaving the same way about a year later, his parents knew what was wrong.
Type one diabetes can be inherited. The auto immune disorder causes the body's own immune system to attack insulin producing cells in the pancreas, killing them, and leaving children like Brooklyn and Tyson without the ability to process their blood sugar normally.
Together, Brooklyn, Tyson, and Shannon monitor their blood sugar ten times a day, and their mother monitors it at night. She says "I wake up and the very frist thing that I do is run into their bedroom to make sure they are still breathing, because their blood sugars can drop so fast in the middle of the night."
If their blood sugar levels are too high, it could lead to organ damage... too low, and they could fall into a coma. Brooklyn's blood sugar dropped at school and her mom had to pick her up... "One time I was really low and I kept getting juice and chocolate milk and stuff and I kept going lower and so she had to come and get me and I was very sick."
The Weeks dream of a day when a cure for Juvenile Diabetes is found, a day when the finger pricks and fears come to an end.
At ABC4 we are working to help find a cure for Juvenile Diabetes. On August 20th there is a walk and benefit to raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
You can
donate to the ABC 4 team through the JDRF Website.
The Tri-County Walk is at Wheeler Historic Farm, at 6351 South 900 E in Murray. Registration is at 8am and the theme this year is "Safari." We hope to see you there!
