Being diagnosed with an incurable disease is stunning news for anyone of any age. Learning such news as an adolescent can be even more devastating; knowing that for the remainder of life the disease will be a daily part of existence.

  As an eight-year-old, Mechanicsville’s Phillip Gardner was a typically active preteen who was involved in a variety of sports and dreamed of one day playing college football. But in the middle of baseball season in the spring of 2000, Gardner suddenly became very ill. After two days of what his mother believed was a bad case of the flu, Gardner was taken to see his doctor. It was only then that he learned he suffered from Type 1 diabetes and his life was forever changed.

  According to the American Diabetes Association Type 2 diabetes can develop in anyone, However, Type 1 diabetes is often attributed to genetics. Therefore the diagnosis came as a surprise to Gardner because no one in his family suffered from that particular strain. “My grandpa, he had Type 2 diabetes but nobody had Type 1 diabetes,” he said. “It’s unusual. It was weird.” 

  For Gardner, being diagnosed with an incurable disease at such a young age made life confusing and hectic. Though only eight-years-old at the time Gardner found a way to adapt to the fact that he now needed to eat a specific diet, continually monitor his blood sugar levels and inject himself with insulin regularly. “It was hard because I hated shots and I just didn’t want to do it,” he said. “But I got used to it.

  “I got into the routine a couple of weeks after I got out of the hospital,” he said. “But I really didn’t get the hang of it, get the flow of it probably for about a year.”

  Sitting out the remainder of the baseball season, Gardner adjusted to the routine of treatment with the aim of being able to return to sports activities in the fall.

  Over the last eight years, Gardner has not allowed diabetes to slow him down or keep him from attaining his goals. “It’s part of life now,” he said. “You just have to deal with it.” He has continued to play sports but his concentration has centered on football. Last fall, as a sophomore at Lee-Davis High School, Gardner became the starting quarterback for the Confederates.

  Gardner no longer has to deal with injections and now uses an insulin pump. On the football field his diabetes has just become another component of his game plan. While other players are resting between quarters, Gardner is checking his blood sugar levels. “I check it every quarter,” he said. If his count registers high, Gardner utilizes his insulin pump between quarters to get his levels under control.

  Because he has triumphed on the playing field despite diabetes Gardner hopes to inspire others, which has also been the goal of fellow Richmonder Elliot Yamin.

  Like Gardner, Yamin a former American Idol contestant, also suffers from Type 1 diabetes, having been diagnosed with the disease 12 years ago.

  Yamin has utilized his celebrity status to raise awareness about the disease and assist with fund-raising. As a result, in 2007, Yamin was named the National Spokesperson for the American Diabetes Association. 

  Speaking by phone from San Francisco, where he was taking a break from work on his second album to introduce the winners of Inspired by Diabetes, an annual competition created in collaboration with Eli Lilly and the International Diabetes Federation, that allows people suffering from diabetes to express themselves through artwork, photos and essays, Yamin described his life with the disease.

  An avid sports fan, Yamin’s recording and touring schedule makes his life much like that of any athlete. Therefore he and Gardner share similar treatment plans.

  “I certainly test my blood sugar more than I probably would on a normal basis,” said Yamin, who wears an insulin pump during performances. “I’m always on the road and my schedule is up and down. I’m always jumping from one place to the next and I’m always on the go.”

  Also, like Gardner, Yamin said being diagnosed with diabetes at such a young age was a real challenge. “I didn’t want to believe it,” Yamin said. “I didn’t want to face that I had this incurable disease.”

  Yamin, who was 16 at the time, said he did not deal with the diagnosis well. “That was kind of a tough period in my life anyway because my parents were going through a divorce and just things going on at home I had to cope with.”

  Because of what he went through, Yamin hopes other can learn from the mistakes he made initially dealing with the disease.

  “It didn’t sit well with me,” he said. “It was a hard pill to swallow initially and I ended up getting sick. I wanted to spite everybody. My parents, my mom, my doctor and myself and I got really sick because I stopped taking my insulin. I was just like, ‘screw it.’ For me it was ‘I don’t have this. I can beat it. I don’t need insulin all of a sudden.’ I found out pretty abruptly that wasn’t the case.”

  If not properly treated, diabetes can lead to stroke, high blood pressure, blindness and sexual dysfunction as well as diseases of the heart, kidney, nervous system or dental disease. Yamin knows he was fortunate to recover from being unable to accept his situation and he now wants to make sure other do not test their fate the way he did. 

  Like Yamin, Gardner felt many of the same emotions and offered sound advice to young people who are newly diagnosed. “Just to not get down on themselves,” Gardner said. “Just make sure you stay on top of it, keep control of it. Not to feel like you’ve got some really bad disease because it’s not that bad if you just take care of it.”

  Yamin offered similar advice. “Just don’t get discouraged,” he said. “That’s why I like sharing my story so much. Here I am, I get to live out my dream and do what I’ve always dreamed of doing and at 16 and even 20 I didn’t know how much of a possibility that was going to be because of diabetes. I thought my world was very limited and that’s not the case. I just try to tell everyone to work hard toward your goals and your dreams.” 

  Though his life has changed significantly since he was younger, Gardner still follows the dream of one day playing college football because he knows an incurable but controllable disease will not stop him.
 
  Statistics from the AMA show that 7.0 percent of the population suffers from diabetes and that 6.2 million people are undiagnosed. Among children and adolescents, one out of every 400 to 600 suffer from Type 1 diabetes. In 2002, diabetes was listed as the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. The risk of death is twice as high for a person with diabetes.

For more information on diabetes go to, http://www.diabetes.org/home.jsp
For more information on Inspired by Diabetes go to, http://www.inspiredbydiabetes.com/index.jsp