Life has a way of throwing you curveballs when you least expect them. Just ask Cole Ridd.
The 10-year-old St. Albert boy loves baseball, hockey, swimming, tennis, football and basketball, among numerous other sports and activities.
“I play everything,” he said.
A few months ago, his parents noticed a change in his health. He was getting skinnier despite maintaining his usually high appetite. He was also going to the bathroom more frequently, even in the middle of the night. His doctor did some tests.
“I knew something wasn’t right,” his mother, Shauna explained. “You don’t eat like that and lose weight.”
The family was on its way to take Ridd to play in a provincial level hockey game when the doctor called back with the results. He had high levels of blood sugar, a really bad sign. They had to turn around right away and go straight to the Stollery Children’s Hospital.
He admitted, “I was upset.”
They had never considered diabetes before. There’s no family history.
“It was quite a shock, absolutely out of the blue,” Shauna recalled.
They soon learned that juvenile diabetes, or type I diabetes, doesn’t come from diet or lifestyle. It is entirely different from adult-onset (or Type II) diabetes. It really has no definitive cause although scientists still speculate that it stems from exposure to a chemical or other airborne agent, a virus or some food component that gets ingested.
Whatever the cause, the result is the destruction of the child’s islet cells, where the pancreas creates insulin.
He now needs to be absolutely vigilant about his diet and his exercise. He doesn’t need to change what he eats though.
“He can have anything. The misconception … is that Type I is autoimmune,” his father Dave said.
Living with the disease means that Ridd has to test his blood at least four times and get two or more insulin injections a day every day. Because he’s so active, he tests more often just to be sure. On days when he has games or even double-headers, things get more complicated but they’re still manageable.
“You just have to test and watch how many carbohydrates you eat, that’s all,” Ridd explained, confident that nothing is going to slow him down. He learned that professional athletes including Ty Cobb, Bobby Clarke, and Jackie Robinson became sports legends even though they had diabetes.
The Ridds just want people to be more aware of the disease and pay more attention to their children. There’s no way to prevent juvenile diabetes but you can always spot it once it happens.
Shauna will be participating in the upcoming Telus Walk to Cure Diabetes. It takes place on the afternoon of Sunday, June 5 starting at the St. Albert Senior Citizens’ Club.
Visit www.jdrf.ca/walk to learn more about the event or pledge participants. The Hebert Road branch of Scotiabank has vowed to match all donations to Team Cole. The goal for the local fundraiser is $30,000.
For more information, call organizer Cheryl Vickers at 780-428-0343.
Otherwise you can help the Stollery Children’s Hospital to support children with juvenile diabetes. The health centre’s Pediatric Diabetes Education Centre is collecting for its Pull-Tab Project. People can collect and donate their pop can tabs to the hospital or to Lions clubs throughout central and northern Alberta, including the Host and Breakfast Lions clubs in St. Albert.
The tabs will be cashed in and the money will be used to send kids to diabetes camp and to help their parents buy diabetes equipment and supplies. Daily blood sugar testing and insulin injections cost more than $3,400 per year. It isn’t covered by either Alberta Health or Alberta Blue Cross.
