Cincinnati teen joins JDRF to fund T1D research

For most 13-year-old girls, vacations to the beach are sources of fun and relaxation, but for Abbey Keith, now 15, this was far from the case.
 
“I felt absolutely terrible within the last couple days, so we went home early,” Keith says. “That morning I woke up at about 8:30, awaiting my doctor’s appointment my mom set up, but I felt absolutely awful. It was like that feeling right before you pass out—but all the time.”
 
Keith says she doesn’t remember the car ride to the doctor, but when she woke up, she was in his office awaiting what would soon become a life-changing diagnosis.
 
“He could smell—some people can smell diabetes," Keith says. "It’s a fruitiness on their breath, and he immediately called the ambulance. I had a blood sugar of almost 700.”
 
The last thing Keith says she remembers was riding in the ambulance and seeing all the cars on the highway split, but after that, she was in a coma.
 
“It was really—it was stressful because I could hear how scared my mom was in her voice,” Keith says. “I was in the ICU for three days, and it was stressful for my family, especially because my little sister couldn’t see me.”
 
Keith now manages her Type I diabetes, but life is far from easy. She dances and plays field hockey, but not without struggling to fit her pod into her costume or stopping in the middle of practice because of blood sugar fluctuation.
 
“I can’t imagine what it would be like without having to deal with—not having to keep my PDM Meter with me all the time—and not having to worry about it every second of every day and managing how I feel and stopping myself in the middle of practice whenever we’re working really hard,” Keith says. “I’m one to always push and go, and when I have to stop and take care of myself and watch everyone else work their butts off, it makes me really—it makes me sad that I can’t do that anymore.”
 
More than anything, Keith says she wants to do everything she can to help make sure others don’t have to go through what she does on a day-to-day basis. Next month, she’ll join the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Children’s Congress in Washington, D.C., to share her story and try to urge Congress to increase support for diabetes research.
 
“It’d be nice to not have to wear a pump anymore," Keith says. "It’d be nice that my family doesn’t have to worry about me. It’d be nice that I don’t have to explain why everything happens the way it does to all my friends—make my boyfriend less worried about me all the time. If there was more funding, and we were closer to getting a cure, I feel like we’d have so much more hope for becoming normal again, which I would like because I’d love to get rid of this. My mom has told me a million times—she’s like, ‘You could have mine,’ but it doesn’t work like that. It’s just one burden that I wish I did not have—that I didn’t have to worry everyone around me.” 

Do Good: 

• If you know anyone with diabetes, provide them with support. 

• Get involved with JDRF Advocacy. 

• Support the JDRF by donating.

By Brittany York

Brittany York is a professor of English composition at the University of Cincinnati and a teacher at the Regional Institute of Torah and Secular Studies. She also edits the For Good section of SoapboxMedia.