Taking on Diabetes

At TMC we treat children that are newly diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes or who are dealing with complications. When a child or teenager is diagnosed with diabetes, the entire family faces many challenges. The interdisciplinary Diabetes Team provides individualized care and attention and includes pediatric endocrinologists, diabetes educators, intensivists, hospitalists, nurses and dieticians who are here to help families cope with all of the questions, concerns and transitions related to diabetes.

Our goal is to help children and teenagers with diabetes feel healthy. We would like them to see themselves as a person first, and as a person with diabetes second. 


As you listen to and read Brody's and Dylan's stories please take a moment to think about them as children, in Dylan's case a teenager, not as patients. We can help make their challenges less so that diabetes does not win, to support them as they meet the challenges that living with diabetes presents. How? We can help by supporting them as they go through challenges by making their experience as pleasant as possible, and by supporting research for a cure. 


Brody:

Dylan is 15 years old, and is a sophomore at Santa Rita High School. In 2009 Dylan was brought to TMC’s Pediatric Emergency Department complaining that he wasn’t feeling well, Dylan has diabetes. Dylan was experiencing complications from a simple cold and fell into a coma. He experienced multiple strokes and damage to his brain stem. Dylan spent a month in TMC’s Pediatric ICU and was in a coma for 2.5 weeks of that month. 



He was released to rehabilitation after a month and today he continues to receive therapy learning to walk and talk again.