Where the Blue Begins

I'm in love with you, Camp Sweeney, For your deeds so true; Perseverance, faith and courage Help our tests stay blue.

The 79 youngsters who shrilled this paean were singing about urinalysis. In their camp for diabetic kids (6 to 18) near Gainesville, Texas, every one of them knows that when the test turns out blue, it means no sugar in their urine; red is bad.

Most of the kids, like ten-year-old Patsy Byrnes, have been taught to make their own tests and give themselves insulin shots. One morning last week she woke as usual at 6:45, padded down her dormitory to the lab. There she made a sugar test of her urine, screwed up her freckled face in a grimace as the reagent turned brick red --four plus. She fished a needle from the sterilizer, carefully measured out 26 units of insulin, and expertly injected it into her thigh.

Then she went to breakfast: corn flakes, scrambled eggs and bacon, buttered toast and milk. But she used saccharin instead of sugar on her corn flakes, and every item had been weighed to the gram, to match the diet calculated for her by doctors.

After breakfast, Patsy went for a 45-minute ride on a pony named Dixie. Next, there should have been a swim, but Patsy had fallen and skinned her knee while square-dancing, so she went to the archery court instead. Before lunch, Patsy made another urinalysis (still red) and went in for another measured meal of meat & potatoes, asparagus, corn muffins, salad and apricot whip.

Between an afternoon nap and lights-out at 9, Patsy played more games, took part in the junior campers' show, acting out Jack Be Nimble, made two more urinalyses. The last was still positive, so for a bedtime snack she only got a carrot; if her test had been blue, she could have had cookies and milk.

Among the campers at Sweeney, Patsy Byrnes's diabetes, which flares up easily, is about average. More fortunate youngsters are able to cut down their insulin dosage early in the three-month camping season or even cut it out entirely. Nearly all of them are vastly improved long before the end of the season.

Dr. James Shirley Sweeney, 54, a specialist in metabolic disorders, started the camp two years ago to help diabetic children get over their introversion and shyness. Children with the same ailment tend to help each other as well as themselves. The camp has 400 acres, with 24-bunk dormitories, a lake and a boathouse.

Says Dr. Sweeney, who shuttles between a Gainesville hospital and the camp: "I wish we could have a thousand of those kids here."

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