Like the vine, Kudzu kids grow

It’s the first day of her first-ever overnight summer camp, and Alexis Whitfield is giddy.

The 9-year-old in pigtails and pink Crocs skips all the way to her rustic cabin at sprawling Camp Twin Lakes in Rutledge. She plops her pink paisley comforter down on her single bed, then spots a bucket nearby. It’s overflowing with peanut butter crackers and juice boxes.

“Wow,” she gushes, “this place is so awesome.”

This week, Alexis will get to do the kinds of things campers have done for generations: go horseback riding, splash in the pool, sing camp songs.

She’ll also do some things that most kids her age will never have to, such as learning to check her blood sugar level and insert a needle into her hip.

Alexis and the 170 other kids aged 8 to 16 attending “Camp Kudzu” have Type 1 diabetes, a lifelong disease that develops when the pancreas stops making insulin. Here, in an atmosphere where the campers don’t feel funny or different, they will take steps toward self-sufficiency, learning, literally, how to save their own lives.

Since being diagnosed three years ago, Alexis — the only one in her family with the disease — has lived under her parents’ constant vigilance.

They monitor her constantly to make sure her blood sugar level doesn’t get too high or too low. A level too low (below 70) can make her feel dizzy and confused and can be fatal if she doesn’t immediately eat something sweet. High blood sugar (above 180) also causes problems. Short term, it makes her stomach hurt. But it also can increase the risks of kidney failure and amputation.

For one week at camp, the inescapable reality of life as a diabetic will be tempered by camaraderie, fun and games. Still Alexis and the other campers will never be more than a few hours away from another finger prick or insulin injection. They’ll be monitored even as they sleep.

But if any one of them seems prepared for this week, it’s Alexis, who lives in Canton with her parents and younger sister, Ashley.

The first evening, campers are given index cards and asked to write down their goals for the week.

Some of Alexis’ cabin mates want to pass the swimming test. Another wants to make new friends.

Alexis wants both of those things. But she’s got another goal — to do something that, up until now, she’s relied on her mother to do.

She grabs a thick black marker and writes in big letters: I want to be able to give myself insulin.

She adds a picture of an insulin pump and a couple of swirly lines, signs her name and hands the card to her counselor.

‘Are you sure?’

At 6, Alexis was a high-energy kid who was thin, but not skinny. She was healthy and not prone to illness. But she began complaining that she was thirsty all the time. She was also urinating frequently and couldn’t always make it to the bathroom in time.

Her mom, Allison Whitfield, set up an appointment with their pediatrician.

A simple finger prick test revealed that Alexis’ blood sugar was so high that the number didn’t even register on a glucose monitoring device, which stopped at 400. The diagnosis was immediate: Type 1 diabetes.

While the more common Type 2 diabetes often can be controlled through diet and medication, Type 1 requires relentless care and attention.

The Whitfields knew of no family history of diabetes. Her parents were in disbelief.

“I was like, ‘Are you sure? Test her again,’ ” Allison Whitfield recalled. “But they knew what the problem was right away.”

And there was no time to debate the doctor’s finding. Newly diagnosed children are often already severely dehydrated; a build-up of sugar in the body can lead to a coma, even death, without immediate treatment.

The family headed to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. For three days, Alexis received fluids and insulin. Her mother and father, Brian Whitfield, immersed themselves in a crash course on Type 1, learning how to use a glucose monitoring device, to count carbohydrates and to inject insulin, practicing on themselves using saline solution.

At first, Alexis bristled at the sight of the needle. She would run away in tears when it was time for an insulin shot.

Her mom tried to be matter of fact. “Let’s do it and move on and you can go back to playing,” she’d tell her daughter.

Eventually, Alexis adopted the same practical attitude. She also started using an insulin pump, a device that delivers rapid-acting insulin continuously, using a catheter.

With her disease under control, she maintains an active schedule, taking jazz, tap and ballet lessons, singing in the school chorus and joining the Girl Scouts. She also does well in school.

“It’s actually quite simple once you get used to it,” Alexis said about dealing with diabetes.

Simple, that is, once you get used to the adults around you keeping track of every bite of food you eat, checking your blood sugar in the middle of the night, changing and adjusting your insulin pump.

At Camp Kudzu, the 9-year-old has decided, she’ll learn to do some of that herself.

‘You can do it!’

By the third day of camp, Alexis has a new pal, Riley Dudek, also 9. The two have become fast friends. They go horseback riding together. And Riley saved Alexis a spot on her paddle boat when Alexis’ blood sugar plummeted and required her to eat some crackers and wait 25 minutes before leaving shore.

Today, they are walking together to a cabin known as Pump Palace. For a “palace,” it’s a pretty nondescript building among a cluster of cabins. Lights and streamers hang on the outside. Inside, single beds are covered in white plastic. Bins hold packages of insulin, needles and glucose monitoring devices.

Alexis and Riley have come to learn to change their own insulin pumps. The girls wear the same model, the devices attached to their hips like cellphones. They’ve made a pact to learn the multistep process, which involves cleaning the injection site, reloading a fresh supply of insulin and using a needle to restart the flow of insulin under the skin.

Riley bravely goes first. She and a nurse stride to a private area in the back of the cabin. Within three minutes, she emerges, her newly filled pump in place. “It hurt just a little,” she assures Alexis. “You can do it!”

Alexis is more nervous. Her heart races. She opens the glittery case carrying her pump.

She has watched as her mom has changed her pump every three days. But until now, she never imagined doing it herself.

She slides the needle into the back side of her hip, then pulls it out, leaving the plastic tubing to feed the insulin.

“I did something I never thought I could do!” she exclaims. “I’m so excited.”

An hour or so later, though, Alexis discovers her pump is not correctly attached. It might have been knocked loose, or maybe it she didn’t sufficiently pierce the skin when she changed it. A nurse helps her reattach it properly.

Undeterred, Alexis decides to return to Pump Palace and try again. She practices the technique on a pillow. Then two days later, she changes her pump again.

This time, she does it right.

‘Kids ... just like me’

In the dining hall toward the end of camp, Alexis and Riley stride to a stone fireplace and lead other campers into doing one big wave.

“It’s so cool to see so many kids who have diabetes just like me,” Alexis said. “It’s like I forget I even have it.”

She puts her arm around Riley and sways to the beat of the song, “Lean on Me.”