“Cabin 2 to Med Team.”

I grab my walkie talkie off of my belt to respond. “Go for Med Team.”

“My camper’s sugar is 66 and dropping,” the counselor on the other end relays.

“I’m on my way, go ahead and give 4 glucose tabs.”

I grab the red “Low bag” and zip up my raincoat before jogging up to Cabin 2. It’s Day 3 of Diabetes Week at CHT, a sleepaway camp in rural VA, and I finally feel like I’m starting to get the hang of things as one of the camp docs. This week, we are hosting 37 kiddos between 7 and 14, all of whom have Type 1 diabetes. As an aspiring pediatric endocrinologist, I have been looking forward to this week for months, and now that it is finally here, I realize that I know so very little about what it is like to live with T1DM.

“Knock, knock, Med Team,” I call before stepping into the cabin when I arrive. Inside are 6 campers, boys between the ages of 7 and 9, with their two counselors. The cabin is chaos, per usual, but everyone has a smile on their face.

“Somebody called for a low?” I ask.

“It’s E,” replies the counselor as he scrambles to find E’s CGM receiver out of the pile he has on his bed. “It says critical low.”

I take the receiver from him and check the reading from E’s continuous glucose monitor. We’re now at 54, so I start pulling some glucose gel from my bag. “Hey E,” I call to the little boy in pikachu pajamas sitting cross legged on his bunk bed, “how are you feeling?”

“I feel fine!” He tells me, exasperated, as he remains engrossed in the baseball cards he is trading with one of the other campers.

“Okay, great. Have some gel just to be sure you come back up.” I hand him the little squishy packet to eat, yet again struck by just how ingrained the process is in these kids’ lives. E is 7, one of the youngest at camp, and he doesn’t miss a beat while he tears open the packet and slurps down the sugary contents, handing me the wrapper without a glance. I give it 15 minutes before checking his receiver again, and this time his blood sugar has come up to a comfortable 86, with the little arrows on the screen indicating that it is still rising. “Okay bud, you’re good to go,” I say with a thumbs up. “Call me if you need anything else.”

The week unfolds with many iterations of this scenario, trying to keep up with the active kiddos and learn the camp songs and dances along the way. A couple friendship bracelets and a tie dye shirt later, it was time to call it a wrap at CHT Diabetes Week. I drove away, beyond exhausted, but with a smile on my face and already looking forward to next summer.

On the one hand, friends, I know what it’s like to live with a chronic illness. My depression and anxiety are as much a part of my history as my acne and environmental allergies, but I fortunately can put them out of my head unless they start spiraling out of control. I am very cognizant of taking my meds every morning and keeping up with psychiatry appointments, but on a day to day basis they are not usually life threatening. On the other hand, it was beyond eye opening to see what the children with type 1 diabetes went through on a day to day, actually, minute to minute, basis. At any given moment, someone’s glucose monitor was inevitably beeping, sending the warning that their sugar was too low or too high. Both ends of the spectrum can be dangerous, and we had to be on high alert whenever someone started to feel off. One night I did an “angel shift,” where I went into each of the cabins at midnight and 3am to check every single camper’s blood sugar to make sure they weren’t dropping while asleep. Sometimes they were, and I had to wake the kiddo up and make them chew some glucose tabs or drink some juice to get them back up to a safe level. I can’t imagine what it must be like for their parents at home, some of whom definitely sleep with their child’s CGM receiver next to their pillow to hear the alarms.

I like to say to the kids that diabetes doesn’t define you, because I want them to be normal kids and not feel inhibited by their condition. At the same time, it is a HUGE part of their existence, and I need to validate that and recognize that a diagnosis of T1DM is life altering in a permanent way. I am so grateful for places like CHT which allow campers and their parents to relax and disconnect for a week to gain some sense of normalcy and respite, all while having a blast at camp. It was a lot of work to stay on top of, and certainly gave my stamina a run for it’s money, but it was an incredible experience that I can’t wait to participate in for years to come.

Goodbye Med Team, see you next summer.