The Whyte Family
2021 Promise Ball Fund A Cure Family

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) and JDRF entered our lives eleven years ago when two of our sons, Cameron (then age 11) and Davis (age 9), were diagnosed. The day we realized it wasn’t just a stomach bug, we went from our home, to the pediatrician’s office, to the Emergency Room, then right to the Pediatric ICU. We rushed from one side of the ICU to the other as both boys were critically ill. After days of progressive improvement and then training, we left the hospital changed forever, armed with vials of insulin to inject Cameron’s and Davis’s little bodies and lancets to prick their fingers a dozen times a day to test their blood glucose levels. Seventeen months later, our daughter Charlotte was diagnosed. We now had three children with the disease that demanded hour-by-hour attention.

This often-invisible disease forced us into unknown territory, allowing no learning curve, no break to regroup, and never a day off. Thankfully, friends at JDRF helped us and we, in turn, embraced JDRF’s mission to help change our family’s future. And we are asking you to do the same.

Before T1D, we took for granted the simple ability to eat, play, and live our lives without ever considering the effect on the kids’ blood sugar levels. But Cameron, Davis, Charlotte, and millions of people like them live in a day-to-day, minute-to-minute balancing act that has serious short- and long-term complications. Too much insulin is deadly. Too little insulin brings the risk of long-term complications. Puberty, hormones, stress, exercise, carb-heavy meals, altitude changes, weather changes and later alcohol all bring added nuances to what would seem like a relatively simple dosage calculation. We believe JDRF is the organization that will change what it means to live with this disease – and eventually deliver a cure.

Over the past 50 years of JDRF-led discovery, thousands of small steps in the lab have led to better management of T1D and outlined a clear path to several cure therapies. Please join us in donating to Fund A Cure.