Cypress resident Anne Imber takes a photo with her son Tristan Edgar, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2009 at the age of 12.
Cypress resident Anne Imber takes a photo with her son Tristan Edgar, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2009 at the age of 12.
Photo: Courtesy Of Anne Imber / Provided By Kimberly Pace, 9th Wonder
Cypress resident Anne Imber takes a photo with her son Tristan Edgar, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2009 at the age of 12.
Cypress resident Anne Imber takes a photo with her son Tristan Edgar, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2009 at the age of 12.
Cypress mother advocates with Beyond Type 1 DKA Campaign to differentiate diabetes symptoms from viruses like COVID-19
Excessive thirst, frequent urination, unexplained weight loss and exhaustion. If Cypress mother Anne Imber and her son had known what these symptoms might indicate, he could have been treated sooner for the serious health complications from his undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes is a chronic autoimmune condition that causes the bodys immune system to mistakenly attack the insulin-making beta cells of the pancreas, explained Dr. Daniel DeSalvo, pediatric endocrinologist at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Childrens Hospital.
Ms. Senior World: Magnolia resident to represent Texas Gulf Coast at inaugural pageant
If a person with diabetes isnt receiving insulin, then they can develop a life-threatening condition called diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA. It causes stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, tiredness, lethargy, sometimes it can cause rapid or heavy breathing, and if its severe it can lead to the point of confusion or even unconsciousness, DeSalvo said.
DeSalvo is on the science advisory board for Beyond Type 1, a nonprofit focused on building awareness and support for people with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes worldwide.
Among the organizations initiatives is to prevent the development of DKA by educating people about the warning signs of Type 1 diabetes.
Imber became a Beyond Type 1 volunteer after her sons diabetes diagnosis and has been advocating on behalf of the DKA Campaign.
Texas was actually one of the first states to adopt the Beyond Type 1 DKA Campaign, Imber said. We have a really passionate group of diabetes advocates in the Houston area, and especially in the Cypress area, because we have a Type 1 diabetes school advocacy group.
One factor that can lead to the delayed diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes is the symptom similarities to some viral illnesses such as the flu or a stomach virus, DeSalvo said. During the COVID-19 pandemic, making people aware of Type 1 diabetes telltale symptoms is of vital importance.
On HoustonChronicle.com: Ventilation expert reveals how Texas schools can stop the spread of COVID in classrooms
Its an issue that Imber knows all too well.
Imber said her son Tristan was 12 years old when he and his sister contracted the swine flu in 2009 during the H1N1 pandemic.
My daughter immediately bounced back, Imber said. She was on the mend in two days. My son, he went down with the swine flu and then he never recovered his full energy that hed had before. He started suffering from extreme exhaustion. He started having a lot of weight loss.
There were many factors that Imber thought might be at play he was slimming due to a growth spurt; he had started running cross-country; and, of course, hed just been sick with the swine flu.
He would come home incredibly exhausted, falling asleep, and I really attributed it to the swine flu his recovery from the swine flu just not taking the path that his sister had taken, Imber said.
He continued to go downhill over the next month, losing 20 pounds in just four weeks. Hed tell his mom he was starving but was too nauseous to eat. He became more emotional than usual, Imber said. She knew something was wrong, so she made a Friday appointment with a pediatrician.
They knew immediately how bad it was, but they wanted us to come back Monday morning for a fasting blood glucose (test), she said.
Halloween happened to fall on that weekend. Thank god he did not eat his candy, Imber said. He was waiting for his braces to come off on Tuesday.
By Tuesday morning, his pediatrician had called to relay his diagnosis Type 1 Diabetes.
They realized Tristan had been going into phases of DKA because of his untreated condition.
Because he was running cross-country, his blood sugar would go really high and then it would drop again because of the activity, Imber said. So, it was a really unusual case and thats one of the reasons it took so long to manifest in really obvious terms of, something was seriously wrong.
Imber believes something as simple as an informational poster in the doctors office waiting room, like the ones distributed by the DKA campaign, could have tipped them off sooner.
He hadnt been sharing the excessive thirst and the frequent urination because 12-year-old boys dont do that with their moms; they dont talk about those things, she said. And I know had he been sitting in that office at that time with the DKA Campaign poster there, he would have been able to say, Mom, Ive been having these symptoms and that wouldve really prompted us to get immediate help Friday versus waiting until Tuesday to seek out support for him.
