We’re celebrating another Mover, Shaker and T1D Changemaker in our community to celebrate National Diabetes Awareness Month!

Meet Bana and her Family!

Would you mind sharing Bana’s diagnosis story?

Bana was sick for almost 10 days, with heavy flu symptoms – vomiting, high temperature, thirst, and wetting the bed. We went to the local clinic, but they diagnosed her with a stomach virus. We even took her for a COVID test, which was negative. On 09/10/2021 we noticed that she had lost a lot of weight, so we took her to the clinic again and this time they referred us to the CMH ER. We directly went over there and after few hours they told us that Bana had type 1 diabetes, and her blood sugar was more than 500. It was a big shock for my wife and myself. Then they transferred Bana to the ICU at CMH KC downtown, she stayed there for 18 hours, then she was transferred to a normal room

Wow. Thank you for sharing your story and raising awareness about the importance of T1D common signs and symptoms. Your family has a fairly new T1D diagnosis. Has your perception of T1D changed since Bana was first diagnosed?

After the diagnosis, we started to read a lot about T1D. Even though it’s a chronic disease, we started to feel it’s manageable and controllable. CMH nurses and doctors helped us a lot in understanding T1D and comfort us made us feel we will be able to do it confidently.

That’s wonderful to hear. T1D care has come a long way and having a great support team can make a huge, positive difference. It sounds like Bana is already a T1D warrior. With all the changes, how has she adapted to life with T1D?

She is a strong girl. I didn’t expect her or us to cope up with the new reality so fast. We accomplish to keep her blood sugar average 149, 69% of the time in range and 64% standard deviation.

That’s amazing! Are you doing anything special to celebrate your first National Diabetes Awareness Month?

We will be celebrating her accomplishments and strengths with the family.

Thank you to Bana, Maitham and Asmahan for sharing your story and highlighting Bana as a strong T1D Champion. Type 1 diabetes never takes a break and neither to the T1D Champions in our community. Whether it’s captaining a walk team, advocating for change or celebrating that magical 100 “unicorn” blood glucose reading, everyone, everyday is a Mover, Shaker and T1D Changemaker in our community.