Meeting Steve Beriault.
Steve is a 59 year old Canadian, he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when he was 2 years old; he has lived with it for 57 years.
He was diagnosed in the “boiling the glass syringe to sterilise it” era. He was in his early 30’s when he received his first Blood Glucose Meter. Before this he had no way of knowing what his blood glucose numbers were at any time and there were no HbA1c’s tests either.
His achievements include; cycling across Canada in 1975, kayaking halfway across Canada, completing five 5K walkathons and raising $100,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) as a double amputee.
Diabetes threw everything it had at him; diabetic retinopathy, kidney disease resulting in a kidney transplant, and neuropathy leading to both legs being amputated below the knee but he still comes out fighting. Of all of these tortures he says that “you want to make the best of what you’ve got in life and live it”.
He maintains that if you have diabetes you need to become a warrior and that diabetes is your enemy. He goes on to say that the worldwide diabetes population comprises almost 240 million persons. About 24 million (10%) are Type 1 diabetics. Imagine if one could mobilise those 24 million as an army in this war with diabetes. This army has huge potential to raise the funds needed to research a cure and to create awareness & education programmes.
I’ve never thought of diabetes as my enemy; I’d rather think of it as a more of a friend, so to speak, because having enemies can be exhausting and eventually you get tired of fighting. However, I like the analogy and after listening to Steve I am ready to take up arms and fight. Maybe if the researchers heard from us, the people they are trying to cure, more often they might become more inspired too.