Diabetes no match for Brooke
Passion for soccer propels teen forward: Next stop, university and a sports scholarship
SITTING AT THE HEAD of her family’s dining room table on a sunny afternoon, Brooke Logel exudes a maturity and confidence well beyond her 17 years.
Straddling the daunting divide between adolescence and adulthood, the St. David Catholic Secondary School student appears to be at peace with her place in the world, comfortable beneath any uncertainty shrouding her future.
Maybe it’s because she’s about to graduate high school, eager to embrace one final carefree summer ripe with the promise of lazy days at the swimming pool and frozen-yogurt-induced brain freezes.
Maybe it’s because she’s on the brink of a collegiate soccer career with a U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association powerhouse, having recently secured a full athletic scholarship to Long Island University in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Or maybe it’s because she is inherently grateful just to be alive.
On a frigid day in February 2001, at the age of five, Brooke was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. It was a diagnosis that almost came too late.
“They checked her blood sugars and she was at 46 (millimoles per litre),” says Deirdre Logel, Brooke’s mother. “She was almost in a coma.”
Normal blood sugar levels for a healthy child are between four and six millimoles per litre. Her blood stream clogged with nearly 10 times that, Brooke was rushed to the hospital.
“I remember getting in the car and crying, thinking ‘I know absolutely nothing about this,’” recalls Deirdre,
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>> who was pregnant with her third child at the time. “I was scared, but there was anger as well. Why did it have to be my daughter? What’s going to happen to her?”
Adding to Deirdre’s anger was the fact that her previous concerns had been all but ignored by her family doctor at the time — Brooke’s unquenchable thirst and alarming weight loss written off as symptoms of strep throat. By this time she weighed only 32 pounds.
After Brook had two unsuccessful rounds of antibiotics, Deirdre insisted her daughter be tested for diabetes – a disease that runs in her husband’s family.
“Finally, I brought her in again and I said there’s something seriously wrong and it’s not strep throat,” Deirdre says. “She’s moody, she’s always thirsty and going to the bathroom, she’s pale and lethargic.”
In the time it took to run a simple blood test, Brooke became a statistic in a steadily growing demographic: one of about 300,000 Canadians living with Type 1 diabetes.
And while Brooke was too young to fully grasp the gravity of her life-threatening disease, she knew it was bad.
“I remember going to the hospital, but I didn’t really know what was going on,” Brooke says. “My mom was crying and there were all these other sick kids everywhere. I was scared.”
Formerly known as juvenile diabetes, the disease strikes quickly and unexpectedly, often during childhood or adolescence. It occurs when the pancreas stops producing insulin and glucose builds up in the blood stream instead of producing energy. Untreated, it can lead to kidney failure, heart problems, blindness and even death.
Unlike Type 2 diabetes, which often occurs in adulthood and can be reversed, Type 1 has no known cause – and no known cure.
“There’s still a lot we don’t know,” says Dr. Ian Wilson, who diagnosed Brooke and has served as the Logels’ pediatrician ever since. “The theory is that you have somebody who is genetically susceptible and then there’s some trigger that makes the body start attacking its own insulin cells. But we don’t exactly understand that trigger, nor do we understand how long it takes.”
Despite growing up with a brother and several uncles who had Type 1 diabetes, Bill Logel says nothing could have prepared him for the shock of his daughter’s diagnosis.
“The first time I went to pick up the pharmaceuticals, there were boxes upon boxes. It really hit me then that this was serious.”
As her parents devoured literature and learned everything they could about the disease, Brooke’s life became a never->>
>> ending cycle of blood tests and insulin infusions. She received so many needles – up to 10 per day – that her parents had to work around the bruises covering her arms and legs.
She also had to begin monitoring her carbohydrate intake.
“I remember bringing all these snacks to school and always eating,” says Brooke, whose diet consists of copious amounts of fruit and cereals.
Since every individual is different, and blood sugar levels are affected by everything from physical activity to stress, injecting the right amount of insulin was more an art than a science.
