It began with an unquenchable thirst.
“I had to put my head into the basin and hold my mouth under the tap so the water could squirt down my throat,” CÁLLUM HALL (13) says of his experience this year on Youth Day. It turned out he’s one of the millions of people who live with diabetes.
In 2006 there were about 230 million sufferers worldwide - and a growing number of them were children. It’s estimated the epidemic could affect 350 million people 20 years from now.
Every year diabetes causes as many deaths worldwide as HIV/Aids; someone dies of diabetes-related complications every 10 seconds. To raise awareness of the disease World Diabetes Day is held on 14 November.
“I didn’t know what was going on with me,” the sporty youngster of Table View, Cape Town, says. He loves playing hockey but got the fright of his life when he stood on a scale that day in June - he’d lost 9 kg in three days.
His mom, Millicent, shudders at the memory. “He looked terrible, like someone from a concentration camp.”
Cállum remembers it as if it were yesterday. “The doctor pricked my finger to take blood and we knew within a minute or two: I was diabetic, a word I’d heard before only in life orientation classes.”
He has since had to develop an adult sense of responsibility. “He must learn he dare not smoke or drink any alcohol and he must eat healthy, balanced meals,” Millicent says. “He must watch his weight and get regular exercise. We’re drilling it into him.”
Cállum has type 1 diabetes and will have to inject himself with insulin for the rest of his life because the beta cells in his pancreas, responsible for manufacturing this hormone, are being destroyed by his immune system. Insulin makes it possible for the body’s cells to assimilate glucose from food for energy.
“The irony of diabetes is it forces people to live the way we’re all supposed to,” dad Gary says.
- For more information on what’s happening in SA on World Diabetes Day go to www.diabetessa.co.za.
- See the 12 Nov issue of YOU for details of symptoms and treatment of type 1 and 2 diabetes.
