Camp makes summer normal

Last updated: 01:01 AM EDT

Camp makes summer normal

Monday, July 29, 2002

By Adam Gorlick
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

OXFORD-- They spend much of the year dreading what so many of their friends take for granted as a good time: birthday parties, sleepovers; Halloween.
     But for a few weeks during the summer, the girls at the Clara Barton Camp and Center for Diabetes Education don't have to worry about funny looks or questions about why they can't indulge in ice-cream cakes, pizza pies and gobs of candy.
     “You feel left out a lot when you have diabetes,” said Madeline Hirsch, 10, of Providence. Madeline has spent two weeks in each of the past three summers at the camp with other girls who have Type I diabetes. The camp is a secluded site tucked in a wooded area that was owned by the family of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton.
     “When I tell people I have diabetes, they sometimes want to know if it's contagious, and they back away from me,” she said. “But that doesn't happen here. Everyone's the same.”
     That feeling of inclusion is what's behind many of the country's camps for children with disabilities and diseases.
     Of the 2,233 camps accredited by the American Camping Association, 267 run programs dealing with specific physical or mental challenges. Ninety-eight of those camps are for diabetics.
     “Children with special needs are often mainstreamed into so many situations during the year that they don't often have the chance to be around people dealing with the same things they struggle with,” said Peg Smith, executive director of the American Camping Association. “I hear from a lot of young people who say it's so nice to be with other kids who understand what it's like to go through what they're going through.”
     About 600 girls attend the camp over four two-week sessions each summer. The fee, which includes meals, medical services and sleeping cabins that the girls decorate with photos and artwork, is $800 a week. That's about $500 more than most of the popular residential camps accredited by the camping association. But $225,000 in scholarships helps cut the cost for half of the Barton campers.
     Along with days packed with swimming, arts and crafts and outdoor adventures on rope courses and makeshift soccer fields, the 6- to 17-year-old campers check their blood glucose levels at least four times each day, eat meals that are measured to meet their blood sugar needs and attend counseling sessions to share their feelings and talk about living with diabetes.
     “The older kids act as role models for the younger ones,” said Allie Winer, a 16-year-old from Westboro. “When you're young and you have diabetes, you sometimes think you can't spend your whole life living with it. But seeing someone older dealing with it helps a lot.”
     Allie, who hopes to return as a counselor next summer, said one of her best moments at Barton was when she helped a younger camper who was injecting insulin into her belly for the first time.
     “There's a sense of independence when you do it yourself,” she said. “That's what this place is about. You realize you have a problem, but you learn how to live with it and be in control.”
     But even the older campers sometimes have a tough time living with their disease.
     With Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes, the pancreas does not produce insulin, which is needed by the body to use glucose (a form of sugar made when food is digested) as fuel for energy. No insulin means glucose builds up in the bloodstream and overflows into the urine.
     Diabetics must replace the natural insulin levels with injections or by wearing pumps that deliver small increments of insulin through a small tube or needle inserted under the skin.
     Eating too much sugar could cause lethargy and unconsciousness or be life threatening. Having a low blood-sugar level is just as dangerous.
     “When I was first diagnosed, I just saw a picture of a piece of cake and a can of Coke with a big circle and X around it,” said Carolyn Kendall, a 16-year-old from Philadelphia who learned she had diabetes about four years ago. “I felt like life was over. And even though you learn to deal with it, it's hard sometimes.”
     The nation's first special needs camp, Camp Allyn in Batavia, Ohio, began in 1921 for the mentally retarded, according to the camping association.
     Eleven years later, Barton opened and is now one of the country's oldest for diabetics. Its first camping session was offered for eight diabetic children. The site was owned at the time by a Unitarian Universalist women's group that wanted to use Clara Barton's homestead for some type of humanitarian purpose.
     When Boston doctor Elliot Joslin started writing about the need for “islands of safety” for diabetic children, the Universalist group offered him the Barton site for a camp with two purposes: to let children play and to give doctors a chance to learn more about diabetes.
     Every summer since, there's been a doctor on duty around the clock to review every camper's blood-sugar level during the course of a day.
     “Doctors learn a lot about treating diabetes right here,” said Shelley Yeager, the camp's executive director. “There's no better place to learn about it in such a short period of time.”
     While the constant reminders of diabetes are inescapable -- strict diets, counselors who carry small bags filled with glucose meters, honey packets and glucose tablets and automatic insulin injectors that hang from waistbands like pagers -- campers say their weeks at Barton give them time to forget they're different from so many of their friends.
     “You feel like yourself -- like you're at home,” Carolyn said. “You realize you're not just a diabetic. You have a normal life, too.”

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