Pre Campamento

Before diabetes camp, the Ecuadorian volunteers as well as the US ones came together at the campsite to prepare for Camp. So, what does that exactly mean? Well, we organized educational diabetes related activities for the kids as well as fun crazy activities, trained on what to do in hypoglycemia emergencies and participated in fun team bonding.

At pre-camp, I learned that I would be working with James and Jairo counseling the group of boys aged 13-14 years old. Jairo is Ecuadorian with diabetes and we had worked together in Bolivia before and James is from the US and new to the program. The others were divided up into groups and the monitors for the youth groups up to age 11, adolescents up to 14 and adults then had to create banners and songs for their groups. I have to say that our group created the best banner for our team the Tucanes Rojos although our songs could still use some work.
For Educational activities, we created stimulating ways to engage the kids in learning about diabetes. We think that diabetes is not a disease but a lifestyle and so we need to ensure that kids understand how to manage their lifestyle to best care for themselves. I continue to learn more about diabetes from those volunteers who have it as well as from the training sessions.
In order to truly understand the ritual of testing the sugar and injecting oneself with insulin, we did something similar. I've tested my blood sugar before in Bolivia and did it again here. We also each took a needle and inserted it into a place that is common to inject insulin to see what that is like for someone with diabetes who has to do this everyday. I didn't mind putting the needle in my stomach, but really hate pricking my finger to draw blood to test my blood sugar. Afterwards, we drew pics around our needle spots.

For fun, we created nicknames for everyone so that the kids would have an easier time remembering names. Although everyone just wanted to call me Fujimoto since they seem to like my last name a lot, I am now Juguete, which means toy in Spanish.

In case of an emergency, we simulated out what to do when a child's blood sugar goes so low that he starts convulsing in the middle of the night. I had seen this skit before in Bolivia, but each time I see it, it still shakes me up. We learned how to use the glucagon, an intramuscular emergency shot of sugar essentially, which I hope we won't have to use.

At the end of pre-camp, one person held a ball of string together and stated what he received out of pre-camp and what he hoped to achieve at camp. After his statement he threw the ball to another person who did the same. Once we had created an interwoven tangle that bond us together, we cut the string and tied it around our wrists to remember this time together and the objectives we had set out for ourselves. The gathering proved to be an emotional one when Martina, a 14 year old Ecuadorian broke down crying when she explained that her sister who has diabetes would be dead today if not for the the support of the foundation. I expect Camp to be even more moving and emotional and I look forward to supporting these kids in their development of skills and tools necessary to better manage their condition.