Nowadays, Imber said a DKA diagnosis warrants immediate hospitalization; but at the time, doctors felt the severity level of Tristans condition was low enough to treat him outside of a hospital. Imber said her son was fortunate to not have experienced the organ failure that some do from DKA. She knows of several cases in which lives have been lost because of an incorrect or delayed diagnosis. If her son had not been diagnosed in a timely manner, Imber doesnt doubt he wouldve ended up in the hospital.
We were lucky that he did not incur that seriousness of it, but we immediately saw relief from being able to be treated with the insulin under the care of an endocrinologist, and then started that learning process on how to manage it with the insulin dosing since his pancreas was no longer able to provide that hormone to regulate his food intake, Imber said.
Imber had attributed several of Tristans diabetes symptoms to the residual effects of his flu recovery a relatively common misidentification among people with undiagnosed diabetes, she said.
When its flu season, youll see a lot of people struggling and thinking, It is just the flu, but in reality there are some symptoms that really stand out that frequent urination, that excessive thirst that really differentiate from a flu symptom, Imber said.
The COVID-19 pandemic presents similar challenges for the diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes and DKA, explained Beyond Type 1 Leadership Council Member Michelle Berman.
We are seeing many families protecting themselves and wanting to avoid visits to doctors or the hospital, Berman said. And on top of that, if they arent armed with the knowledge of the warning signs, they also arent taking action when they appear. We really want families to get to the hospital or contact their physician right away, in spite of COVID or in addition to looking for the COVID warning signs. Type 1 diabetes does not stop just because theres a pandemic.
Berman serves as the National Family Advocate for the DKA Campaign.
Her child was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2007. She took him to the doctor after hed fainted from what she thought was abnormal blood pressure. After his diagnosis, Berman felt frustrated that shed never been made aware of the warning signs for Type 1 diabetes.
Berman learned of the Beyond Type 1 organization in 2016.
So, I partnered with Beyond Type 1 as a family advocate and began working on partnerships with the American Academy of Pediatrics and individual chapters in each state, Berman said. Together, Beyond Type 1 and the AAP partnered and brought awareness to families. Currently, I think theres 25 states across the country that partnered with Beyond Type 1 and disseminated materials warning signs, posters, fliers and handouts to families at well visits.
The campaign began its push to disseminate the information in November of 2016 and has distributed the material in 25 states to more than 28,000 pediatric offices serving over 90 million patients a year, according to Berman.
And thats just phase one.
With a grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust Foundation, we were able to expand the campaign into phase two, into 10 states across the country, Berman said.
Phase two targets the general public, schools and businesses such as gyms.
In February of this year, the National Association of School Nurses partnered with Beyond Type 1 with the awareness campaign, and so thats been very exciting to expand beyond the pediatricians, Berman said. With the school nurses, were raising awareness of the warning signs, really to be distributed to tens of thousands of school nurses nationally in the United States. So, weve been really thrilled with the awareness and partnerships with this campaign.
For more information or to get involved, visit http://www.beyondtype1.org/dkacampaign or email dka@beyondtype1.org. Find Beyond Type 1 on social media: @beyondtype1.
Read more here:
Cypress mother advocates with Beyond Type 1 DKA Campaign to differentiate diabetes symptoms from viruses like COVID-19 - Chron
- Novo Nordisk Isn't in The "Magnificent Seven," but Here's Why I Think It Should Be - Yahoo Finance - March 18th, 2024
- Doctor warns of strange telltale sign of diabetes which can appear on the legs - The Mirror - March 18th, 2024
- Unraveling the complexities of muscle repair in diabetes: A call for targeted research and therapies - News-Medical.Net - March 18th, 2024
- Popular diabetes and weight loss drugs often hard to get for people who need them - NBC News - March 18th, 2024
