NORWAY - Brandon Blake was a jolly, bright-eyed 20-year-old who never met a stranger, but he was also a Type 1 diabetic who took pains to control the disease which eventually claimed his life.

Diagnosed at the age of 6, Brandon's life was filled with syringes, test strips, needles and meters.

His attention deficit hyperactive disorder further complicated his parents' efforts to maintain his sugar levels with a glucagon emergency kit, but his mother, Sandy, woke up frequently in the night to make sure her son's sugar levels had not dropped too low.

She poked Brandon's finger with life-saving insulin and also that of his older brother, Patrick, who had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age nine.

The extra work was worth the boys' survival against a disease with no cure which affects nearly three million Americans nationwide. Brandon grew into a strapping young adult who managed his own sugar levels until Aug. 21, when his brother found him dead of an apparent glycemic attack in the separate dwelling they sometimes shared behind the family's Norway home.

Something they

could live with

Sandy Blake said no one really knows exactly how he died because Brandon was alone. Patrick was opening the family's gas station, Blake's Texaco in Norway, because she and her husband, Chuck, were out of town.

"Patrick came in early that morning from Columbia and checked on Brandon. He sat up and talked to him and went down to open the station at 6 a.m. At 9 a.m, he realized Brandon hadn't come by," she said.

Sandy and Chuck tried to treat Brandon and Patrick as normally as possible, she said, even with the dietary and physical limitations which diabetes posed on their lives.

"There's a lot of worse things in life that could have happened other than diabetes," she said. "I tried to make them feel like they were just like everybody else. They both played football, and Brandon raced go-carts and did mud bogging. I never let them use that excuse, 'I'm a diabetic.' That was not an option.

"I wanted them to know it was something they could live with. We had candy bars in the house occasionally, even pizza, but they had to understand that if they ate it, they had to take the insulin in order to compensate for it," she said.

Choking back emotion, she described Brandon as "happy and outgoing," someone who would help anybody with anything. She and Chuck spent much time with their boys and enrolled them at Camp Adam Fisher, a week-long camp for diabetic children, where the boys eventually became counselors.

Chuck believes Brandon lived his life the way he did because he knew it would be short. "He would always play that song, "Live Like You Were Dying," by Tim McGraw," he said, adding that he feels like he knew his son better than most parents know their children.

The key is maintenance

Diabetes occurs when the body fails to produce sufficient amounts of insulin, the hormone that allows the body to metabolize sugars.

More than 20 million Americans have diabetes, according to the Columbia-based Palmetto Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, with South Carolina ranking second in the nation per capita for diagnosed cases.

Type 1, or juvenile diabetes, is the most severe, usually strikes in childhood and lasts a lifetime. Type 1 diabetics are unable to produce insulin and must take multiple insulin injections daily or constantly infuse insulin through a pump. They must test their blood sugars by pricking their fingers for blood six or more times a day and can lapse into a life-threatening coma without supplemental insulin injections.

Diabetic seizures are more common among Type 1 diabetics than Type 2 diabetics, in which insulin is still present, but isn't used properly by the body, says Katherine Gibb,director of care planning and resource management at The Regional Medical Center of Orangeburg and Calhoun counties. Type 2 can begin during adulthood, and is caused by obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, physical inactivity and/or family history. Treatments include diet, oral medication and insulin shots.

"Diabetic seizures can be prevented by checking blood sugars as directed by a physician," Gibb said.

Seizures can be caused by a disruption of the blood sugar caused by illness, such as an infection, the flu or a bad cold. If a diabetic takes insulin and does not eat, the body may go into seizure due to an overabundance of insulin without the sugars to counter it. Type 1 diabetics also may forget to take their insulin and then eat something with too much sugar, thus triggering a seizure.

"Seizures don't develop instantly," Gibb explained. "It's sometimes even takes weeks while the body is getting sicker and sicker. The key is maintenance. We have the outpatient diabetic program here, and our whole goal is to educate people with diabetes."

Explaining how to check their blood sugars, watch their weight, exercise and eat properly are the program's principle goals. Insulin is usually secreted by the pancreas, but in a diabetic, the pancreas can't secrete any or enough insulin, so the sugar reaches a level the body can't handle, making it critical for diabetics to watch how much sugar or carbohydrates they eat.

Steroids, such as prednisone, and some antibiotics will raise your blood sugar, so diabetics and their managing doctors need to know what drugs they are taking , Gibb said.

For parents of Type 1 diabetic children, Gibb said, blood sugar checks, sometimes several times daily, are critical. If parents know the optimum range for the blood sugar level, and the check shows it is out of range, they should call the doctor rather than wait to go to the emergency room.

"I think diet and exercise are important, but you can exercise and eat the proper diet all you want and maybe your blood sugar's still not good. Monitoring it is really important," said Gibb, noting that more and more children are actually being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes because of a nationwide obesity epidemic among them.

"Look at Orangeburg. We've got a massively obese child population here," she said.

Passionate about a cure

Technology has made great strides in the fight against Type 1 diabetes, says Palmetto Chapter JDRF Executive Director Gail Ginsberg.

Founded in 1970 by parents of Type 1 diabetic children, JDRF has provided more than $900 million to diabetes research worldwide. By partnering with several companies, the foundation has developed a glucose sensor monitor that will ring when the sugar level is too high or low. The pump operates via a pump inserted in the stomach, which eliminates the necessity of pricking the finger.

An artificial pancreas or a closed loop system is one of the major methods of treating Type 1. "We're the largest funder, other than the government, of diabetes research," Ginsberg said. "Our grassroots campaign is run by parents who are very passionate about finding a cure."

Ginsberg urges involvement with JDRF for anyone who wants to help make a difference and be part of a cure. The sooner and faster a cure is found, she said, the sooner a lot of other problems -- such as kidney disease, blindness and amputation -- can be prevented, she said.

T&D Staff Writer Dionne Gleaton can be reached by e-mail at dgleaton@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5534. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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