Even a Cancer Diagnosis Did Not Dampen Diabetes Educator's Passion to Help Those Living with Diabetes

Barbara Stone has been diagnosed with cancer twice and has lived with Type II diabetes for 29 years. Yet she remains dedicated to community service and is happiest when she is helping someone, especially one who has or is at risk of developing diabetes.

Her dedication is evident when she describes her grueling schedule of the diabetes screenings she conducts every month. As she talks, she passes her hand through the shoots of hair just starting to grow back after her chemotherapy, which she began following her breast cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

"My first reaction was fear, pure and simple," she says. "I would probably go out of my mind if I was not busy."

It was this same attitude that kept her strong when she was diagnosed with diabetes in 1977.

"I attended all the classes I could find, which were not too many, and the ones out there had a lot of misinformation," she says.

So when the fear surfaced this year after her cancer diagnosis she remembered how she had coped before, found out everything she could and scheduled her treatment.

This was not the first time she had been diagnosed with cancer either--in 1979, she was diagnosed with kidney cancer. That cancer was successfully treated.

Barbara, who describes herself as a wife, mother, grandmother, friend and nurse, says her strength is derived from her close-knit family. She has a daughter,Katy, a granddaughter, Miranda and a husband, Jim. She says the family dines together at least twice a week and vacations together in Hawaii every year.

But it is also clear the Diabetes Society holds a special place in her heart. She has a look of determination as she talks about the Diabetes Society screening program she helped start.

Barbara says she got involved with the Society by chance when one day in 1967 she was at Moffett Field and a child was brought in who had been diagnosed with diabetes. Barbara felt she needed to get more information in order to help the child and remembered some colleagues at her Stanford nursing job had mentioned the Diabetes Society. The Society was still in its infancy then and had no diabetes educators but had support groups. She encouraged the child’s family to join one of the support groups.

Shortly thereafter she was recruited to volunteer at the Diabetes Society’s educational camps and her long history of volunteering and working for the Diabetes Society began.

In 1985, Barbara started doing screenings on a volunteer basis with support from Lions Clubs and Longs Drug Stores in Santa Clara County every month and the Diabetes Society screening program was born. The program has now grown to where Barbara and a group of volunteers go to senior centers, local schools, health fairs and any other centers where there is the opportunity to screen the community.

During the screenings, Barbara says participants are given a questionnaire aimed at determining high risk individuals and include factors such as a history of Type II diabetes in the family.

Ethnic background matters too: for example, African Americans, Native Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders and Hispanics are more likely to get diabetes.

Those determined to be at risk are then offered a finger stick glucose test where a blood sample is taken, placed on a strip and read to determine how much sugar is in the blood.

Those who test high (over 100 mg/dl while fasting, over 200 mg/dl when tested at random and over 140mg/dl after eating) are provided with a list of low-cost or no-cost clinics in their area such as Gardner Community Health Clinic and East Valley Clinic so they can go and get tested for diabetes.

In addition to the testing at community centers Barbara also distributes language-appropriate diabetes information materials.

Barbara says the highlights of the diabetes screening program include getting parents to take their children to the doctor when they test high, and providing information to non-English speakers who have been unable to control their diabetes because they do not have access to information. The relief on their faces needs no interpretation.

"We have taken the mystery out of how to feed grandma and grandpa," she says.

She adds that the program is sometimes the only way that some in the community have of finding access to medical care resources.

The program is not without its challenges. Barbara says there is a shortage of bilingual educators in the Bay Area and the existing educators have a problem reaching out to the large Bay Area immigrant population because of language and cultural barriers.

For more information about our screening program, or to volunteer, please call Barbara Stone, RN, CDE, our Community Health Services Coordinator, at (408) 287-3785, ext. 152

by Ruth Wamuyu Schriver