Maggie’s new outfit

By: Chelsea Holleman
Beth Haven Christian School, Louisville

Of all the courses and extracurricular activities offered by the Kentucky Governor’s Scholars Program this summer, Maggie Wetzel’s favorite was dance.
To her delight the staff at GSP’s Bellarmine University campus seemed to find a zillion ways to dance. Their dance program included ballroom, salsa, hip-hop and Zumba, but the one that the scholars liked the most was the “surprise dance” announced suddenly and seemingly at random times throughout the five-week GSP program.
Maggie Wetzel was a huge fan of the surprise dances. She could often be seen quizzing a resident advisor with trick questions that might reveal plans for an upcoming dance. If Maggie got a tip about a dance, she would rapidly spread the word. Occasionally there were false alarms that led to a gaggle of girls showing up at a Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament in glittering ensembles, but just as often her tips led to a glow-stick-lit ballroom where Maggie and her friends danced the night away in stylish outfits.
For Maggie, the stylish outfit was the key to her evening. She was always looking for the perfect outfit – one that wouldn’t reveal her new insulin pump. She had been diagnosed with Type I diabetes on June 10, just 9 days before Opening Day at Bellarmine.
After the diagnosis, the 16-year-old Caldwell County High School senior stayed at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville until June 18. Maggie only had a few days to learn to manage her disease by herself before she would spend five weeks on campus in Louisville, hours away from her family in Princeton, Kentucky.
Now Maggie must check her blood sugar level at least seven times a day; she must check her blood both before and after she eats. She also has to keep track of how many carbs she eats so she can monitor how much insulin she should be receiving. Maggie is fortunate enough to have an insulin pump so she does not have to give herself injections. Her insulin pump is about the size of a deck of cards. She usually wears it under her arm, but the site where the insulin actually enters her body is near her hip. She is already managing her daily monitoring seamlessly, but an added chore that comes along with an insulin pump is changing the site where the insulin is administered every three days.
As one of a very select group of Kentucky high school seniors who were invited to GSP at Bellarmine and its sister campuses at Centre College and Murray State, Maggie seemed destined to achieve academic excellence and a solid future in whatever field she chose. The discovery of an ongoing and perhaps lifelong challenge of diabetes hasn’t changed a thing.
Sure, “It adds more work to meals, and makes eating a hassle,” she said, but she won’t let it slow her down. Maggie is now considering a career in medicine with a focus on pediatric endocrinology. And of course she will be rushing for a sorority in her freshman year of college, most likely at the University of Kentucky.
But her experience has led her to a new outlook on life.
“Up until now my life’s been fairly easy,” she said. “I feel like now I have a story to tell.”