Twelve times a day for 14 years – starting at 3 a.m. – Cameron Crouse checked his blood sugar with finger pricks from a glucometer.
Diagnosed a month shy of his third birthday with type 1 diabetes in 2003, Crouse said administering 12 pricks a day became second nature. But for many people, especially those diagnosed later in life, managing diabetes often presents substantial physical, emotional and financial challenges.
“I consider myself fortunate because I was so young that I don’t have any memories of being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes,” said Crouse, 24, a University of Florida Ph.D. student and biomedical engineering major in the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.
Crouse is now rolling his experiences, knowledge and insight as a lifelong patient into his graduate research, hoping to find a diabetes treatment at the cellular level through tissue engineering. His goal is to reverse diabetes through transplanted cells that can produce insulin.