“When she was younger, there was a lot of trial and error, so a lot of lows would happen at night,” Deirdre says. “She’d wake up screaming and we’d have to hold her down and give her a drink box. When she came around she’d say, ‘Mommy, what’s going on?’ ”
Brooke’s battle with diabetes took a turn for the better when she switched to an insulin pump at the age of 12. The device, which clips to her waistband, is programmed to continually dispense proper insulin doses through a thin clear tube attached to her stomach.
In addition to saving time, Deirdre says, the pump reduced Brooke’s lows.
“She was instantly healthier. She said, ‘Mom, I didn’t know I could feel this good.’
More therapeutic than any technology, however, has been Brooke’s passion for playing soccer. According to Deirdre, the sport has become her daughter’s lifeline.
“She actually gets quite depressed when she’s not playing. She’s had her ups and downs, but soccer’s really helped her get through the downs.”
In fact, the only time the confident teen displays any signs of trepidation about her future, the only time her contagious smile fades to something closer to a frown, is when she considers a life on the sidelines.
“My biggest fear is what will happen after university, when soccer isn’t everything,” Brooke says. “What will I do?”
Brooke first learned how to kick a ball at the age of five, but it wasn’t until her early teens that she considered soccer more than just a way to pass the summers.
“They always call it the beautiful game, and it really is,” Brooke says, glancing at the muted Champions League game on the flat-screen television overlooking the Logel family room. “Just watching how it’s played, seeing how a player receives a pass or a defender covers an opponent, there’s so much going on.”
When John Tsilogianis first met Brooke, about five years ago, he knew there was something different about the girl with the eager blue eyes and the long brown hair. And it wasn’t her diabetes.
“People use the word passion so much
these days, but she’s someone that truly has a passion for soccer,” says Tsilogianis, who has been volunteering with the Kitchener Soccer Club for 10 years and coached Brooke for three. “Just seeing the skill and talent she had was overwhelming. I don’t know if I should say this, but I honestly didn’t know girls could play at that level.” And it wasn’t just her foot speed and striking ability that impressed Tsilogianis.
“Even though she lives with this scary disease, she’s a very positive person,” he says. “She was always happy, always supportive. She always worked hard and never used her diabetes as an excuse.”
That’s not to say balancing her passion and her poison hasn’t been a challenge. With the drastic spike of blood sugars over the course of a 90-minute match, lows are common.
“I always go low during games,” Brooke says with a shrug. “When I start to feel dizzy or disoriented, I’ll just come off and have a juice and relax for a few minutes.”
“She’s really matured with her diabetes,” says Wilson, her pediatrician. “She realizes it has to be under control for her to excel and do her best performance-wise.”
Thanks to her rigorous carb moderation and diligent game-day diet, Brooke has never encountered a serious scare on the soccer pitch. Off the field, however, is another story. “In Grade 9 or 10, during exams, I was hanging out with some friends and I came home late,” Logel recalls. “Like normal, I tested my blood before bed and it was fine. All of a sudden, it was around one o’clock I think, I had a seizure.”
When her family couldn’t shake her out of it, they called 911.
“Usually when her blood sugar drops, the whole family runs around and we get her juice or something to eat, and she comes out of it,” Deirdre says, her voice catching at the memory. “But this night, her blood sugar dropped severely and we still don’t know why.
“When they took her away in the ambulance, we thought she was going to die.”
It is this unpredictability that has Deirdre torn about her daughter’s upcoming move to Long Island University’s Brooklyn, N.Y., campus, where she will join one of the top women’s soccer programs in the nation and pursue a degree in sports science.
“With her going away by herself to school, I worry about her roommates not picking up on it,” she admits. “I know she’ll be more cautious, but I’ll always worry about her.”
As for Brooke, she is resigned to the idea of living with a disease with no known cure and has prescribed to her parents’ mantra that “everything happens for a reason.”
“Of course it’s a terrible disease, but I could be in a wheelchair, I could have cancer,” she says. “I obviously don’t want to have it, but I’m trying to make the best of it.
“Things could be worse.”