- Your Health Matters: The ABCs of diabetes - The Globe | News, weather, sports from Worthington, Minnesota - The Globe - March 18th, 2024
- The Link Between Pancreatic Cancer and Diabetes - Cedars-Sinai - March 18th, 2024
- Nikita Kuzmin diabetes: what was he holding in the CBB house? - Cosmopolitan UK - March 18th, 2024
- FDA Approves Rezdiffra, the First Drug for Diabetes-Related Liver Disease - diaTribe Foundation - March 18th, 2024
- He took up running rather than take diabetes medication. It worked - South China Morning Post - March 18th, 2024
- Can Eating Yogurt Really Reduce Your Risk of Diabetes? - Health.com - March 18th, 2024
- Even short periods of diabetes remission are linked to lower risk of heart attack and stroke - The BMJ - March 18th, 2024
- Kidney stone risk factors and how type 2 diabetes medication may help - WECT - March 18th, 2024
- 'Making the Invisible Visible': CGMs Offer Insights for T2D - Medscape - March 18th, 2024
- Novo Nordisk Discontinues Insulin Medication After Cutting Its Price - The American Prospect - March 18th, 2024
- Infographic: Where GLP-1s Work Now -- and What's Coming - Medscape - March 18th, 2024
- Intermountain Health Experts Say Education Key to Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes | PRUnderground - PR Underground - March 18th, 2024
- International body recommends more sensitive test to indicate risk of developing diabetes - The Hindu - March 18th, 2024
- The importance of knowing your A1C level - KSAT San Antonio - March 18th, 2024
- Tandem Diabetes Care's t:slim X2 Insulin Pump is the First Automated Insulin Delivery System to Integrate with ... - Business Wire - January 9th, 2024
- Diffuse Alveolar Hemorrhage Occurring Suddenly in a Diabetic Patient With Asthma Exacerbation - Cureus - January 9th, 2024
- Virginia Tech researchers find drugs used to treat Type 2 diabetes reduce alcohol cravings - WRIC ABC 8News - January 9th, 2024
- FDA looking into reports of hair loss, suicidal thoughts in people using popular drugs for diabetes and weight loss - CNN - January 9th, 2024
- Glycemic control and cardiovascular outcomes in patients with diabetes and coronary artery disease according to ... - Cardiovascular Diabetology - January 9th, 2024
- Insulin price cap: More Americans will now pay no more than $35 - USA TODAY - January 9th, 2024
- Eli Lilly cracks down on the use of weight loss drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound for cosmetic reasons instead of for diabetes and obesity - Fortune - January 9th, 2024
- No Increased Risk of Suicidal Ideation With GLP-1 Drugs - Medpage Today - January 9th, 2024
- Ask the Doctors | New research being conducted to treat diabetes - Eureka Times-Standard - January 9th, 2024
- Salivary Chloride Intracellular Channel 1 (CLIC1) as a Hub of Gene-Gene Interactome of Periodontitis With Diabetes ... - Cureus - January 9th, 2024
- Why Omada's CEO Thinks Amazon Selected His Startup as the 1st Partner for Its New Program - MedCity News - January 9th, 2024
- Researchers find drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes and obesity reduce alcohol cravings - Medical Xpress - January 9th, 2024
- Randomized open-label trial of semaglutide and dapagliflozin in patients with type 2 diabetes of different ... - Nature.com - January 9th, 2024
- CV Safety Profile of TheracosBio's BRENZAVVY (bexagliflozin) Confirmed in Research Published in Diabetes ... - Business Wire - January 9th, 2024
- 6 "Bad" Fruits You Should Be Eating When You Have Diabetes, According to Dietitians - EatingWell - January 9th, 2024
- Children of Women with Type 1 Diabetes Have Increased Heart Defect Risk - Inside Precision Medicine - January 9th, 2024
- Transforming Corporate Health: Fitterfly's Success in Tackling Diabetes and Weight Issues - Business Standard - January 9th, 2024
- Ozempic and weight loss | News and views - Diabetes UK - January 9th, 2024
- Drugs used to treat Type 2 diabetes reduce alcohol cravings - ScienceBlog.com - January 9th, 2024
- People taking Wegovy and Ozempic have lower risk of suicidal thoughts vs. older drugs, study finds - ABC News - January 9th, 2024
- For Those With Diabetes On Medicare Part D, Insulin Is $35...If Its Covered - Forbes - October 27th, 2023
- Biologist Douglas Melton: I was studying frogs until my son was diagnosed with diabetes then I started looking for a cure - EL PAS USA - October 27th, 2023
- Diabetes and Hearing Loss with Concept by Iowa Hearing | Paid Content - Local 5 - weareiowa.com - May 9th, 2023
