MID-MICHIGAN (WJRT) –(07/21/14) – Type 1 diabetes is a life-changing disease. For many, battling it alone, seems impossible. One Mid-Michigan family is fighting back against the disease.Alli Jablonski loves to spend time in the pool, ut practicing with her swim team takes discipline.

Like watching her ‘numbers’ closely.

“It’s usually in the 100’s, so that’s good,” she said.

Alli has had to check her blood sugar ever two hours, every day, since she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes six years ago. Her mom remembers the day.

“It was Oct. 1, 2007. Your life changes forever,” Melissa Jablonski said.

Alli was just starting pre-school and her parents were shocked by the news from doctors at Hurley Hospital. Amid learning what it means to be a type 1 diabetic, Alli’s dad made a decision.

“He said, ‘We’re not going to allow this disease to manage us, but we’re going to live with it and then we’re going to find a purpose for it,'” Melissa said.

That purpose, they now know, is advocacy. It’s lead the Jablonski family across the state, and puts Alli center stage as a youth ambassador at the kick-off for the Breakthrough T1D Walk for a Cure and at a fundraiser in Grand Blanc last week.

Talking about her life as a type-1 diabetic has given Alli an outlet to share her frustrations – and her truth.

“You have to get up in the middle of the night and check your blood. I can’t have sleep overs or go to friend’s houses because my mom worries about me that, I will get too high or low,” she said.

Often, Alli is met with assumptions about how she became a type-1 diabetic.

“My friends will ask me, ‘Did you eat too much sugar when you were little? Is that how you got it?’ When I eat, someone will say ‘Oh, you can’t eat that!'”

Working closely with Breakthrough T1D, the Jablonskis have raised thousands of dollars to help find a cure for the disease they live with each and every day.

They are now a family of “type-3 diabetics” – a term coined by the 1999 Miss America for the family members of a type-1 diabetic – who know the disease inside out.

“Do you need to eat, are you high, are you low, and there’s a whole way you change your life,” Melissa said. “This is her battle and we have to teach her how to fight it.”

“She can be one perfect number for about 30 minutes and she comes to me, ‘Kelsey, I’m shakey’ and she drops down super low and you have to start all over,” said Kelsey Larsen, Alli’s nanny.

“I think Breakthrough T1D says it better than anyone – ‘To make Type-1, Type-none.’ And we believe that that will happen in Alli’s lifetime with enough money, time and research. We strongly hold on to that dream that alli will find that in her lifetime, that’s our drive,” Melissa said.

To visit Alli’s website, which raises money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, click HERE.