|
High Tech Medicine Keeps Student on Her Feet
by Matt Davis
Chelsey Gaddy
|
Chelsey Gaddy's dad came home from work one day to find his daughter collapsed and in a daze in the middle of the bathroom floor. He rushed her to the hospital to find out that her blood sugar was way off course. A normal blood sugar is between 80 to 120 milligrams per deciliter. Chelsey's was a dangerous 429.
The diagnosis was diabetes.
Today Gaddy is a musical theatre major and vice president of the junior class at Mars Hill College. She is secretary of Gamma Chi Epsilon Sorority, a member of the college choir, and a Showstoppers team member. She has sung in campus musicals, and on December 3 she performed before a packed Moore Auditorium as a soprano soloist in Handel's Messiah.
This represents a triumph of both will and technology.
Gaddy's trials began after her parents got a divorce when she was a sophomore in high school. "I was holding a full time job and helping pay rent, because my dad and I had moved out of my mother's house," she recalls. "I was Honors Student Kid, and I was very involved in anything - chorus, band, and theater - at school. With my mom not there to support me anymore, I became really stressed. About two months after my dad and I moved out, I began to constantly get sick. It was like I had the flu, but I was tired all the time, and I was constantly thirsty and hungry, but I was losing weight like crazy. I went from being 130 to about 95 in about a month and a half."
After her collapse, when Gaddy got to the hospital, the nurses hooked her up to an IV to get her blood sugar stabilized. She stayed there for about two weeks because she was so sick and because the doctors wanted to take plenty of time to educate her about her disease and how to take care of herself.
They prescribed insulin shots to control her blood sugar. "This worked for about two years, but my diabetes gradually got worse," she says. "I was up to six shots of insulin per day, and my blood sugar still was not stable. I also kept gaining and losing weight, and I was not healthy at all."
Her doctors suggested an insulin pump. An insulin pump is about the size of a beeper. It clips onto your belt and connects to a tube that is inserted just under the skin near the waist. It is battery powered and has to be charged about once a week with new insulin.
"They say it is the most effective way for your body to act like it still had a (working) pancreas," Gaddy explains. The pancreas is the organ that produces the insulin that the body requires to process sugar. Gaddy's high blood sugar count is what made her pass out. "I had to go to two days of classes and fight with my insurance company," she says, "but I ended up getting the pump," a MiniMed 507C.
Chelsey's pump works automatically; she does not have to do anything to it except wear it. It pumps in a constant amount of insulin called "the basal rate." "If I eat anything that will make my blood sugar increase, such as sugars or carbohydrates, then I have to "bolus," which is where I give myself a specific amount of insulin according to what I eat. For example, a piece of bread has about 15-20 grams of carbs in it. So if I eat a piece of bread, I will pump 1.5-2.0 Units of insulin. It's really simple, and it keeps my blood sugars balanced better."
Gaddy wears her pump all the time but one would not know it just by looking. Chelsey is still doing it all like she was in high school. She is very involved on campus and has a great social life. The only thing that is different this time is that her diabetes is not going to hold her back.
HOME
| 
