Diabetes no barrier for active eighth grader
FILLMORE -- John McCammack is, in many ways, a typical eighth grader.
He loves sports, especially baseball and football, and is on the teams at South Putnam Middle School, where he is a student. He enjoys swimming and hanging out with his friends. He gets into tussles with his litter sister Kate.
But in one very specific way, John is different from his peers.
John, now 14, was diagnosed with Type I -- or juvenile -- diabetes at the age of 9.
"His pancreas does not produce insulin," John's mother Jill explained. "There is no pill he can take; there is no cure. Right now, the reality is that John may very well have to live with diabetes for the rest of his life."
John remembers the weeks and days before and right after his diagnosis.
"I got really sick and skinny," he said. "I dropped 25 pounds in a month."
John was admitted to the hospital for several days.
"His sugar levels were astronomical," Jill said. "His body thought it had sugar and it didn't. His fat and muscles were being eaten away."
Jill admitted that when she found out John had diabetes, she was somewhat relieved.
"He was so sick," she said. "I was thinking, 'He has leukemia or some kind of cancer. My son is going to die.' It may sound funny, but when I found out it was diabetes, I thought, 'OK, it's something we can battle.'"
Kevin said he felt alone at first, but the realized many other parents had diabetic children.
"It's kind of like when you buy a new car," he said. "You think you're the only one who has one, but then you look around and all of a sudden there are a bunch of them on the road."
John went through a phase of self-pity.
"I was tired and grumpy all the time," he said. "I went through a big 'why me?' phase."
Jill and John's father Kevin went through feelings of guilt after John's diagnosis.
"Eventually, we realized it was nothing we had done," Kevin said.
For the first year after his diagnosis he took self-administered insulin shots to control his disease. Then he switched to an insulin pen, and now he uses a pump.
The pump is a cannula that is inserted under the skin that uses a tubing system to push insulin.
The patient can set the pump to administer correct dosages. John changes the tubing on his pump every three days to avoid infection.
John wears the pump pretty much all the time, normally only taking it off to shower and for highly physical activities such as football practice.
"I take it off because I don't want to risk it getting broken," he said.
Diabetes makes it difficult for John to be spontaneous. He has to test his blood sugar several times a day and adjust his pump accordingly. He has to count the carbohydrates he consumes. In the morning, he has to measure his cereal and milk.
"He can have that piece of birthday cake, he just has to plan for it," Jill said. "He can have all the hamburgers he wants, he just can't have the bread."
When he goes out to eat at a restaurant he is familiar with, John can estimate how much insulin to take beforehand, but if it's a new place it takes a little more thought.
"I have to figure it out and plan," he said. "I know at school, the meals all have five carbs. If they have cookies, I can't have cookies."
John has to do finger pricks to test his blood.
"I've lost feeling in my fingers," he said. "I cut my fingers up all the time."
John's teachers have come to know the signs when John's insulin is going low.
"He stops paying attention," Jill said. "He can get the notes again if he starts to zone out."
Jill and Kevin are pleased that the insulin pump has worked so well for their son.
"All we ever wanted was for John to be able to be John," Jill said. "We wanted to control this disease so it didn't control us."
John downloads numbers off his pump to his doctor's office every couple f weeks, and if everything is as it should be, he only has to go see the doctor every three months.
In the five years since his diagnosis, John, along with his family, have made it a priority to do what they can to aid the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Kevin said the family raises about $2,000 a year for JDRF.
In fact, today the McCammacks are at Military Park in Indianapolis participating in JDRF's Walk to Cure Diabetes.
"We do this work and we work with JDRF because we really believe, in John's lifetime, a cure will be found."