Promoting awareness about diabetes

Times Reporter 

 

Injecting yourself with approximately 1,460 needles a year doesn’t sound fun to anyone, but it’s something every diabetic with type 1 diabetes has to do to live. 

For Rachel Rogers, and many like her, it’s just part of her daily life. She has to strictly watch what she eats, monitor her exercise in relation to her food intake and much more. 

When Rogers found out the spring queen at Strathmore High School is picked by who raises the most for a charity important to them, it was an easy choice for her to pick the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF).

“I’ve lived with type 1 diabetes for over 11 years now, it’s all I really know and I wanted to bring awareness to the disease.  While I was looking for donations, so many kids at school had no idea what this form of diabetes was all about or what I go through every day, but it’s just what I know,” said Rogers. 

“I was happy I won and was able to raise as much as I did for JDRF, I know it’s going to a great cause.”

Susan Shearer, a Strathmore teacher and JDRF volunteer, met with Rogers to pick up the cheque for $821.86 on June 14. Shearer taught Rogers while she was at Wheatland Elementary school. Her son also has type 1 diabetes. 

Every year Wheatland Elementary school does a Walk for a Cure, focusing on something that affects a member of the student body or staff. Six years ago they walked for diabetes. 

“It was just neat to see that six years later she’s still raising money, still trying to find a cure for diabetes,” said Shearer. 

Shearer said she loves the idea that the high school decided that the students have to raise money for a charity of their choice in order to become prom king and queen. 

“JDRF is Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation so the goal is to find a cure, so all the money that is raised for JDRF through events, or functions or individuals, all goes to research and finding a cure. So every bit helps,” said Shearer.

“I’m just hopeful that in my son’s lifetime there will be a cure. My niece and nephew are diabetic as well. When you’re younger like that you shouldn’t have to worry about counting carbs. When you go to a birthday party (and) they have cake, how much is in the cake. 

“They have to become planners, they have to think about things that they shouldn’t have to think about, they can’t be a kid. They have to do all this other stuff that we don’t think about, let alone having to take the needles themselves.”