Healthy lifestyle key for girl with diabetes

It was a health fair at school meant to encourage children to live healthy lifestyles.

Instead, it made 8-year-old Grace McCullough feel terrible.

The woman spoke about childhood obesity and said that if children didn't make better food choices, they'd end up with diseases like diabetes.

"People don't distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes," said her father, Scott McCullough. "It made her think, 'I did something wrong.' That was hard."

Type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes, is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. Doctors don't know why or what causes it, and there is no cure. Unlike other forms of diabetes, those who have it did nothing to cause it.

For Grace, the diagnosis came three years ago at Thanksgiving.

"It was third grade," said Grace, now 10, "and I was going to the bathroom all the time. I got drinks a lot and I would sleep during recess. My teacher got worried and told my parents."

Stephanie and Scott McCullough consulted WebMD first.

"Everything kept coming back diabetes," said Stephanie McCullough. "She'd get stomachaches, she was tired, she went to the bathroom a lot, but it didn't come on all at once. You could always find some other reason for the symptoms. She was drinking a lot, so she went to the bathroom a lot. We wouldn't have come up with (diabetes) on our own."

It was a neighbor who convinced them to take her to the hospital.

"She tested my blood sugar and said it was high," said Grace. "She said, 'Get your toothbrush and pillow, you're going to the hospital.' It was 11:30 at night."

Grace said she was so tired, she didn't really understand the gravity of being sent to the hospital right away. Her parents, however, knew it meant their worst fears were likely going to become a reality.

Stephanie McCullough fights back tears as she describes what she knew about diabetes before her daughter's diagnosis.

"The only thing I knew about lifelong diabetes is that people had to have body parts amputated or couldn't have children," she said. "I wanted her to have a normal life."

Grace was so lethargic, she doesn't recall feeling much but fatigue in that first night.