Young Warriors

Twins don’t let type 1 diabetes stifle their dreams

- Tim Craig

When 8-year-old Amelia Walls was hospitalized in 2016, Cecilia, her older sister by a whole 10 minutes, was worried. When Cecilia found out that her identical twin sister was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, she went from worried to confused.

“I had no idea what that was,” she recalls. “I didn’t know, and Amelia had to explain it to me.”

After she knew, she became interested. She asked questions about the disease and tried to help, even pricking Amelia’s finger to test blood sugar levels. When Cecilia found out that half of the siblings of people with Type I diabetes also get the disease, she went from interested to serious. She admits she was scared about the prospect of being diagnosed, but seeing her sister successfully manage it helped ease her fear. In November 2018, Cecilia was diagnosed with it.

“After I saw Amelia work with it and manage it, I kind of wanted it, too, to be honest,” Cecilia says. “We barely knew anyone with the disease at the time, and I knew she felt alone at times. When I got it, I felt like, ‘Now she can’t say she’s alone anymore.’ ”

Now 11-year-old sixth-graders, Cecilia and Amelia are two of approximately 1.5 million people in the U.S. who have Type 1 diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control. More than 200,000 of those are under the age of 20, according to JDRF, a foundation that funds Type 1 diabetes research.