- COUNTY COLUMN: Learn to Live well with diabetes at The Well - Norman Transcript - May 1st, 2023
- Want to Cut Type 2 Diabetes Risk? This High-fat Food Can Be the Answer, According to New Study - Revyuh - May 1st, 2023
- Diabetes: What It Is, Causes, Symptoms, Treatment & Types - March 13th, 2023
- A number of healthtech startups claim they can reverse Type 2 diabetes. But caveats apply, caution doctors - Economic Times - March 13th, 2023
- Tampa doctor who lost brother to diabetes calls insulin price cut a 'game changer' - ABC Action News Tampa Bay - March 5th, 2023
- New study suggest people previously infected with COVID-19 could have increased risk for diabetes - CBS Los Angeles - February 16th, 2023
- Diabetes Symptoms, Causes, & Treatment | ADA - October 15th, 2022
- A nutritionist with type 1 diabetes shares the top 5 'food swaps' she eats to manage her blood sugar - CNBC - October 15th, 2022
- Diabetes and the gut: How a bacterial protein may impact insulin - Medical News Today - October 15th, 2022
- Milton teen involved in launch of diabetes support program - Milton Daily Standard - October 15th, 2022
- Providers Now Have Free Access to Latest Diabetes Technology in One Place - PR Newswire - October 15th, 2022
- 5 Modifiable Factors in Women with History of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus That Can Reduce the Risk of T2D - Pharmacy Times - October 15th, 2022
- BCMH the stoy of Diabetes and Determination - 921News - October 15th, 2022
- Can skipping a meal lead to diabetes and fat around abdomen? - The Indian Express - October 15th, 2022
- Type 2 Diabetes Drugs Market Research Report by Drug, Application, Distribution, Region - Global Forecast to 2027 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19 -... - October 15th, 2022
- Diabetes: Symptoms, risks, and prevention - Wilmington News Journal, OH - July 17th, 2022
- Diabetes symptoms: The sign of nerve damage that often strikes at night - severe - Express - July 17th, 2022
- Local Teen Brings Smiles and Health Kits to Kids with Diabetes - River Journal Staff - July 17th, 2022
- Type 3 diabetes: symptoms, causes and treatments - Livescience.com - July 17th, 2022
- Diabetes Travel Essentials and Tips for the Approximately 21 Million Americans that Must Manage Their Diabetes While on Vacation - PR Newswire - July 17th, 2022
- A type of 'step therapy' is an effective strategy for diabetic eye disease - National Institutes of Health (.gov) - July 17th, 2022
- Diabetes education: one in five search results for diabetes lack reliable information - Open Access Government - July 17th, 2022
- Arch City Kids Theater Troupe Fights Type 1 Diabetes With Its Annual Revue - Broadway World - July 17th, 2022
- Nutrigenomics Testing Industry Forecast to 2027 - Insights Into Obesity, Diabetes, Cancer, and Cardiovascular Disease Applications -... - July 17th, 2022
- Harvard Scientists Have Developed a Revolutionary New Treatment for Diabetes - SciTechDaily - June 16th, 2022
- Do Viruses and Coxsackievirus Cause Type 1 Diabetes? - Healthline - June 16th, 2022
- Diabetes Week: Types 1 and 2 symptoms, causes and prevention - Yahoo Entertainment - June 16th, 2022
- Diabetes And Sex: Have Safe Sex While Managing Diabetes - MadameNoire - June 16th, 2022
- Diabetes Devices Market to Expand at the CAGR of 6.4% from 2019 to 2027, Increase in Prevalence of Diabetes Expected to Drive Global Market - BioSpace - June 16th, 2022
- Anemia and Diabetes: What You Should Know - Healthline - June 16th, 2022
- Patient Knowledge of Diabetes and CKD in an Inner-City Population - DocWire News - June 16th, 2022
- ASCENSIA DIABETES CARE ANNOUNCES EUROPEAN APPROVAL OF THE NEXT-GENERATION EVERSENSE E3 CONTINUOUS GLUCOSE MONITORING SYSTEM - PR Newswire - June 16th, 2022
- Understanding the Link between Diabetes Care and Sickle Cell Disease | NIDDK - National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases... - June 16th, 2022
- Child type 2 diabetes referrals in England and Wales jump 50% amid obesity crisis - The Guardian - June 16th, 2022
- Covenant Childrens to host diabetes camp in July - KLBK | KAMC | EverythingLubbock.com - June 16th, 2022
- Pattern of contraceptive use among reproductive-aged women with diabetes and/or hypertension: findings from Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey -... - June 16th, 2022
- Diabetes warning: The 6 signs on your SKIN that can be a sign of life-threatening disease... - The Sun - June 16th, 2022
- www.thestreet.com - December 8th, 2021
- Long-Term Glycemic Control Cuts Risk for Severe COVID-19 With T2DM - HealthDay News - December 8th, 2021