LETTER: Together We Can Make a Difference

Amherst residents the Conway's along with family and friends will be taking part in JDRF's 2012 Walk to Cure Diabetes. We will be walking along with one-half million other walkers across the country as we try to reach our goal of raising $89 million. This year the walk will take place at 10am in the Northeast Delta Dental Stadium Manchester on September 30, 2012.
 
On Thursday, June 16, 2005, our lives changed forever.  We have twin girls Maddy and Abby and we were on vacation on Cape Cod.  On this sunny June day over 7 years ago, Abby became ill with what we thought was a virus, and decided that we needed to get her home to see her doctor.  After a check up and several tests and re-tests, we were told four words that no parent wants to hear.  Your daughter has diabetes.  We were told to go directly to the hospital, not to stop at home.  Just go.  In a a few short days the staff at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center pediatric wing gave us a primer in how to now care for our daughter in order to keep her healthy and alive.  We were then referred to the Joslin Diabetes Clinic in Boston where the education is ongoing to this day.  The support we receive from them is phenomenal.  Looking at Abby, you would never know she has diabetes.  She is a happy, healthy 11 year old with a full schedule!  She is an avid dancer, skier and budding chef with the Kids Culinary Arts program through the Amherst Rec. Department.  She does not let diabetes keep her down.  In fact, she is off this week with AMS on the 6th grade camping trip to Nature’s Classroom! 

Type 1, or juvenile diabetes, is a disease that affects millions of people, a large and growing percentage of them children. Everybody has some amount of sugar, or glucose, in their blood. We couldn't live without it. Glucose comes from the food we eat. Nearly everything we eat gets broken down into glucose. It helps cells to grow and get the power they need to do their job.

Most people's bodies do a good job of controlling the amount of glucose in their blood. One of the body's organs, called the pancreas, makes a substance called insulin. Insulin does most of the work in moving glucose out of the blood to where it's needed in the rest of the body's cells. In a person who doesn't have diabetes, the pancreas produces just the right amount of insulin needed by the body.

But when someone diabetes, their body has trouble controlling the level of glucose in its blood. Either the person's pancreas can't make insulin, or can't make enough insulin, or their body has a problem using the insulin it does make.  Right now, there is no cure for diabetes, though there is some incredible technology out there that helps make managing diabetes more easy.  Abby wears an insulin pump.  This is a small machine attached to her body that constantly gives her doses of insulin so that she can stay safe.  Scientists are constantly working to create new technology and JDRF is our best hope for finding a cure. It funds more type 1 diabetes research than any other charity worldwide and it's making progress along many promising paths toward better treatments and a cure.

Until that cure is found though, we continue to walk.

You can visit our website:  http://www2.jdrf.org/goto/teamabbysassociation.

Thank you from the bottom of our pancreases!

Abby’s Association

Abby, Maddy, Wendy and Mark Conway