Teen with juvenile diabetes raising money to find a cure
Published: March 16, 2006
Jenny Vandevelde, 17, doesn’t have a problem telling people she has juvenile diabetes; she’ll tell anyone who will listen. But one day, she says, she would like to tell people she “had” juvenile diabetes.
The Westview High School student is telling her story to raise money to help the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation find a cure for her disease, in which the body doesn’t produce insulin needed to convert sugar and starches into energy for daily activities. Complications of diabetes can include blindness, amputations and early death.
Jenny needs to raise another $4,600 by May 6 so she and her father can participate in the foundation’s “Ride to Cure Diabetes.” The ride takes place May 4-7 and includes routes of 36, 62 and 105 miles through Death Valley. The Vandeveldes are doing the 36-mile ride.
She said her condition, also known as Type 1 diabetes, will make the bike ride harder, but she’s happy to make the effort if it means diabetic children as young as a year old may someday have a life without insulin shots.
The teenager is collecting and recycling old cell phones and ink-jet cartridges to raise money, and is selling rubber wristbands for $5. Jenny has donation boxes in schools and businesses throughout the Poway Unified School District.
Of the 20.8 million people with diabetes in the United States, experts estimate that 6.2 million of them are unaware of it. When Jenny was diagnosed at age 15, she had been experiencing symptoms such as fatigue, extreme thirst and rapid weight loss. She thought the affects were due to an increase in her soccer playing until she lost 15 pounds in nine days.
The day she was diagnosed she learned how to give herself painful insulin injections three times a day. Most children hate needles, but Jenny says needles are her life, literally.
“Without insulin I would die,” she said.
Today, Jenny uses an insulin pump, a computerized cell phone-size device that carries enough insulin through a thin tube into her abdomen to provide her with a continuous supply of insulin for several days. Jenny also pricks her finger several times a day to test her blood sugar levels and can push a button on the pump to increase her insulin level if necessary.
Every few days the tube’s insertion site needs to be changed, and the sudden surge of insulin into her system can be a jolt more uncomfortable than an injection from a doctor.
“It’s different because with a doctor you can look away,” she said. “I have to watch it. The worst is the anxiety between the time you push it and it shoots it into you.”
Jenny said she hopes that through her fundraising efforts and those of others, a cure for diabetes can be found so she can get her “childhood back.” On that day, she said, she will lose the insulin pump and get back into her bikini.
“I’ll go do a cannon ball in a pool without my (insulin pump) coming out,” she said. “I’ll play soccer and have all the energy I had before.”
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