Diabetes Forecast - August 2014

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Bythe time Debra Franco connected with another parent of a child with diabetes, she was desperate. Her 8-year-old son, Luke Franco Salazar, had been diagnosed with type 1 and began slipping into a depression. “He was the only one in the hospital with diabetes,” she says, remembering how Luke felt like the only kid in the world with the disease. It didn’t help that he was the only one in his school with diabetes.

Luke was so resistant to diabetes care that Franco had to hold him down each time she tested his blood glucose or injected insulin.

“All the little [diabetes-management] things
that complicated his life were just too much
for him,” she says. “His life was different, and
he didn’t know how to cope with it.”
But Franco had a hunch that her son could

cope, if only he could realize he wasn’t alone.

Finally, a friend of a friend put Franco in touch with another parent of a child with diabetes. Franco and her new acquaintance set a meet-up for their children along with two other families of kids with diabetes.

The simple playdate changed Luke. “He was really quiet but watched all the kids check their sugars,” Franco says. “It was that extra little push to see that he isn’t alone, that he can do it,” she says. Now 11, Luke checks his blood glucose and injects insulin himself, counts carbs, and reads labels like a pro.