Child Takes Control of Diabetes Diagnosis

Ellie Kreidler was diagnosed with Type I Juvenile Diabetes earlier this year.

"It was devastating," said Shelby Kreidler, mother. "When we first went in there, I thought she just had a cold virus. We come out and she's got extremely high blood sugar levels and they're saying that she could possibly go into a coma if we didn't get her to Children's Mercy."

In January, Ellie was diagnosed at the Children's Mercy Wichita Clinic, which has specialists in pediatric endocrinology.

"Children's Mercy is in Wichita to fill the pediatric gaps," said Sandy Pickert, nurse manager.

"When they first get diagnosed with diabetes, families are really overwhelmed, and it's nice to kind of be able to step in and calm the families down," said Dr. Randy Blue, pediatric endocrinologist.

The Wichita clinic serves about 7,500 children each year.

"There's some families that are at higher risk than the general population but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to get diabetes," said Blue. "Something in the environment that's kind of triggering the immune system to make a mistake and then cause diabetes to happen and we don't know what that trigger is."

For Ellie's family, this has has been a year of learning how to manage diabetes.

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