Healthilife? I don’t think so.

On Monday, Alex came home from school more excited than normal. I mean, she usually tries to “scare” me at the gate, and runs around like a kid with too much sugar in her (eeek!) until she finally has a shower and calms down. I think the joy of being out of school and being home alone with Mommy is enough to make her nutty. But, as I said, Monday was different. She comes in all excited, and tells me she’s going to be cured!

Okay, good thing I was sitting down, because news like this is not something you want to learn standing up. Apparently, a guy at the school came in to push his company’s new product, Healthlife. Now, we’ve seen the commercials on television – a bunch of happy laughing kids who rush to get their Healthilife juice box. No marketing novices, these guys, the commercials run during all of the cartoons.

So Alex shows me this purple box of Tropical flavored Healthilife juice. And she starts…

Alex: Mom, I bought this at school. The guy says it's good for all diseases.

Me: Alex, he’s a salesman. He wants you to buy his juice. That’s all. It’s simply juice.

Alex: No, mom. It’s going to cure me. The guy said if has no sugar in it, and if you’re sick with malaria or any disease you are going to be cured! So, can I drink it? Can I drink it, please, huh? Please?!!!

Me: Let me see the box.

Hmmm. My opinion: It’s a stupid juice box. Ingredients: Water, Fruit Juices… oh and here’s the magic ingredient – GLUCOSE!! Reading a little bit more, let’s see, for every 100 ml there’s 12 carbohydrates. Okay, this box is 250 ml, so that’s 30 carbs for a single little juice box! Alex would need 1.25 units of Humalog just to drink this. “No sugar added,” my ass. What they mean is no extra sugar added. Yeah, these guys learned from the marketing masters, alright. Didn’t they used to do that in the states until consumers got savvy?

But Alex is an 8 year old girl. And the premise (promise?) is just what an 8 year old girl with Type 1 diabetes wants to hear: That she will be cured if she drinks this.

Mom has to play the bad guy, once again. Alex learns she’s been duped out of 65 pesawas for a juice box that’s no different than any other – except for the price, that is. Similar juice boxes sell for 30 or 40 pesawas.

When the boys come home, I ask them about the salesman. They confirm that this guy had a whole crowd of kids around him and he was pitching the benefits of this drink over any other. According to Mike (who did this amazingly funny impersonation), “If ‘dis guy over here drinks Healthilife and ‘dat guy over ‘dere drinks “someting” (sic) else, and ‘dey have a race, ‘den ‘dis Healthilife boy, he’s gonna win dat race every single time. He gonna go very fast because of ‘da glucose.”

Funny or not, if I had been at that school listening to that crap, I’d have chewed this guy a new one. Telling our kids that this drink is good for malaria and all other diseases is simply outrageous. How many kids bought that “no added sugar” diatribe as gospel, not understanding that it wasn’t the same as “sugar-free.” Too many kids, I’ll wager. According to Mike, pretty much everyone bought a juice box, and they’re now being sold at the canteen. That's great. Just wait till next year when the Ministry of Health reports that incidents of Type 2 diabetes in children has increased in Ghana, now that all of our kids are being tricked into drinking this "no sugar added" drink under the delusion that it's healthy.

Sean told me that some of his classmates will chastise him for buying a 7-Up (saying, of course, you're going to get diabetes like your sister -- and yes, Sean does try to explain the difference between Type 1 and Type 2) – meanwhile they’re drinking a Healthilife juice box with the same amount of sugar in it. I asked Sean why they’d even allow this guy to come to the school to sell this product. He said, “Mom, this is Ghana. It’s bribery. He paid someone so he could sell that at school.” How sad that my 13 year old is so cynical. But worse, that he’s also correct.

And how devastating and evil is it to dash the hopes of an 8 year old girl who only wants a cure and is tricked into believing that she’ll find it in a juice box?

We are truly blessed

There are many ways for a type 1 diabetic to get the insulin they need to live into their body. Alex uses multiple daily injections to get her insulin. An insulin pump is another way (very common in developed countries), but it will probably never be doable here in Ghana. The technology isn’t here, and for the most part, I think the pump companies wouldn’t come because there’s no money to be made on it. Each pump costs in the thousands of dollars and that's just for the equipment. Factor in the infusion sets, and all of the other stuff needed, and it's an expensive never-ending treatment. No, insulin pump companies will not bring this marvel of medicine to Ghana any time soon because it is all about the money (and profits), despite what anyone says. But we recently received two donations, which are probably as close to (insulin) “pumping” as Alex is going to get, at least for the next few years. Two very nice ladies sent us two very interesting things: The Luxura Insulin Pen and the I-Port.

Now, Alex already has an insulin pen, and it’s really nice ‘cause it keeps track of the last 16 doses and all, but it only doses in full units. And Alex is still small enough that she occasionally needs a half unit or a unit and a half. If I give her a full unit and it’s too much insulin, her blood sugar gets too low, and if I give her less than she really needs, then her sugar gets too high. We could get around that with a syringe, but that’s neither here nor there. But the Luxura insulin pen doses in half units, and it has been wonderful at keeping Alex’s numbers in better range. Her 7 day and 30 day averages have both gone down. Of course the proof is in the A1C, but that’s next month.

The other interesting donation is the I-Port, which is what is known as a delivery device. It allows insulin to be injected through a port. You know how if a person needs an IV in the hospital they stick that little thingy in the back of their hand, and then they inject into that? This is the same concept. The I-Port goes into Alex, a little tiny (really really tiny) cannula stays embedded in her skin (until it removes, that is) and all of her insulin is injected through it. No more individual injections!

I was a little intimidated by it when I first saw it, because the needle that the cannula is in is a lot bigger than her pen needles or her syringe, but I was brave and followed the instructions and 1-2-3 in it went! Alex didn’t flinch or wince or anything. For the next 24 hours all of her insulin went into the port. Then, the I-Port came off after swimming, so we had to do another. And another, and another.


That's the I-Port in the picture, a few hours before it came off. So far, we’ve been through five of them; each lasting only a day or so. They’re supposed to last between 3 and 4 days, so that has been disappointing. But Alex loves it, because I can give her a shot before food and after food, if she wants more than she originally thought. (Oh, and that Fanta cocktail requires a full unit of insulin all by itself.) That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’ve only got another dozen left, so we’re using it a little more judiciously, and I’m telling Alex to be careful, because she’s accidentally torn out the last two by banging into things.

On a sad note, I read a press release the other day that started off with these disturbing words, “The life expectancy for a child with type 1 diabetes in much of sub-Saharan Africa is typically less than one year.” I emailed the contact person who put out this press release and asked when we can expect to see this program come to Ghana. I haven't had a response, yet, but I'm hopeful.

As we approach Alexandra’s one year anniversary of her dealing with this horrible disease, I can’t tell you how amazingly lucky and blessed we are. I am sickened at the thought that there may be so many “unlucky” children with type 1 diabetes here. All of our children are blessings from God. They don’t deserve this.