Chloe Bacik is a 12-year-old who loves fashion.
She’s streaked her blond hair with a pink highlight, she dangles large earrings from her ears, and she can rock a pink-and-black checkerboard scarf with total aplomb.
Her mom is not involved when it comes time to getting dressed, Chloe insists.
“I don’t let her,” the Edmonds girl said. “She’s dangerous.”
Chloe likes clothing, and variety, but she always wears the same shiny silver bracelet on her right wrist. It conveys a piece of vital information: Chloe is a Type 1 diabetic. She has been since she was four.
Diabetes is a disease that affects the way the body processes food and sugars. Untreated, it can cause serious health problems.
Now, eight years after her diagnosis, Chloe has become a one-person diabetes awareness campaign.
In addition to speaking at countless corporate functions, she’s thrown the first pitch at a Seattle Mariners baseball game — pitcher Brandon Morrow, a fellow diabetic, caught her pitch — and this June she’ll travel to Washington, D.C., where she’ll help lobby the U.S. Congress for research dollars to combat a disease that required her to draw blood from her own finger an estimated 20,000 times.
Last week, she spoke to a crowd of nearly 50 employees at the Bellevue Nordstrom before opening hours. The employees were trying to raise $20,000 for research to combat diabetes.
“It’s really annoying,” she told the group. “I don’t remember any day without diabetes.”
Her parents hardly do, either.
They were forced to give the 4-year-old Chloe insulin shots two or three times a day, said her father Mark.
“That was really difficult,” he said. “It was hard for a child who has absolutely no idea why.”
At some point, she started to understand the disease. According to Mark, once when Chloe was 5, she marched into a doctor’s office and said, “I’m here for my cure.”
That drive continues. It keeps her explaining diabetes and pushing people to help.
“I just love talking to people,” Chloe said. “They listen to me, and then we raise more money, and then we get closer to a cure.”
Chris Fyall: 425-339-3447, cfyall@heraldnet.com.
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