Chronic illnesses in ECISD

Madilyn Smith walks into the nurse’s office at Johnson Elementary School and pokes herself with a needle. A scarlet drop of blood appears after she squeezes the tip of her finger, and she presses it to a small blood sugar reader on the table.

“What’s the number?” school nurse Vicki Tamplen asked.

It’s 126, a good day for Madilyn.

Madilyn is a big-eyed 8-year-old who does after-school gymnastics and is learning to play the piano. She looks like any other happy, active second-grader, but she is different.

Madilyn has type 1 diabetes, and as one of the thousands of students living with a chronic illness in ECISD, it takes the efforts of everyone involved in Madilyn’s life, including Madilyn herself, to keep her on an even keel.

At the beginning of every school year, elementary students diagnosed with diabetes, asthma, seizures or any other chronic illness meet with their parents, teachers and school nurse for a Special Care Meeting. Every child is different and the parents can go over what the trouble signs are and how to respond to and treat the problem, Travis Magnet School nurse Nancy Garcia said.

“Everybody that comes in contact with that student has been trained on what to look for,” Tamplen said.

In Madilyn’s case, if her blood sugar is too high or too low, her P.E. teacher, her music teacher and her regular teacher will all know the signs. Snacks and machines to test her blood sugar are kept in every classroom.

“With these kids, our biggest effort districtwide is prevention, prevention, prevention,” ECISD health services director Laura Mathew said.

The goal is to get the kids used to monitoring their illnesses on their own so that when they go to high school they will be able to take care of themselves, Tamplen said. Asthma students carry their own inhalers and diabetic students are being taught to count carbohydrates and balance their choices in meals so that eventually they can take care of themselves. In the meantime, parents’ work with the school district to make sure that no child is walking this tightrope without a net.

Without her school’s support, Madilyn’s mother, Brenda Smith, said taking care of her daughter’s diabetes would be extremely difficult.

When her second-grade teacher, Amye Cotton, learned she would have two diabetics in her classroom, she volunteered to be trained so she would know what to do.

“It can make you anxious, worrying ‘what if I do it wrong’ or ‘what if I make a mistake’ at first, but once I got used to it, it was no big deal,” Cotton said.

In the past, children had to take care of their medical issues on their own, or parents were left to figure out how to deal with everything, Mathew said. Now schools are required by law to accommodate the children.

“Over the past 15 to 20 years, there’s been more recognition that children are going to lose classroom time and lose out on their education if they don’t get taken care of at their home schools,” Mathew said.

Smith said during the year she and school employees’ work hard to make Madilyn’s life as normal as possible. Madilyn does gymnastics, she goes on field trips and this will be her second year attending summer camp.

“We don’t let it be a barrier for anything,” Smith said.

Tamplen said this is the policy for all students with chronic illnesses.

“All of these children, we strongly encourage them to do anything they want to do,” she said.

Managing her illness can still be difficult sometimes, both Madilyn and her mother agree.

When asked about her diabetes, Madilyn’s face dropped, and she looked down at the floor.

“I don’t like it,” she said.

Her mother gets frustrated, too.

“She gets tired of it sometimes. She’ll throw a fit, and I throw a fit too because I don’t like it either, but we’ve got to just keep praying for a cure and dealing with it and thank goodness we’re at a school that can help,” Smith said.