| 9/9/2006 9:00:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Madison boy will testify about bill requiring diabetic care in schools
Peggy Vlerebome
Courier Staff Writer
A 9-year-old Madison boy will testify Monday at an Indiana legislative committee considering a bill about the care and management of diabetes in schools. The bill would require every Indiana public school to have "care assistants," who would not be health professionals but would be trained to help diabetic children manage their disease.
Hunter Sego, who will be 10 on Sept. 24, wrote to state senators about being a diabetic in school. Friday afternoon, his mother, Kathy Risk-Sego, received a call inviting Hunter to testify before an interim study committee.
Ideally, every school would have a nurse, not only for diabetic children but also other medical conditions and needs, Risk-Sego said. Financially, however, that is not a realistic goal, she said. The Madison Consolidated Schools district has a full-time school nurse at the high school, the junior high school and E.O. Muncie Elementary, and one nurse who travels among Lydia Middleton, Rykers' Ridge, Canaan, Deputy, Dupont and Anderson elementary schools, she said.
Sego is a fourth-grader in the ELOP gifted-and-talented program housed at Lydia Middleton Elementary School. He lives in the E.O. Muncie Elementary attendance zone but previously attended Anderson Elementary. He plays soccer, football, baseball and basketball.
He was diagnosed with diabetes two years ago. Since May he has used a pump attached to his body to regulate insulin, and that has made managing his disease at school so much easier, he said. Another recent change is that now, he is allowed to test his glucose level in his classroom instead of having to go to the office several times a day.
At Anderson, aide Harriet Carpanini voluntarily went to training at Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis so she could be Sego's helper at school, Risk-Sego said. When he transferred to Lydia Middleton this year, Carpanini went to his school the first four days to educate the teachers and staff, and to help him adjust.
The bill would require schools that have a full-time nurse to have one care assistant. Schools without a nurse would have to have three care assistants. The care assistants could be people already employed by the school, such as teachers, according to the bill.
The bill isn't saying that diabetic children, who are classified by law as being disabled, need special nursing care, Risk-Sego said. To the contrary, she said, the bill treats diabetic children as people instead of invalids.
Sego said that at Lydia Middleton, he is accepted by the teachers, administrators, his classmates and their parents as a regular kid. After the first few days of school, he told his mother, "At this school, I'm no longer Hunter Sego the diabetic. I'm Hunter Sego the boy." He wrote to his principal and teachers thanking them.
The bill died in the 2005 General Assembly before getting to the House floor. State Sen. Earline Rogers, a Democrat from Gary, is trying to revive the bill for the 2007 legislative session, Risk-Sego said.
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