COUNTYWIDE : Peer Group Aids Young Diabetics

For nearly eight years Nicolina Heretakis has endured daily blood tests and insulin shots, frequent doctor’s visits, and a diet short on the goodies her peers enjoy.

But what the 12-year-old from Santa Ana dislikes most about having diabetes is the lack of understanding from friends and family.

“They don’t know what it’s like” to have the disease, she said. “They just don’t understand.”

Now Nicolina has someone to talk to who does understand. A new program, started this year by an Orange County diabetes education and research group, is seeking to help young diabetics cope with the disease and the regimented treatment that it requires.

The Pediatric Adolescent Diabetes Research and Education Foundation, known as PADRE, has joined with Children’s Hospital of Orange County in Orange to start a peer counseling program.

Eight teen-agers with diabetes have been trained as peer counselors and paired with other diabetics who are rebelling against treatment.

That rebellion can mean eating forbidden foods, skipping meals or failing to test blood sugar level, a process that is required to determine dosages of insulin.

Cathie Heretakis, Nicolina’s mother, said her daughter is prone to sneaking in sweets, and Nicolina herself admits to skipping blood tests now and then.

But the biggest problem the Heretakis family has faced is an age-old struggle made all the more important by Nicolina’s disease: the child’s desire to be independent versus the parents’ concern for health and safety.

“When she was younger, it was our disease,” Cathie Heretakis said. “We were completely responsible for her blood tests and shots.”

Giving up that control isn’t easy for parents, and as Nicolina gets older she is increasingly resentful of what she sees as their over-protectiveness.

“She gets belligerent when I talk to her doctor about what she’s doing wrong,” Cathie Heretakis said.

Earlier this month, Nicolina was matched with 16-year-old Melanie Vergilio, who learned that she had diabetes when she was 10.

Vergilio knows just what the younger girl means when she complains that her parents don’t trust her to check her blood sugar levels or follow her diet.

“It’s the worst,” Vergilio said of the constant reminders and questions from her parents about shots, diet and blood tests. “It can drive you nuts.”

Vergilio had her own episode of rebellion several years ago when she stopped monitoring her blood sugar levels, making up figures that would seem to indicate that everything was fine.

She has also chafed under the constant scrutiny of her diet from her parents.

But talking with other peer counselors gave her a new understanding of her parents’ concern for her health.

“I realized that they weren’t just trying to make me miserable, that they really did it because they care about me,” she said.

That is the kind of insight program founders are hoping peer counselors can foster among their counselees.

“Peer counselors can give youths a chance to talk to someone who has been successful in dealing with their disease,” said Duncan Wigg, a psychologist who works with diabetic children.

“Most feel very isolated in their families and among their peers. They want to appear normal and are prone to deny their illness.”

Those seeking information on the program can call the PADRE Foundation at (714) 532-8330.