Lex Hindley, 11, was diagnosed with type 1 of the incurable condition three years ago and he and his family have been managing it successfully ever since with training from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) which also focuses on finding new treatments and a cure. As a result, the young rugby player and Salford Red Devils fan from Ashton has decided to sacrifice the hair he has been growing for the last two years in tribute to his favourite player Tim Lafai to raise money for the good cause. The former RL Hughes Primary pupil, who starts at Cansfield High next month, set himself a target of £500 for the JDRF which mum Natalie thought was too ambitious, so he lowered it to £100.
But since his Just Giving page was launched the total has already beaten the original goal and the appeal will keep going for a few days after the big crop takes place on August 31. Natalie said: “T1D affects every aspect of Lex’s day-to-day life, but he does not let that stop him. We’re lucky that he is so laid-back and has got the hang of ‘carbing’ his food.
"He chos to raise money for JDRF because of the vital research they do, the training they gave us about managing diabetes, and they also gave him a teddy when he was diagnosed showing injection areas, which he still has to this day.” Lex had recently turned eight and had been playing at a tournament at Rose Bridge for St Pat’s when he was taken ill that evening. Natalie said: “He was really thirsty, had a bad pain in his stomach and he started vomiting.
He went downhill very quickly. "We never thought it might be diabetes because we weren’t really clued up on it then. He had been complaining of stomach aches for 18 months before that.
"But this time because of the vomiting and the fact that the pain seemed to be near his appendix, we knew he probably needed treatment fast. A simple finger prick test showed his blood-glucose level high and that was it: he was diabetic. "He was taken to hospital where he was injected with insulin.
He spent three days there because he couldn’t be allowed out again until we new how to inject him and manage his diet. I have to say that the nursing team in Wigan for juvenile diabetes are fantastic. "T1D is an auto-immune disease and there was nothing we could have done to prevent it.
He was always going to end up with it; it was just a question of when his pancreas would stop working. The doctors reckoned it started packing up two years before diagnosis. "We were told though that had we not taken him for tests and hospital treatment when we did, things could have been a lot worse.
” And so Lex now has a regime which factors in a ratio of one insulin unit per 20 carbs. A lot of his treatment is automated now, though, with an arm sensor measuring his blood-glucose every minute and instructing a pump attached to cannula into his stomach to deliver insulin if necessary..
