{"id":35470,"date":"2024-11-28T17:10:02","date_gmt":"2024-11-28T22:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=35470"},"modified":"2024-12-05T17:00:31","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T22:00:31","slug":"local-family-celebrates-60-years-of-kicking-type-1s-butt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/local-family-celebrates-60-years-of-kicking-type-1s-butt\/","title":{"rendered":"Local family celebrates 60 years of \u201ckicking Type 1\u2019s butt\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aged just 11, Mason Dos Anjos celebrated a significant anniversary this month \u2013 his 10-year \u201cdia-versary,\u201d marking a decade since he was first diagnosed as a toddler with Type 1 diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t just an anniversary of a diagnosis \u2013 in their words, it was a chance to mark \u201c10 years of kicking T1\u2019s butt\u201d and, in a true celebratory anniversary, they invited other area residents giving T1\u2019s glutes \u201cwhat for\u201d to make it a round 60 years\u2019 worth of festivities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last Tuesday, Mason celebrated his 10-year milestone with Jake and Logan, two others who have trounced their first decade with the disease, alongside Chris, who is marking a 30-year anniversary of his own. The party took place at Aurora\u2019s Boston Pizza location, where they served as celebrity waiters, with 10 per cent of all sales before 5 and 7 p.m. going to I Challenge Diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe wanted to make a difference because 10 years of thriving with T1 is a big deal\u2026 and I wanted to make a difference for Mason with I Challenge,\u201d says Mason\u2019s mother, Miriam Dos Anjos. \u201cIt was incredible. We had the community buying tickets via e-transfer and it was nice to see the community was celebrating, even coming in as far as Guelph.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, they packed the place \u2013 a fitting community effort for National Diabetes Awareness Month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Mason\u2019s diagnosis at 16-months, the Dos Anjos family has been working to raise awareness of T1, providing support to other families at the start of what can be a very trying journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt has been interesting,\u201d says Mason when asked on what this journey has been like for him. \u201cThe constant ups and downs. When my sugars are high, my stomach hurts and I have nightmares. When I\u2019m low, I feel droopy. I never have a break. I have devices attached to me all day, every day. They keep me alive. I have to carry my kit everywhere, which has my sugar low treatments, my cell phones and my emergency contacts in case my sugars drop so low I lose consciousness. It\u2019s counting all of the carbs and measuring my food to establish my insulin. I was bullied for having T1D. So many things I have to think about just to survive on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As advocates and mentors, they try to take some of the guess-work out for families, providing what might be a different perspective on the tools needed to thrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople need to know that they are not alone, because Type 1 Diabetes, like many other chronic health conditions and medical conditions, can be very lonely and isolating,\u201d says Miriam, chuckling that people might be tired of seeing her social media posts during National Diabetes Awareness Month; but these messages, she says, are real, raw and from the heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome of my posts aren\u2019t the easiest to read and some of the posts are more upbeat, but I am real about it: this is what this disease is \u2013 the good, the bad and the ugly. It\u2019s about being real, but I also want to bring awareness about the signs and symptoms of Type 1 Diabetes: the increased thirst, the frequent urination, the bed-wetting, the extreme hunger, weight loss, irritability, blurred vision \u2013 all of these things can be masked and seen as the flu, when really they can be the onset of Type One diabetes, or you could be going into diabetic ketoacidosis, a very serious complication about Type 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI get a lot of questions about, \u2018Does it get easier? How can you do this?\u2019 I mentor a lot of families just because Mason was diagnosed with 16 months, and as we have been living with this for 10 years, so people just want to know the real, the facts. It\u2019s a sense of community and that is a really big thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the start of their family\u2019s diabetes journey, Miriam says they were fortunate to have close friends that although they didn\u2019t understand the ins and outs of the disease, they were more than happy to provide a network of support. Yet, Miriam sometimes felt she didn\u2019t have someone with lived experience to whom she could call in times where she felt she was \u201cstruggling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI reached out on social media and had very close friends in other provinces I would be calling and texting all night for their support. I really thought about how I could help another family because I didn\u2019t want them to feel as lonely as we were \u2013 and isolated and petrified,\u201d she says. \u201cI really enjoy working with families now. Some conversations are hard and we\u2019re in tears, and sometimes conversations are great, but it is that sense of community, belonging and understanding that is huge and has been very beneficial and rewarding for me and my journey with Mason.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aged just 11, Mason Dos Anjos celebrated a significant anniversary this month \u2013 his 10-year \u201cdia-versary,\u201d marking a decade since he was first diagnosed as a toddler with Type 1 diabetes. It wasn\u2019t just an anniversary of a diagnosis \u2013 in their words, it was a chance to mark \u201c10 years of kicking T1\u2019s butt\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":35471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/2024-11-28-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9e6","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 11:49:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35472,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35470\/revisions\/35472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}