From Sunday's Times and News-Star
Zack
Weissmann gets pumped by lifting weights, by training people in CrossFit, and
by the little rectangular machine that’s almost always clipped by his waist.
An
insulin pump. A 24-year-old with a college degree in biology, he’s worn the
pump half his life.
“Every
living memory I have, I’ve had diabetes,” Zack said. “I don’t know anything else.
I’m blessed from the aspect that I grew up not knowing what it was like not to
have it.”
Zack
was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, a lifelong debilitating disease for which
no cure currently exists, when he was 21 months old. All these years, while
playing organized baseball or soccer, track or football since age 5 through
high school, while on the powerlifting team in college, while becoming
certified as a CrossFit trainer, he’s been the diabetic on the team. Doesn’t
seem to have slowed him down.
“I
can do anything anyone else can do,” Zack said one morning this week after
leading a CrossFit class in Ruston. “I just have to be aware of what my body’s
doing.
“It
is what it is,” he said. “I went through a time at 11 of 12 when I didn’t want
to listen. Hormones kicked in. I wanted to eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.
I was self-conscious with the shots I had to give myself; that was part of it.
But then I was able to get the pump, which I hardly even think about now. And I
decided that if anybody asks me about it, instead of being self-conscious,
maybe it gives me a chance to help educate them.”
Zack
has a couple of partners, both in research-for-a-cure support and in spreading
the word of the dangers of Type 1 and the acceptance of living with it. Those
friends are the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and also a Shreveport
organization that has benefitted the JDRF in a record-breaking way.
The
fourth annual Shreveport Diabetes Golf & Tennis Classic is May 17-19 at
East Ridge Country Club. If this young fundraiser were a golfer, it would be
way, way under par going into round four.
Consider
that as a startup in 2011, all Shreveport’s Robbie Gaiennie and Joe Sterkx were
trying to do, realistically, was raise $10,000 a year for the JDRF; two of
Robbie’s brothers had died from the disease before age 50, and her son, now 15,
had been diagnosed at age 4.
Armed
with not much more than a willingness to work and a passion for fighting what
Sterkx calls “a brutal, brutal disease,” the pair have parented a tournament
that has the chance in two weeks to exceed the $250,000 mark in funds raised
through four years.
What
began as a stapled four-page flyer from a copy machine to announce the first
tournament has “exploded,” Sterkx said, into a format and system of
organization that the JDRF wishes to copy nationally. Plus, there’s that
quarter-million dollars – that’s above the annual cost of putting on the
tournament -- toward research.
“We’ve
got a loyal group of volunteers, a strong board, wonderful members and staff at
East Ridge who are willing to help, plus supporters all over the community and
individual and corporate sponsors who’ve really gotten behind this,” Sterkz
said. “You’ve got to have a passion for it and you’ve got to work your butt
off; add to that the people who are willing to go above and beyond to help
kids, and that’s why we’re a success.”
To
play or to get involved, go to shreveportdiabetesgolf.com or call (318) 584-2300
or (318) 453-3051. To help immediately, make a difference for a teen with
diabetes through education and encouragement.
“I
have a cousin back East who was diagnosed at age 14 or 15; he’s a couple years
older than me,” Zack said. “He’d lived one way for all those years, so now he’s
not sold on eating right and doing what he needs to do. I tell him to come on,
that he’ll get used to it. I guess it’s denial to a certain extent…he hasn’t
died yet and doesn’t think he’s going to die.
“I’ve
had the proper support structure around me; my family’s very supportive and I’ve
learned what works for me and accepted it and I keep going,” he said. “It just
makes sense.”
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