Brave girl with diabetes will raise charity funds
A nine-year-old girl with cerebral palsy and diabetes will walk 5km – the furthest she has ever attempted – to raise awareness of her conditions.
Eilidh Kane is about to make the walk of her life to help those who, like her and her four-year sister Grace, have type 1 diabetes.
The 5km One Walk for charity JDRF, takes place on Sunday at Strathclyde Country Park.
It will be the furthest Eilidh has ever attempted, because as well as living with the constant finger pricks and carb counting that goes with managing her type 1 diabetes, Eilidh has cerebral palsy which leaves the right side of her body weak.
Eilidh’s dad Paul, calls her ‘my trouper’. He says: “Life can get tough for Eilidh but she battles through. To her twin sister, Iona, she is a hero.
“And for my wife Joan and me, she is the main reason why finding the cure to type 1 diabetes sooner rather than later is so important.”
Diagnosed with right-sided hemiplegic cerebral palsy at nine months, Eilidh was then diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of five. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Eilidh and her twin sister Iona were about to start school and baby Grace had just arrived.
Then in January this year, younger sister Grace, now four, was also diagnosed with type 1. Because of their experience with Eilidh, Paul and Joan knew what to do and were able to get Grace home from hospital quickly. But it was Grace’s diagnosis and her ability to manage her condition compared to her sister that brought it home to Paul.
He said: “Seeing Grace, able to do her own blood sugar tests and essentially being almost self-sufficient when it comes to testing; and then seeing the constant effort Eilidh has to endure, struggling to do her own blood sugars and even operate her insulin pump, because her hemiplegia, makes me want more for my children.”