5 minute read
NEED FOR SPEED
We meet Matamata local Mason Todd, who wants to be a racing car driver when he grows up.
When we speak to Mason and his mum, Marie, his stomach is directing him to cook up something as an after-school snack. A busy 10-year-old, Mason’s favourite pastime is ‘blatting’ around a spare paddock on his Yamaha 110 bike with his brother, friends, and cousins. He’s been riding bikes since he was five years old and is in his element when grinding tracks into the paddock.
Mason lives just outside Matamata on a dairy farm with his big brother Korbin and mum and dad. And a good mate called Bax. Bax is a springerdor – a mix of Springer spaniel and Labrador.
She joined the family last year as a puppy and has taken it upon herself to be Mason’s guard and BFF. She was welcomed into the whānau in the hope that she could be trained to be a diabetes dog, and she’s fulfilled that order by being there beside Mason in the night if Marie has come in to treat a low.
It was last April when Mason was diagnosed with type 1. Marie says that, when she came home from milking, she would find the kitchen bench strewn with coffee cups, all half full of water. She thought nothing of it, assuming it was due to both of her sons and their friends choosing to pick out a new cup every time they wanted a drink. Mason appeared otherwise well, so she only started to notice what was happening when they went to friends’ houses where Mason would finish his drink and keep asking for more.
With Mason now in the background, pondering making pancakes, Marie explains the battle to get a funded pump for Mason. Although having regular highs and lows, his HbA1c was at an ‘ideal’ level of 48, thereby making him ineligible for a funded pump. ‘According to his blood tests, he had excellent control, but this didn’t take into account the spikes and drops that come with multiple daily doses of insulin and, as a result, the sleepless nights Glen (Dad) and I were experiencing, and the hours and hours of high or low levels, and the fact we just weren’t coping with the worry, anxiety, and helplessness. Something more had to be done.’
The Todd family reached out to Dr Martin de Bock, a private Paediatric Endocrinologist based in Christchurch who has clinical interest in adolescent type 1 diabetes. He applied under the hypo criteria, and Mason went from receiving 60–70 short and long-acting injections each week to far superior control with a lot less effort.
Mason still does everything like a normal child. We don’t stop him doing anything.
MOVING ON
Marie says her advice to other parents of kids with type 1 is to not limit your child’s life because of their diagnosis. She says at the start she feared Mason’s diabetes was going to slow him and the family down. ‘It hasn’t. If anything, it has made us more determined to do all the things we’ve wanted to do.’
A great example of this is when the family was recently on holiday in Rotorua. They all did all the ‘normal’ activities: the Redwoods mountain bike tracks, the Zorb. Then Mason and Korbin hatched a plan to ask their parents if they could do a bungy jump. He loved it and has asked if he can do another jump soon.
ALL THE BIKING
Mason spends hours every week on his bike. Marie says she is happy to send him out to rip up the paddock as he always has his CGM on, his pump around his waist, his phone in a belt, and a ready supply of glucose on hand. ‘I don’t need to stop him while he’s on his bike. I can see him while he’s riding around the paddocks, and I can monitor him from afar.’
When he’s not on two wheels, Mason is honing his driving skills on four, via PlayStation. He knows all the tracks on Gran Turismo, which are taken from real life circuits around the world. His current favourites are the Monza track in Italy and the Bathhurst track from Australia.
Watching cars whizz past is in the Todd family blood as the whānau is keen on V8s and stock cars. A special treat for Mason was when he got to see the final event ever held at Pukekohe raceway. This is where Mason got to see his favourite motorsport race driver, Shane Van Gisbergen. Lately, most photos of Mason show him either wearing a Shane Van Gisbergen cap or a crash helmet.
By the end of the interview, Mason has settled down to eat his freshly made scrambled eggs, lightly seasoned with salt and pepper. A firm favourite.
