From The Saline Reporter

Saline’s Elizabeth Caswell, wife and mother of three boys, awakens at 3 a.m. to prick her son’s finger to check the level of glucose (sugar) in his blood. If the result is too low, she must wake him so that he can chew a chalky-textured glucose tablet. Caswell’s middle-of-the-night monitoring is critical to protecting her son’s developing brain from the effects of low blood glucose, also known as hypoglycemia, a dangerous condition for those with diabetes.

Caswell’s 11-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, or T1D, two weeks ago, the third person in her family to receive the diagnosis. Caswell’s 8-year-old son was diagnosed in 2007; her husband, Trey, has been diabetic since he was 18.

“When I met my husband, he already had T1D, but he was an adult who took care of himself,” Caswell said. “I didn’t have much to do with it.”

But Caswell was forced to become an expert in T1D and its management when her middle child became diabetic only a week after his third birthday.

According to the Breakthrough T1D’s, formerly Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, website, T1D is an autoimmune disease. A person’s own immune system begins to attack and finally destroy the cells in the pancreas that produce the hormone insulin, which is what allows the body to obtain energy from food. Because it is an autoimmune disease, it is not caused by diet or lifestyle. At present, there is no way to prevent it or cure it.

Caswell finds it difficult to explain this type of diabetes to others.

“My children can’t control this through diet and exercise. They require insulin to live,” she said. “Before insulin was discovered (in 1921), people just wasted away until they died.”

About three million Americans have T1D. About 80 new cases are diagnosed each day – half are children. Signs of T1D include excessive thirst and urination, drowsiness, increased hunger, weight loss, sudden changes in vision, fruity breath odor, heavy breathing, and unconsciousness.

Not only are people with T1D dependent upon injected insulin to live, but they must check their blood glucose levels up to 10 times a day, and must carefully plan and balance diet and activity with insulin.

The Breakthrough T1D website lists the possible long-term complications of T1D as “ … kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage, amputations, heart attack, stroke and pregnancy complications.”

Caswell and her family began raising money for Breakthrough T1D in earnest in 2008, and over the years have raised more than $100,000 through sponsorships and donations. “Breakthrough T1D provides the most funding for T1D research in the world, and they take a coordinated approach, focusing research dollars on initiatives that will improve lives through better treatment or research that leads to a cure,” she said.

For the third year in a row, Caswell will be one of the top fundraisers for Breakthrough T1D’s Walk to Cure Diabetes. Her team’s goal this year is to raise $10,000.

This year’s 5K walk will be at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 23 in Dexter at Hudson Mills Metropark, 8801 North Territorial Road. Registration is at 8:30 a.m. or in advance at www.walk.jdrf.org. The website also lists other walks in the state, including one in Warren on the same day.

Caswell co-captains her family’s team of 65 members with her mother, Vivian Sangunett. This year’s team, called 3 Caz 4 a Cure, has received “phenomenal” support.

“Underground Printing donated T-shirts to the team,” Caswell said. “Goldfish Swim School is donating all admissions from the family swim on September 21 to our team; and Tippins Market has been doing a change drive.”

Despite the challenges of managing T1D, the Caswell boys don’t think of themselves first as diabetics.

“It’s on the list, but it’s not at the top of who they are. We try to keep things as normal as possible, but to do that is a lot of work.”