health caused by diet, and no one knows how to prevent it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When Nick was diagnosed in 2012, Larry says his son “took it like a champ.” Both Nick and Katie, who’s now a senior at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, started attending Children with Diabetes’ annual Friends for Life conference in Orlando, Florida. They became active fundraisers for JDRF, formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. In high school, Nick served as a JDRF ambassador and spent a day on Capitol Hill speaking to members of Congress to help secure federal funding for Type 1 research. For Colleen, Nick’s diagnosis was different than Katie’s. “I was still sad for Nick that his life would no longer be as carefree as before,” she says, “but I already knew I could manage it.”
WHEN THE KIDS WERE young, each
carried a kit to school so they could test their blood sugar throughout the day. They never complained, Colleen says, “at least to me.” Every morning, she made sure the kits were loaded with snacks, test strips, insulin, syringes, finger prickers and Glucagon, an emergency medicine for extreme episodes of low blood sugar. She’d write down the carbohydrate counts for their lunches so the nurse would know how much insulin they’d have to take before they ate. These days, Colleen says, “We can all look at a plate of food and tell you about how many carbs it has in it.” About 1.6 million Americans have Type 1 diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association; Type 2 diabetes is far more common, affecting more than 32 million people in the U.S. Though some people with Type 2 are insulin-dependent, many produce enough insulin to manage the disease through diet, exercise and medication. Those with Type 1 require careful monitoring and regular insulin injections to keep glucose levels from staying elevated for long stretches of time. Years of 272
Nick, pictured at his family’s Darnestown home, brings Rainy almost everywhere. He hopes to be back on campus at Catholic University this fall.
improperly controlled high blood sugar can lead to heart attack, stroke, blindness, amputations and death. “But it’s low blood sugar that scares parents the most,” Colleen says. “It’s the driving force behind getting the dog, because you can go from a normal blood sugar range to a dangerously low blood sugar range in a surprisingly short period of time.” For those with Type 1 diabetes, if low blood sugar isn’t dealt with right away—the Opacks’ go-to is a fun-size pack of Skittles—it can cause seizures and a loss of consciousness. Glucose dips also can be hard to detect, a condition known as hypoglycemia unawareness, which is especially worrisome at night. “When you are asleep, you can’t always
feel your low blood sugar—the shaky, sweaty feeling you get that you can feel when you are awake,” she says. Colleen’s introduction to Type 1 diabetes came when Larry was diagnosed at age 27, two months before the couple got engaged. At the time, he was working as a nurse in a private medical practice in Kensington and studying to be a certified diabetes educator. Larry’s father was diagnosed with Type 1 a few years before he was born. When Larry learned he had diabetes, he was able to get the disease under control quickly. “I knew my husband was living a great life with it, and it never affected anything we’d ever wanted to do,” Colleen, 53, says. “At the same time, the last thing you ever want to
MARCH/APRIL 2021 | BETHESDAMAGAZINE.COM
HEALTH_Diabetes.indd 272
2/8/21 9:27 AM