Hello, and welcome back to the Poetic Diabetic! Sorry for the lack of consistent uploads over the past few months, I’ve been busy doing a variety of diabetes-related activities, such as interning  with the San Francisco based diabetic education company, Close Concerns and volunteering with the Maryland based non-profit company, AYUDA (American Youth Understanding Diabetes Abroad). Now with all these experiences, I have a lot to write about, starting with my time in AYUDA! 

For those who aren’t familiar, AYUDA is a nonprofit organization focusing on helping American teens run educational summer programs (called Campo Amigo) for youth with diabetes in the Dominican Republic (a country which has Spanish as it’s native language).  

I was in the DR for eleven days, during which I and a group of nine other teens partnered with a local Dominican charity, “Aprendiendo a Vivir” in order to prepare a four-day camp packed to the brim with both educational and entertaining activities for the local children. I was in the blue group, which worked with campers ages nine to thirteen. 

Each day, we’d bring the kids into camp, check their blood sugar, and have the nurse administer any corrections to their blood sugar levels. Next, we’d do a group of activities, which were separated into the categories of sports, arts and crafts, and education.  

For sports, we started with a simple game of hot potato, where the campers would have to say their name, favorite color, and favorite hobby when they lost. After every camper got the chance to introduce themselves, we moved onto a game we called “Alto, Bajo, Medio”. This game involved the campers either limboing under or jumping over a jump rope, depending on if a number they were given was high or low. 

For education, we played an activity called “Pin the Insulin Syringe on the Person,” in which campers would split into teams and use cutouts of insulin syringes to mark common injection sites. While I didn’t come up with every idea, I was quite proud of that one. And finally, for arts and crafts, we had each of the campers make a partitioned bracelet color coded to represent the types and sizes of different foods they’d find on their plates. 

Each kid came from a very different background and lived a very different life from me, but we all still had the same illness and had chance to bond and grow together. Having diabetes made them all strong, and being there together, with both their peers and the counselors, made them stronger. For instance, on the first day, there was one camper, a ten-year-old named Juan, who I invited to play basketball. After all that exercise, I implored him to check his blood glucose, but he didn’t want too. He was too afraid of the lancet to perform his own check. By the time we got to the end of the day, he’d gotten the chance to see both kids and counselors checking, and he was finally brave enough to check his own blood sugar for the very first time. 

Being there with him and seeing his growth reminded me about how I was when I was newly diagnosed. I was terrified of the needles and the blood and all those frightening medical terms. But just as I grew up and learned how to control my diabetes, so did he. Not only did I get the chance to help, but I also got the chance to be helped. The program nurse was there to help both the kids and counselors. For instance, on a night where I was having significant trouble with my pump (I simply didn’t seem to be absorbing insulin), the program nurse spent thirty minutes trying to figure out why I was having issues (it turned out that I just needed to try a new pump site, as my usual ones were getting too used up). This was the true value of AYUDA, being given the chance to both help and be helped. 

That’s all for now! AYUDA was a great experience, and I look forward to hopefully participating  next year!