LadyBug
Well-Known Member
2009 JDRF Walk To Cure Diabetes!
I have had type 1(juvenile) diabetes since i was 10 1/2, almost 5 years and every year for the last four years my family and i have done the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Walk To Cure Diabetes. it's a great way to get involved and make a difference and i like knowing that i'm helping make a cure a reality for all of us!
lastyear i posted about my walk on RO, had several people give(you know who you are-thanks so much!) and i love sharing this with you guys, so with the mods blessing i'm posting about it again!
here is my 2009 walk letter. you guys are getting a bit of an early preview, no one out side my family has seen it yet, we still have to mail it out(ETA: we mailed them out yesterday! whooo:bunnydance
! this is the first year that i have written the whole thing myself(Mom did proof read it though ), so i'm very proud of this letter. enjoy!
â......All this time goes by
Still no reason why
A little bit longer and I'll be fine.
Waitin' on a cure
But none of them are sure
A little bit longer and I'll be fine
But you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
You don't know what itâs like to feel so low......."
Dear friends and family,
Wow, I canât believe itâs been a whole year already and itâs time to do another walk letter! Iâm now 15, half way through my freshman year of high school and approaching half a decade with juvenile diabetes(on June the 16). Iâve done about 1,980 insulin shots, 440 insulin sets (for my pump-think small i.v.) and 10,020 finger pricks. Thatâs a lot of needles!
Now, Iâm sure youâre wondering what on earth I have at the top of my letter this year. It is, in fact, part of the lyrics to a song called A Little Bit Longer written by Nick Jonas (of the Jonas Brothers band) about his type 1 diabetes. As you can imagine, itâs one of my favorite songs and I really wanted to share part of it with you!
In the last year Mom and I have started mentoring newly diagnosed families through JDRF. Mom calls them, talks to the parents and while sheâs at it she finds out if the kids want to talk to me. Some do, some donât, but I love doing it and helping the kids; in our local JDRF Chapter alone we have an average of 10-15 referrals of newly diagnosed children each month. And there are even more who havenât sought our help. It has helped me to see a reason for me getting this horrible disease, but it has also put the numbers more in my face and has made them much more personal-3 million Americans have type 1 diabetes and each year more than 15,000 children are diagnosed. Thatâs 40 children per day!
Want to help us? Hereâs what you can do!
:highfive
ray about it! Our God is awesome and hears our prayers. In the Bible He says âI am the Lord who heals youâ (Ex. 15:26). I find that extremely comforting. All we have to do is simply ask!:highfive:Come walk with us! I would love to share this special day with you and have you join our family team, Annaâs Hope.
:highfive:We can fix you up with collection envelopes if youâd like. We also have incentives for big fund raisers-JDRF sneaker key chain for $50 and up and a JDRF sneaker stick pin for those who raise $100 and over.
:highfive
onate! All donations are tax-deductible and are a flat rate (this is not a per mile walk.). You can send checks(or cash, whicheverâs better) made payable to JDRF in the self addressed envelope to our house or donate online(Go to JDRF.org, click on the green sneaker, locate âsupport a walkerâ and fill in Anna Caro, Annaâs Hope and FL. The donation can be made by credit card and is also tax-deductible.) As Iâve gotten older Iâve become more and more aware of how serious diabetes is. Iâve always viewed complications as something that happens to older people with diabetes or kids that didnât take care of themselves. But I got a big wake up call in December when my toe got infected and wouldnât heal. The infection drove my blood sugar up and my blood sugar being up kept the infection from healing. Itâs been six weeks and a small toe operation later, my toe has healed up completely and my blood sugars are down, but it was very scary to have to deal with and really woke me up to the fact that even if you do everything right, extra diabetes-related problems can still occur. I got lucky this time, but next time a problem might have more lasting affects, which scares me to death. This is why I want a cure so bad and why Iâm asking for your help to make a cure a reality for me and all the other kids like me. For us, itâs not things that go bump in the night that are scary, itâs the looming threat of complications, even when we do it all right.
My team is Annaâs Hope because my greatest hope is to someday live in a world where type 1 diabetes is as preventable and curable as chicken pox. And itâs that hope that keeps me going until then. A little bit longer and I hope to be fineâ¦â¦â¦
Love to you all and God bless!
Anna (and the rest of the family team)
several things of note, since y'all aren't getting this in the mail-if you want to mail it, that's cool, just PM me and i'll give you my address,Mom doesn't wantme to just post it for everyone on the web to see .and the blank spots where bullets normally are came out a bitfunky, i used our chapters logo for this walk and when i'm copying and pasting it it's not showingup(ETA:i 'fixed' it by putting emoticons there
)!and since this is on the web, i'm just going to post the link to my JDRF page to make it faster and easier-my fund raising page.this is the logo, which i think is really cute!
Iwear an insulin pump, which for those of you who don't know is like a small iv.
this is what my pumplooks like-
and this is what myinsulin infusion sets(sets for short) look like-
the tubing you see goes all the way from the set to pump and in where you see the piece sticking out on the top right where it connects to a cartridge with insulin in it.
i must have it on me at alltimes, over night, when i go out, etc. it is basically a life support machine,because without the insulin i die.i thinkthat a lot of people think that insulinis a cure and we're fine with it, but we're not. our bloodsugars go up and down andthe more they do that the more our internal organs are hurt. my blood sugars have been yo-yoing around for the past few months and at this point it's finally caught up with me-i feel sick and i'm tired. i feel low and high when my blood sugars' really fine.insulin is definitely NOT a cure.
ok, that's it for my rambling. if you've made it this far-thanks for sticking with meand i love you
ink iris:! thanks again guys! i'll be keeping this thread updated and re-posting it when we move back
Anna
