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Dealing with Diabetes

Tya Tiempetch

(page 1 of 4)

Zachary Ullman was born in autumn 1987 with an insatiable thirst that kept parents Ellen and Jeffry in, what seemed like, constant diaper-changing mode.

On the one hand, the first-time parents were happy that their son had a healthy appetite. However, as the wet diaper count remained unusually high, the Ullmans began to wonder if healthy was the right word to describe Zack’s condition. They asked their pediatrician if Zack should be tested for diabetes, which has warning signs that include their son’s symptoms. The doctor said that “drinking a lot and peeing a lot was an old wives’ tale” as far as detecting the disease.

A few months later, in February 1989, the Ullmans were frantically rushing their son to the emergency room at Miami Children’s Hospital. Zack, only 15 months old, labored to take a simple breath. He was vomiting, and he was weakening by the minute.

An ER nurse sliced the child’s finger with a razor-sharp lancet to draw blood and quickly test his glucose level. It was off the charts. His little body, unable to produce enough insulin, was burning fat as a fuel source, resulting in life-threatening levels of organic acids in the bloodstream and heightened blood sugar. Zack was in the throes of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA).

Doctors confirmed what the Ullmans had suspected all along. Their son was a type 1 diabetic. The lives of Ellen, Jeffry and Zack never would be the same.

“Most people, even doctors, don’t [understand] the psychological toll diabetes can have on a family,” says Ellen, who lives with her husband in Boca Raton. “Our whole world [became] consumed with what to do next—when to test Zack’s blood, when and what to feed him, and how often to check him at night.”

Today, Zack, 21, is a junior at the University of Florida, majoring in political science. Over the years, he’s learned to live with daily insulin injections and, later, an insulin pump. As many as 10 times a day, he’ll prick his finger and test his blood-glucose level. He has quarterly checkups to evaluate blood-glucose levels and insulin doses; doctors also test for nerve disorders, diseases of the kidney and thyroid, and celiac disease (which involves an inability to tolerate gluten)—all conditions to which diabetics are particularly susceptible.

The impact that diabetes continues to have on Zack and his parents has been life-altering in more ways than one. However, the Ullmans are hardly alone.

Over the last 15 years, the number of people with diabetes in the United States has doubled, making it our nation’s fastest-growing chronic condition. More than 24 million people live with the disease, according to reports released last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That’s nearly 8 percent of the national population. In Palm Beach County, 9 percent of the population has diabetes.

If those numbers seem startling, then the forecast is nothing short of mind-numbing. The CDC estimates that another 57 million Americans have prediabetes—blood-glucose levels higher than normal but not elevated enough to be called diabetes—and most of them don’t know it. According to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), many of those people will become type 2 diabetics within 10 years. In fact, if the trends continue, the ADA predicts that one in three Americans eventually will have diabetes, reducing his or her life expectancy by 10–15 years.

The good news is that there is hope—much of it originating here in Florida—in the form of research, advanced techniques for diagnosis and treatment, and professional and private advocates committed to stopping the disease in its tracks.
However, as residents in and around Boca can attest, the challenges grow more daunting by the day.

What is diabetes?

People with diabetes have either a pancreas that produces no insulin (or insufficient amounts) or a system that doesn’t effectively process insulin. Insulin is a vital hormone that allows sugar (glucose) to penetrate cells and convert into energy.

There are two main types of diabetes:

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune, genetic or environmental disease that cannot be prevented. The body, in this case, produces no insulin. It most often strikes children and young adults.

Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for nine out of 10 cases, is often linked to obesity, physical inactivity, old age, problematic glucose metabolism, ethnicity and race (Native Americans and Native Alaskans have the highest rates). Type 2 diabetics do not produce enough insulin or their cells ignore the insulin.

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