GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Friday is National Teddy Bear Day and for thousands of children diagnosed with type one diabetes, a teddy bear has helped them cope with the challenges like needles, pumps and injections.
“We take care of close to 2,000 children with diabetes, both type one and type two,” Dr. Nader Kasim, a pediatric endocrinologist at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, explained to FOX 17. “We recognize that it’s a very difficult diagnosis. Oftentimes, there is crying.”
Helen DeVos has a team of specialists there to help, but it’s one special teddy bear named ‘Rufus’ that can make all the difference.
When a child is diagnosed, Rufus can be right there with them.
“The doctors, the diabetes educators, the social workers, they will use Rufus to explain, you know, different types of the T one D management. I mean, everything from food and nutrition to using the tech and devices,” Beau Trussel, community engagement manager for JDRF, added.
The children’s hospital partnered with JDRF, a diabetes research nonprofit, to provide the bear to 16 children with diabetes during the summer of 2022.
In doing so, Helen DeVos hosted its first-ever “Teddy Bear Clinic.”
“We were able to work with the JDRF to set up this event to bring kids and basically engage them with diabetes for the first time in person,” Dr. Kasim said.
The concept has been around since 1999 when a mom wanted her son with diabetes to have a companion through the process. She says he already had one companion in his teddy bear.
“So she started sewing patches on all of the areas that he would for his finger pokes or for his injections,” Trussel explained.
From there, she did the same for other children at the hospital. JDRF partnered with the mom and made 15,000 Rufus teddy bears and that number has grown even more ever since.
Jillian Crane, the development director for JDRF, showed FOX 17 her son’s old Rufus.
“He’s got the patches that Beau was talking about and so the patches help, you know, provide companionship with the children to start learning how to do their own finger pokes if they’re having to manually check their blood glucose levels throughout the day,” Crane explained.
A lifelong partner, for a lifelong condition…
“Rufus being a teddy bear, we would expect to be used in someone who’s at a young age, but I can tell you how many of our patients still play with Rufus at an older age. It’s quite amazing,” Dr. Kasim added.
Dr. Kasim also explained more about spotting the signs of type one diabetes: “Diabetes is typically recognized based off symptoms, so I wanted to make sure that I convey this message clearly. If you have any symptoms of peeing a lot or drinking a lot, those might be symptoms of diabetes. And it might be worth getting tested for a child. There might be urgency to this test. I would recommend seeking medical care to actually get tested. If you leave diabetes untreated, you can develop a condition called diabetic ketoacidosis and that would require a hospitalization, so catching it early is going to b very important. At Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, we actually have ways to screen for type one diabetes and gauge your risk of developing type one diabetes.”
JDRF will host its “One Walk” to fight Type I Diabetes on September 24.
For more information about type one diabetes, click here.