“You shouldn’t do that.”
Each year, more than 18,000 young people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, formerly called juvenile diabetes. They’re otherwise healthy kids living normal lives. They’re students, athletes, dancers, band geeks, gamers, racers, builders, and more. It’s not a disease that discriminates.
When they’re diagnosed, these kids are all told a version of the same story. It’s a deeply cautionary tale about their bodies and the world. It’s a story about limits. A story about vulnerabilities. And about what they can and can’t do for the rest of their lives. It’s a story that, over time, can congeal into an unquestioned fact. One that many of those kids — even when they’re all grown up — never attempt to rewrite. They don’t know what that would even look like.
Until someone blades by to show them.
When they were 16, Matt Tarro and Brandon Denson were two of those 18,000 kids faced with adjusting their lives to fit a diabetes diagnosis — a challenge coupled with the typical teen pressures of adolescence, masculinity, and identity at large.
Brandon didn’t lose any time challenging his story. He was a standout linebacker in high school and went on to play for Michigan State. Matt too worked hard to keep high-energy activity in his life, embracing rally racing and other extreme sports while beginning a career in media.
“I love to skate. I love any type of activity. Football, rugby, volleyball, tennis, camping, hiking — you name it. It makes people nervous. They say, ‘You’ve got diabetes, man. You shouldn't do that. You can't do that.’ And they’re wrong. Sure, we have to do certain things a bit differently, but we're not truly different than anybody else. So Matt and I, we go roll. On our skates, or in Matt’s 4Runner, we roll and just be free.” – Brandon