REDFORD, Mich. – Skye Blue, 4, loves her new Barbie.
“I think it’s so beautiful,” said Blue on Friday, July 11. “I think I’m still grateful for me to have this. I love it so much.”
The Barbie is particularly special to Blue because she has type 1 diabetes.
She comes with a glucose monitor and an insulin pump on her stomach, just like Blue.
“It’s a journey. When you’re first with that diagnosis,” Shanna Blue, Skye’s mother, said. “I’m like any parent or anyone you’re on Google, you’re searching to see, you know, what’s the latest? Is there a cure somewhere that you know is unknown?”
Shanna, who lives in Redford, says it has been an adjustment since her little girl was diagnosed with the illness almost two years ago, around Thanksgiving.
Skye, along with hundreds of other kids from across the country, was in Washington, D.C. last week as part of the 2025 Children’s Congress, a three-day event that brought kids living with Type 1 Diabetes face-to-face with lawmakers.
It was sponsored by Breakthrough T1D, formerly known as the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. Mattel also introduced the new Barbie during the event.
Youth delegates from all 50 states, including four from Michigan, called on Congress to renew the Special Diabetes Program.
It allocates millions of dollars for Type 1 Diabetes Research.
Skye was one of the littlest delegates and got to meet so many other kids also living with Type 1 Diabetes.
“In our community, she’s the only type 1 diabetic that we know of,” Shanna said. So, just to get out and just be around other families who get it, it was just wonderful."
Another of the delegates was 16-year-old Ella Boger of Lake Orion. She was there with her service dog, a 3-year-old Black Lab named Luca.
“She can detect the hormone changes in sweat, and she’ll know when my blood sugar is going high or low 30 minutes before it happens,” said Boger.
Luca goes everywhere with Ella and will paw at her when a sugar change is coming, and gets juice for her when it spikes too high.
“And then, in the case if I were to pass out from an extreme low blood sugar, she’d be able to go get someone nearby and bring them to me to help,” said Luca.
Ella, who is about to start her senior year at Lake Orion High School, was diagnosed three years ago after she noticed distinct changes in her body while she was in the marching band.
“It was actually my first season of Varsity Winter Guard, and I thought that I was losing weight because of how active I was,” she said. ”I thought that I was just drinking a lot of water at practice.
“But it became a little too much, and it was affecting my performance,” she said. “And that’s when we noticed something was wrong.”
As of 2021, the last known year of statistics, the American Diabetes Association said there were 1.8 million cases of Type 1 Diabetes. It makes the fight for a cure and better treatments even bigger for parents like Shanna.
“It’s hard for the parents and the family to get used to the new normal,” Shanna said. “So, but once we were in it, we were in it to win it.”
You can follow Skye and Ella (and Luca’s) journey with Type 1 Diabetes on Instagram at skyeblue911 and type_happy.
