Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
The first red flag came from a school guidance counselor.
John Paul wasn't the student he used to be. The seventh-grader at Tampa's Orange Grove Middle School was driving teachers crazy with constant requests to get water, go to the bathroom or visit the clinic.
If he went to the clinic one more time with complaints of hunger, thirst and fatigue, he'd be suspended, his mother recalls.
"I was thinking he was just a whiner," Kathy Miecznikowski says.
The aspiring ballet danseur's antics also worried his instructors at Orange Grove and the Patel Conservatory. He wouldn't dare miss rehearsals, countless hours of ballet and hip hop, but it looked as if he wasn't giving his all.
"I actually thought he was giving me attitude," says Peter Stark, chair of the Patel dance program at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts. "This is not him, there's something wrong."
In late-November, John Paul and his mom suspected the flu or mononucleosis and headed to a walk-in clinic. The nurse practitioner noticed not only that the tiny 80-pounder had dropped nearly 30 pounds, but the blood sugar that controls his body's energy was sky high.
Within a day the "problem child" was in the hospital, being treated as one of the roughly 2.3 million Americans living with Type 1 diabetes.
http://www2.tbo.com/lifestyles/heal...tes-keeps-young-dancer-on-his-toes-ar-407953/
John Paul wasn't the student he used to be. The seventh-grader at Tampa's Orange Grove Middle School was driving teachers crazy with constant requests to get water, go to the bathroom or visit the clinic.
If he went to the clinic one more time with complaints of hunger, thirst and fatigue, he'd be suspended, his mother recalls.
"I was thinking he was just a whiner," Kathy Miecznikowski says.
The aspiring ballet danseur's antics also worried his instructors at Orange Grove and the Patel Conservatory. He wouldn't dare miss rehearsals, countless hours of ballet and hip hop, but it looked as if he wasn't giving his all.
"I actually thought he was giving me attitude," says Peter Stark, chair of the Patel dance program at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts. "This is not him, there's something wrong."
In late-November, John Paul and his mom suspected the flu or mononucleosis and headed to a walk-in clinic. The nurse practitioner noticed not only that the tiny 80-pounder had dropped nearly 30 pounds, but the blood sugar that controls his body's energy was sky high.
Within a day the "problem child" was in the hospital, being treated as one of the roughly 2.3 million Americans living with Type 1 diabetes.
http://www2.tbo.com/lifestyles/heal...tes-keeps-young-dancer-on-his-toes-ar-407953/
