BY: Mark A. Yearwood

It was a phone call no parent ever wants to make. Ricardo Best dialed 911, requesting assistance for his 14-year-old daughter, Sherica, who had fainted in front of him. Fearing that his daughter, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 11, was in trouble, he made the call. Sherica, now 18, recalls the incident with much more calm than either of her parents.

Like Sherica, more than two million Canadians have some form of diabetes, a chronic condition that results from the body’s inability to sufficiently produce and/or properly use insulin, a hormone produced in the pancreas.

Sherica’s fainting incident was caused by low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), a reaction that people with diabetes must learn to prevent through the effective management of their blood-sugar levels. As a patient in the diabetes clinic at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Sherica has learned to safely and effectively manage her diabetes. Now a first-year Ryerson University student, Sherica keeps the glucose meter, needles, syringes and vials of insulin she needs in her backpack. “I’m used to the finger pokes when I check my blood sugar, and injecting insulin four times a day doesn’t bother me,” she says.

Ricardo and Sherica’s mother, Sharon, were unfamiliar with the disease prior to their daughter’s diagnosis. “We thought that diabetes was for older people, not children,” Sharon says. But Sherica exhibited the classic symptoms of Type 1 diabetes.

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“Parents will notice that their child is constantly thirsty and hungry, urinating frequently and losing weight,” advises Dr. Denis Daneman of Sick Kids. Diabetes has no cure, but “by taking insulin regularly, and following a good diet with exercise, good control of diabetes is possible,” says Daneman.

Sherica does not follow a special diet. According to Vanita Pais, a registered dietician at Sick Kids, “A child can eat normally, the diet is not restrictive and the focus is on healthy eating and timing meals appropriately.” Pais stresses that the whole family should become involved, something the Best family strives for. “Helping Sherica has changed all our lives in the way we view our own health and nutrition,” says Sharon.

Educating her family and friends has helped Sherica become more comfortable with her diabetes, and she wants others in her position to remember that “once you learn about diabetes, you’ll be OK. You don’t have to change who you are, it’s just about adapting.”

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