Tyler mom set to run 100 miles to raise awareness for Type 1 Diabetes

TYLER, TX (KLTV) - A Tyler woman is preparing to lace up her running shoes and hit the streets to raise awareness for Type 1 Diabetes.

At Angelica Gonzalez’s desk, you’ll find running medals from past runs. And come this Friday, she’ll be on the run again. But this time it will not be for another medal. This run will be for a greater cause.

“Even though he’s not with me, I worry about him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” Gonzalez said. “Every morning when we wake up, I think about him. Is he awake? Did he survive the night?”

Gonzales is talking about her 16-year-old son, who is one of the millions of Americans with Type 1 Diabetes.

“Our son has to have constant finger pricks to check his blood sugar,” Gonzalez said. “He has to have constant insulin shots every day. About six to eight shots a day. Insulin is his life support.”

Gonzalez says Type 1 isn’t the type we often think about when we hear the d-word. It’s an insulin dependent disease not caused by a lack of exercise or poor diet, unlike Type 2.

“The stigma is that it’s this fat, lazy people disease,” Sarah Wilson, executive director of Type One Tyler said. “So you’re constantly living your life trying to assert that you didn’t do anything wrong to get this. And you’re not doing anything wrong to keep it.”

And in an effort to stomp out that stigma, Gonzalez will run towards awareness this week for the fourth time. She’ll make the 100-mile run through the streets of Tyler starting Friday morning. To put that in perspective, that’s about two miles less than the distance from Tyler to downtown Dallas. A number that seems big, but is nothing compared to the struggle of a person dealing with Type One Diabetes.

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