Nicole is five years old and a kindergarten student at Munsey Park Elementary School in Manhasset, NY.  Nicole was diagnosed with Juvenile or Type 1 diabetes on September 8, 2004, just a few weeks before her second birthday. 

Juvenile Diabetes is a life long, chronic disease in which your body no longer produces insulin, a hormone necessary to sustain life. Insulin must be administered on a daily basis and blood glucose must be monitored continually to make sure it stays in an acceptable range.  Low blood glucose or “hypo-glycemia” is a serious condition that requires immediate attention as it can cause loss of consciousness, convulsions, or even death. “Hyper-glycemia” or high blood sugar has a corrosive affect on the body over the long term and can cause serious long term complications including blindness, heart disease, nerve damage, and kidney failure. 

Life with diabetes is not easy for Nicole, or for the millions of other children and adults afflicted with this disease.  There is never a break, or a day off, from the constant blood sugar monitoring and administration of insulin.  Nicole wants very much to be like all of the other children in her kindergarten class and in many ways she is.  However, in so many others she is not – she can not share in frosted cupcakes at a classmates birthday celebration, she is constantly running back and forth to the school nurse’s office, her blood sugar fluctuations often make it difficult to concentrate and it is difficult to schedule play-dates for her.

In the 3 ½ years that Nicole has battled this disease, new treatments have improved her quality of life.  She now wears an insulin pump that delivers insulin through a flexible tubing and that is inserted just under her skin.  This takes the place of multiple daily insulin injections.  She also recently started using a Continuous Glucose Monitoring System which, as the name suggests, monitors her blood sugar 24 hours a day.  This has the benefit of reducing the number of finger pricks necessary each day but more importantly helps to maintain better blood sugar control which will hopefully help her to avoid the serious long term complications of this disease. 

Organizations like the American Diabetes Association, the beneficiary of this outing, are working very hard to find a cure for this terrible disease and to develop better treatments until a cure is found.  Tremendous progress has been made in the last 20 years and I truly believe that a cure is within reach, during Nicole’s lifetime, if we continue to provide the funding for them to continue their important research. 

Your support of this event will help to make this cure a reality so that Nicole, and all the other children and adults like her, no longer have to endure painful injections, blood glucose testing, a life tethered to medical devices, and the constant threat of complications.