Toowoomba teen Fred Turner shares experience of living with type 1 diabetes

A Toowoomba teen is ready to embark on a career of helping regional Qld residents access diabetes type 1 support, nine years after receiving the diagnosis for himself. Read his inspiring story:

Year-12 graduate Fred Turner will study nursing next year following his desire to share his story of living with Type 1 diabetes and help other regional Australians get continued support for the condition. Picture: Christine Schindler

Year 12 graduate Fred Turner will celebrate his formal at the end of the week, and then head up to Rainbow Beach for schoolies.

As the Toowoomba Anglican School rugby player makes plans for end of year celebrations, his blood glucose is being constantly monitored by a device that is connected to a pump, which injects insulin into his body as needed.

Fred was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes just a few weeks before his eighth birthday after a flu passed through his family.

Living in Blackall in central Queensland at the time, the diagnosis came as a shock to his mum, Emma Turner, who said there wasn’t any history of diabetes in the family.

In 2021 more than 13,000 children and young adults were living with type 1 diabetes, with an unexplained increase in the condition among young people.

Year 12 graduate Fred Turner will study nursing next year following his desire to share his story of living with Type 1 diabetes and help other regional Australians get continued support for the condition. Picture with Emma Turner (mother). Picture: Christine Schindler

He started to have cold feet, couldn’t walk up steps, drank excessive amounts of water, continuously wet the bed and lost almost half his body weight in a few days.

After vomiting and sleeping following an Anzac Day Dawn Service, Ms Turner, who was also a nurse, noticed how skinny he was when he was about to bath.

“She finally put all the pieces together of the puzzle and figured out that it’s got to be diabetes,” Fred said.

The next day at the hospital the doctor could smell the ketones on his breath.

Fred was flown to Brisbane with “lights and sirens and put in the ICU”, Ms Turner said.

“It’s a very traumatic diagnosis,” she said.

For the time the family were living in Blackall, there was a diabetes educator who would visit the town once a month, but her focus was type 2 and she wasn’t trained to deal with children’s cases.

Since then both Fred and his mum have been fierce advocates for type 1 diabetes, hoping to build awareness and understanding of the condition, as well as putting their hands towards fundraising for the cause.

Year 12 graduate Fred Turner will study nursing next year following his desire to share his story of living with Type 1 diabetes and help other regional Australians get continued support for the condition. Picture: Christine Schindler

Ms Turner, now a nursing and midwifery lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland, has currently been studying diabetes type 1 support systems available for regional Queensland families.

She said technology like the continuous glucose monitor and the insulin pumps had meant fewer needles, emergency juice poppers at night and less stress, with the ability to connect the measurements to her phone.

As diabetes affects the whole body, anyone with the condition needs to see regularly see a number of different medical practitioners.

It is here where there is still a lot of support missing in regional Queensland, and her research showed the biggest need was a “one-stop-shop”, where families coming into the city for treatment could access all the services at the same time.

Apart from taking rests when his blood glucose levels get concerning, it hasn’t stopped Fred from following his dreams – or simply playing on the school rugby team.

Next year he will study nursing at the UniSQ in the hopes to go on to specialise in diabetes education.

“Being able to talk to people and educate them on what type 1 actually is as well as give them an understanding of what people have to go through who living with it is really important for me,” Fred said.

Ms Turner and Fred will speak at 12-1pm on Thursday, November 14 at UniSQ as part of World Diabetes Day.