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Dadley Douglas, 7, does crabwalks down the mat at her acrobat class at Darcee's School of Dance. Hadley was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes two years ago.

Hadley Douglas holds up her pincushion fingers, spotted red from day after day of needle pricks. When her mom pokes her once again to draw blood for a reading, Hadley doesn’t even flinch.

Her blood sugar is normal; she doesn’t need any insulin. Unless she wants the package of cookies that sits in front of her, that is. Carefully examining the wrapper, Hadley identifies the number of carbohydrates in the snack and keys it into her insulin pump, then tears away the paper and starts chowing down.

After two years, this process of poking and injecting, reading and carefully counting is as common to her as breathing. At only 7, maybe it seems like life has always been this way.

“It hurts,” she says — but this is all she says. After all, she has lots better things to do than talk about diabetes. Like play her older brother’s video games or dress up in her mom’s clothes or dance.

Or walk a mile — and raise money for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in the process. On Oct. 11, Hadley walked in the foundation’s Walk to Cure Diabetes, which took place in Kansas City, Mo. Small paper shoes representing pledges she received went up one by one on a wall at Darcee’s School of Dance, and money came in through other fundraising efforts, as well.

Hadley also will perform a dance to the Jonas Brothers song “A Little Bit Longer” — written by Nick Jonas about his experience with diabetes — at the 2008 Diabetes Expo, which will take place Oct. 25 at Missouri Western State University.

Hadley’s mother, Dottie Douglas, hopes these efforts will raise awareness about type 1 diabetes and the importance of searching for a cure.

“A cure for type 1 diabetes would mean that no more children, no more families, would have to endure the pain our family has,” she says.

Her family’s pain began just before Thanksgiving two years ago, when a nurse at Children’s Mercy Hospital delivered Hadley’s diagnosis. Unlike type 2 diabetes, which often is caused by factors such as age and obesity, type 1 is an autoimmune disorder that, in Hadley’s case, may have been brought on by a bad infection she had when she was 3. Because her pancreas doesn’t properly produce insulin, she and her family must administer the hormone themselves in order to keep her blood sugar from being too high or too low.

When Mrs. Douglas heard the diagnosis, she rushed into a bathroom and cried, knowing her baby was sick with something she couldn’t cure. The hours that followed weren’t any easier, as she and her husband, Mike, had to hold a kicking, screaming Hadley down as the nurse administered an IV. It was the first of many times she would cry and beg them not to stick her.

And Hadley is far from alone. About two out of every 1,000 children in the United States have type 1 diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, it can be easy to feel alone when dealing with it, which is something Deb and Greg Walker know well.

The Walkers, who were put in touch with the Douglases by a mutual friend, also have a 7-year-old daughter, Alexis, who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes Aug. 14.

“I’m the worst mommy in the world, because I make her hurt all day and night,” Mrs. Walker says. “And right now, she feels like she’s not normal, because she’s the only one who has to leave the classroom several times a day and who has to eat crackers at P.E. and recess.”

But being able to talk to Hadley has helped Alexis, she adds — simply because it shows her she’s not the only one in the world dealing with diabetes. This connection is important in a city that doesn’t have any type 1 diabetes support groups, she says.

For the Douglases, if their efforts to raise awareness of the disease can make other families like the Walkers feel less alone in dealing with it, that in itself is a small victory.

“You think you can do this on your own,” Mrs. Douglas says, “but there’s a really dark tunnel if there aren’t any hands to help you out.”

Lifestyles reporter Erin Wisdom can be reached at ewisdom@npgco.com.