Troy Resident Takes on Fight Against Type 1 Diabetes
in General

Published by the Troy Patch, September 15, 2013
Terry Conley of Troy, a partner at Grant Thornton LLP, serves as chair of the Walk to Cure Diabetes events in Southeast Michigan.
The Walk to Cure Diabetes events take place Sunday, Sept. 29 at the GM Tech Center in Metro Detroit and Hudson Mills Metropark near Ann Arbor.
For Terry Conley of Troy, the fundraiser takes on a sense of excitement comparable to Apple releasing a new iPhone product. Conley serves as chair of the annual event by Breakthrough T1D, but he said he hasn’t always been this active in the organization.
Conley’s daughter, Leigh Leader, now 23 years old, was diagnosed with type-1, or juvenile diabetes, as a seventh-grader at Larson Middle School.
“I research for a living—I do tax research. (When she was diagnosed) I started to research it online and I was convinced I would be able to find some resources, that there was a way to resolve this. My research basically left me in utter shock. There’s no treatment, there’s no cure,” Conley said.
“For the first 2-3 years, I was in a lot of denial. I couldn’t accept the fact that she was afflicted with something that I couldn’t fix.”
As type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease, Leigh had shown no prior signs of serious illness prior to her diagnosis, according to Conley. She quickly became involved with Breakthrough T1D and played Alice at the Troy Daze parade event in 2004.
There, she attracted some publicity for type 1 diabetes research with an interview in the Troy-Somerset Gazette, where she discussed the vigilant attention required to deal with the condition.
“She said that all she wanted was to be free of the disease for one day,” Conley said. “When I sat down to read it, it really just broke my heart. She had been facing this disease 24/7. I really wanted to become more active in supporting her.”
Leigh is recently married and thriving despite the condition, while she continues to fundraise for diabetes research which benefits both type-1 and type-2 cases. Conley said that she benefits from several advances in the field of consumer technology, such as her continuous glucose monitor, which delivers a wireless signal to a display panel which allows she and her family to monitor her blood sugar.
“You can see the improvement. You can actually see that we’ve put forward the effort, raised the money, hired the researchers, the researchers go to work, and there’s an improvement. … People expect Breakthrough T1D to pull off the next miracle.”
While those developments and others have made her life easier, there remains fear of nerve damage, kidney failure, and blindness. Conley said that is why 7,500 are expected to walk on Sept. 29, to raise an expected $1.8 million.
The Walks will feature food, entertainment, children’s activities and special attractions. Walkers will enjoy a 1.5 mile walk at the GM Tech Center and a 5K stroll through Hudson Mills Metropark. Registration opens at 8:30 a.m. The Walks begin at 9:30 a.m., rain or shine, and conclude at 11:30 a.m.
Walkers can register at walk.jdrf.org.
https://troy.patch.com/groups/giving/p/troy-resident-takes-on-fight-against-type-1-diabetes