I’ve known Kira, the daughter of my good friends Ron and Irene Lue-Sang, since she was a day old. She was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) nearly a decade ago. Since 2015, the Lue-Sang family have helped raise funds to end T1D by walking in the annual Breakthrough T1D Walk (formerly JDRF). They’re fundraising ahead of the next walk on October 13, and I’m asking for your help in reaching their goal of raising $10,000.

If you’re unfamiliar with T1D:

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease that is diagnosed in both children and adults and has nothing to do with diet or lifestyle.

As the Lue-Sangs note on their fundraising page:

When you have T1D, your body stops producing insulin—a hormone essential to turning food into energy. Managing the disease is a constant struggle that involves monitoring your blood-sugar level, administering insulin, and carefully balancing these insulin doses with your eating and activity.

Kira wears a continuous glucose monitor to check her blood sugar levels, and an “insulin infusion set”, which, Ron explains, are:

steel needles that stay embedded in her thigh or tricep to slowly do the work of providing the insulin her pancreas no longer produces.

Managing T1D is challenging for anyone; it requires constant attention: measuring carbs, checking blood sugar levels, injecting just the right amount of insulin around meals, adjusting throughout the day as needed, replacing those steel needles and sensors every few days…. It’s a lot, especially for a teenager who just wants to be a teenager. As Ron put it,

There’s simply too much life to live for an active teenager to be bothered…. 

But bother she must, because failing to be vigilant every day could mean having

blood sugars so low that she shouldn’t walk around unaccompanied, or blood sugar so high for so long that she might not be getting insulin at all. Either situation could end in her passing out, ending up in the hospital, or damaging her internal organs (eyes, kidneys, heart) a little bit at a time.

Parents may expect to argue with their kids about various dangers in life (like riding a motorcycle, or driving too fast), and to be dismissed as being overprotective and paranoid. As a T1D parent, those arguments unexpectedly shift from “Check your mirrors before changing lanes!” to “check your blood sugar before starting the car!”

Elizabeth Stone said that having a child is “to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

Raising a T1D teen must be like having your heart roar off to school on a motorcycle every day.

The work Breakthrough T1D does helps further the science of living with T1D. Ron tells me:

One hundred years ago, science had barely discovered insulin. Before that, people with Type 1 Diabetes just wasted away a few months or years after diagnosis. 

Ten years ago our standard of care was pricking Kira’s fingers to check blood sugar levels at least four times a day and injecting insulin by hand. We’re grateful for the advances technology has brought, including modern insulin, continuous glucose monitors, and insulin pumps. But we believe—it’s an article of faith—that there are still more advances to come, if only we pursue them. 

If you can, please make a contribution to Breakthrough T1D to help them pursue those advances. Any amount helps, whether it’s $1, $10, or $100. No parent should agonize over the health of their kid, and no kid should have to stick steel needles into her thigh.

The Lue-Sang family thanks you, and I thank you.