Jye Warren, a local football coach and social worker, is using his personal experience with Type 1 diabetes to support young people managing the condition in regional Australia.
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A local football coach and social worker is using his personal experience with Type 1 diabetes to support young people managing the condition across regional Australia.
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Jye Warren, who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 25, now serves as an ambassador for the Type 1 Foundation and Medtronic while co-coaching senior football at Moama Football Netball Club.
“I was diagnosed 10 years ago, in May, at 25 years old,” Jye said.
“It was a late onset of Type 1 diabetes. It is obviously a lot more common for children to get it, but I was one of the unlucky ones.”
At the time of his diagnosis, Jye was playing football for Labrador AFC in the AFL Queensland League.
“I came back for a holiday and was just watching the footy, drinking a Coke and ended up fainting and seven days later I was back up in the Gold Coast with Type 1 diabetes,” he said.
Jye had the symptoms since 2012 but thought he couldn’t have diabetes because he was fit and young.
“I had some of the symptoms that Type 1 diabetics show; very thirsty, needing to go to the toilet, a lot of loss of weight or not being able to keep weight on,” he said.
“I had all those symptoms for such a long time and then my body decided to shut down because it had had enough of fighting against not producing enough insulin against the glucose.”
Jye's journey with diabetes management has improved significantly since receiving a Medtronic MiniMed 780G insulin pump.
“I started going to an amazing diabetes educator named Lori Auld at Echuca Regional Health,” he said.
“And since seeing her, she was amazing and really super supportive with how I was managing my diabetes, which wasn’t great, but she got me back on track.”
Before receiving the pump, for about four months, Jye had to control his diabetes by documenting glucose readings and carbohydrates, counting carbs and giving himself the right amount of insulin each time he ate.
He then had to undergo an HbA1c blood glucose test and bring his count down from 11 to 9, which is now at seven due to the use of the pump.
Having a pump has not stopped Jye from doing anything.
He plays and co-coaches in the Moama seniors football team, swims daily in the river and works out at the gym.
Jye continues to play football, swim daily, work out at the gym and conduct online support sessions for young people with Type 1 diabetes and their families.
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JORDAN TOWNROW
As a social worker at Echuca East Primary School, Jye conducts online support sessions for young people with type 1 diabetes and their families.
“I have Zoom meetings with a lot of different young people and their parents, which is called the Type 1 Warrior and on Instagram it is the Average Athlete,” he said.
“I knew how hard it was for me at 25 and I could only imagine as a seven or eight-year-old, how hard it would be to have to wake up in the middle of the night to check their glucose, to stop playing sport for five minutes to check their glucose or to stop their education and be different from other kids.”
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