Getting An Early Start

It’s only June, and I haven’t even graduated yet, but I’m already beginning my internship!

The Bastyr interns have been offered the opportunity to complete 32 hours of a diabetes rotation by working at a summer camp on Vashon Island for 4 days. This camp will be slightly unusual as these summer camps go because it will be a mix of “normal” kids (what kid is normal, anyway?), kids with T1DM and kids with celiac disease. Out of about 300 children, only 70 will be diabetic. This will also be the first year that the camp integrates gluten-intolerant kids (they’re expecting about 30). Since 5-10% of T1DM kids have celiac disease, there will be some overlap between the two groups.

Today I attended an orientation of sorts. The orientation took place at the GIG conference in Seattle and our small meeting was led by Cynthia Kupper, RD and executive director of GIG, the Gluten Intolerance Group of North America, and Jennifer Okemah, the lead RD and diabetes expert for the camp. Cynthia is a dynamic personality (so is Jennifer) and has been instrumental in new legislation and policy-making related to gluten-intolerance. She is the person to watch in all things gluten-free, especially in terms of gluten-free certification for food producers.

We talked briefly about the structure of the camp and how the GIG contingent and the diabetes contingent will interface. The main goal will be to monitor the children with celiac and diabetes while keeping out of their way as much as possible as they do kid-at-summer-camp things. I’ll get to practice doing finger sticks and reading blood sugar levels and, of course, counting carbs.

I’m really looking forward to this! I'll post more about the camp as it happens.