Life throws young player a diabetes curve

As one of Petaluma’s best young baseball players, AJ (Andrew James) Miller has seen a lot of breaking balls through the course of his already extensive baseball career, but nothing like the curve ball life threw at him two years ago.

Miller, a 14-year-old freshman at Casa Grande High School, spent this past summer playing baseball, participating with a multitude of teams against some of the best competition in the country, including playing in the National Team Identification Series, a national tournament that can lead to a spot on the U.S. National team. Among other places, his baseball took him to North Carolina, Arizona, San Diego, Georgia and Cal State Northridge. He collected enough baseball caps to stock a sporting goods store.

And, he played every game wearing an insulin pump to regulate his blood sugar level that could be driven wack-o by his Type I (Juvenile) Diabetes if left untreated. It is a disease than in January of 2013 almost cost him his life.

Type 1 Diabetes is a particularly dangerous form of diabetes that can lead to severe complications, including kidney disease, high blood pressure, strokes, heart conditions, eye trouble (even blindness) and a multitude of other health problems. Only 5 to 10 percent of all persons diagnosed with diabetes have Type 1, but the numbers are still striking. According to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, more than 3 million people in the United States have the disease. Alarmingly, Type 1 Diabetes is increasing by an estimated 3 percent each year with 15,000 children and 15,000 adults diagnosed with the problem annually.

The good news for Miller and others afflicted with the disease is that, while it can’t be cured, it can be controlled. However, unlike the more common Type 2 Diabetes, it takes much more than diet and exercise to keep it under control. Injections of the vital insulin that the body no longer produces naturally are required.

Left untreated, it can prove fatal. Miller and his family are hoping that by telling his story, they can prevent others from experiencing his close call and also let others know that people can continue to not only have normal lives, but can achieve at a high level, even in athletics.

Miller says he began to feel sick about five months before his diagnosis. “I noticed that I was getting slower, losing weight. I was so lethargic I didn’t want to get out of bed,” he explains.

He found himself consuming prodigious amounts of water and continually urinating. Despite eating constantly, he continued to lose weight. His lips chapped and his hands cracked.

“All the signs were there, we just didn’t recognize them,” says his father, Dan. “It’s a warning for other parents to recognize the signs and be aware.”

It finally came to a head for Miller just three days after his 13th birthday when he was too sick to go to basketball practice, unheard of for him.

“That was the worst day of my life,” he recalls.

The Millers were fortunate to get a doctor’s appointment for him on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Fortunate because when the physician, suspecting diabetes, tested his blood sugar level it was too high for the meter to even read. He was rushed to the Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco where he was placed in the ICU unit and then transferred to the Pediatric Unit, where he continued to recover. His family credits the care he received at the hospital for helping get through the immediate danger and on the way to recovery. By the time he left the hospital he had regained 12 pounds he had lost to dehydration.

As he began to recover, he also began to learn about his disease - about what it does to the body, about diet and about insulin. He first had to learn to give himself insulin shots. After about six months, he had progressed far enough along the learning curve to use an insulin pump which does what his pancreas should be doing - regulate the amount of insulin needed to allow his body to process his food.

“It’s awesome,” he says of the pump. “It makes everything so much easier.”

Now, fully healthy and having regained the almost 20 pounds of weight he lost before being diagnosed, Miller is looking forward to playing freshman baseball at Casa Grande after a whirlwind summer on the diamond.

Among many teams, including the Grizzlies and Peta-Locos, local traveling teams, Miller played for the San Diego Show, one of the elite traveling teams in California. “They have the most organized practices I’ve ever been a part of,” he observed. He also had a chance to play with the Show in a tournament in Georgia.

He attended the NTIS tryouts in Manteca and was chosen among the top players to move on to the selection tryouts in Santa Clara where he was among the 32 players chosen to attend the National Team Championships at the National Training complex in North Carolina.

“That was probably the best baseball experience I’ve ever had in my life,” he says.

There was also a three-day tournament in Arizona with a Nor-Cal travel team.

On most of the teams, Miller batted in the middle of the order in the No. 3 and No. 4 spots. He played both catcher and first base. “I really don’t care where I play just as long as I’m in the lineup,” he says.

For anyone, and especially one who just a year earlier had to be rushed to an emergency room with a disease he will have to live with the rest of his life, it was an arduous schedule, but Miller loved every inning.

“I could play year round. Baseball is something I never get tired of,” he says.

It is also something he definitely sees in his future. “I want to play varsity baseball at Casa Grande and then play baseball in college (he would like that to happen at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee), get a good college education and start a successful career,” he says.

He carefully avoids mentioning a professional baseball career, but when pressed acknowledges it is something that he thinks about. “That is a dream I’ve had since Little League. Every baseball player has that in the back of his mind, but the main goal is to get an education,” he says.

AJ has a sister, Ally, who is a junior at Casa Grande and a brother, Austin, in the seventh grade at Kenilworth Junior High School. Among his biggest fans are his father, Dan, and mother Lorraine.