New Castle’s Pavia overcomes diabetes to hit the field

By JOHN D’ABRUZZO

jd’abruzzo@ncnewsonline.com

Uniform. Check. Shoulder pads. Check. Helmet. Check. Cleats. Check.

Juice bags, crackers, Rice Krispies treats, glucometer, alcohol pads, syringes and insulin.

Check.

This is the only way Vince Pavia knows how to play football.

And for the New Castle High senior lineman and juvenile diabetic, this is normal.

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A 5-foot-11, 255-pound starting right guard and nose guard, Pavia has type 1 diabetes and has played football in spite of it since he was 7 years old. And he has never used his diabetes as an excuse.

“It’s a way of life,” Pavia said. “Without it, what would I do? I don’t know. I’m so used to being the guy who has to do this.

“I can deal with it. I know some other people would have a harder time dealing with it than I do. I can handle it.

“God doesn’t give you any more than you can handle.”

A three-year starter for New Castle, Pavia has never missed a game. He constantly checks his blood sugar and needs to maintain the proper levels throughout his daily routine and especially in practices and during games.

“Honestly, for a young man to be in that situation and being able to monitor it and keep it in check, that’s a great accomplishment in itself on top of playing football,” Red Hurricane coach Frank Bongivengo Jr. said. “He checks it regularly and he lets us know where he’s at. When he’s ready to check it, we tell him to just go and do those things.

“That’s not something easy to live with and especially when you’re playing sports, your adrenaline is fluctuating up and down. He does a pretty good job with it.”

HIS LIFELINE

Pavia can usually be seen running toward the New Castle bench in between changes of possession and quarter breaks.

He has a little black backpack-like pouch that hangs off the corner of the bench. In that bag, Pavia has all his essentials, including a glucometer, insulin syringes, insulin, a Capri Sun juice drink, pack of crackers or Rice Krispies treats, I.V. preps, alcohol pads and a Glucagon emergency kit.

When he’s not playing football, Pavia has an insulin pump clipped to his right side. The machine is as big as an oversized pager or cell phone.

The pump makes everything a little easier. It provides 300 units of insulin and he uses about 100 units a day to keep his blood sugar at a normal rate.

“It’s like having a pancreas on the side,” said Pavia, who also throws the shot put as a member of the New Castle boys track team. “It pumps insulin all day long. I have to test my blood sugar, see what it is.”

He obviously can’t practice or play with a $12,000 machine clipped to his football pants.

During both practices and games, Pavia disconnects the insulin pump’s tube that runs to a circular port stuck to the side of his hip and tapes over the port with medical gauze.

“Every 45 minutes I check it,” Pavia said. “If it’s high, I take insulin to bring it down a little bit. If we’re running low, like I usually am because I’m out there running around and burning energy, I go to my bag.”

Pavia never wanted to be treated any differently from his teammates.

“He’s never used it as an excuse,” Bongivengo said. “That’s a credit to him. He works his butt off and he doesn’t use the diabetes as an issue.”

“And I try to give the players as much credit too,” Pavia said. “We’re out here banging heads and I get taken out of practice. They could give me a hard time about it, but they don’t. They know, they all accept it and they all handle it in a mature way.”

LIFE CHANGES

A son of Alan Pavia and Traci and Vince Martwinski, Vince remembers when he and his family knew something was going on with his health.

He was 6 years old.

“It was March of my first grade year and I had lost about 30 pounds out of nowhere,” said Pavia, whose father is the all-time leading rusher at Shenango High.

His mother is a registered nurse with Sharon Regional Heath System and knew the symptoms. Diabetes runs in the family and her mother, Charlotte Viggiano, also suffers from the disease.

She had his blood sugar checked one day and the reading was not good.

“It (the blood sugar) was irate,” Pavia said. “It wouldn’t even read the levels because it was so high. So from there it was go to the hospital and then from there I’m told I’m going to take shots for the rest of my life.

“I had a whole new lifestyle at the age of six. You’re taking shots every day and everything’s on a schedule.”

Doctors at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh diagnosed Pavia with Type 1 diabetes.

“Type 1 is usually in juveniles,” said Pavia, who still travels to Children’s Hospital for a checkup every three months. “The pancreas stops producing insulin, so now everything I eat with carbohydrates is not allowing me to release any insulin for it to go and regulate the blood sugar. So I have to inject the insulin manually.”

For the next couple years he started taking insulin shots up to six times a day. When he reached fifth grade, Pavia went through the proper training and was given an insulin pump.

“Even being a nurse when he was diagnosed, I was still nervous,” Traci said. “I was uneasy and I had the background to know how to take care of him.

“But he’s very independent. Since he was six years old, he’s given his own shots.”

FEELING GOOD

The thought of not playing football never crossed Pavia’s mind.

His family even encouraged it.

“We always told him do what you need to do,” Traci said. “He loves the game, so we told him to do what you need to do to play and feel good.

“That was always his attitude with everything. He’s a successful student and a successful athlete, and I think it’s because we’ve never discouraged anything. He just has to do a little bit more than what others have to do.”

But when it comes to regulating his sugar, Friday nights are a different story.

“Before a game, nerves and adrenaline alone will shoot it up, no matter what I eat or don’t eat,” said Pavia, who is starting on both sides of the ball for the first time this season. “Friday’s a battle. I try to regulate it, but once I get out here (on the field) there’s no stopping it.

“The insulin brings it down, but the adrenaline brings it up so fast, especially since I’m usually running around like a nutcase.”

During games, Pavia is constantly checking his levels. Considering he plays on both sides of the ball, punts, kickoffs, in between quarters and halftime are his prime stops to the bench.

“If it gets to a point where it’s too high (coaches) tell me to get out,” Pavia said. “They want me to get it under control so I can be used later in the game.”

And when the game ends, his levels slowly level off.

“It will drop down to normal in about an hour,” Pavia said. “It’s pretty crazy how it does that.”

And what’s normal?

“On the charts they’d tell you to be anywhere from 80 to 120, give a couple points,” Pavia said. “I fluctuate a lot more. While I’m playing, I try to keep it at 180. I give it 180 so it has time and room to drop.”

The last thing he wants is to allow his levels to get too low on the field.

“Then I start to forget things,” Pavia said. “You’ll get real sidetracked, so I try to keep it up there because the last thing you want to do is bottom out.”

Pavia had one scare.

And it’s one he doesn’t enjoy remembering.

“It wasn’t my fault or anyone’s fault. It was my pump,” Pavia said.

When he was in eighth grade, Pavia was playing a football game at Trinity in Washington County. It was a hot day and he was sweating so much that his insulin site, where the pump connects with his body, fell out.

“I didn’t know it fell out,” he said. “They bought us food and I ate the sandwich. I ate the cookie. I ate the chips. I ate everything. I figured I would connect up and everything would be all right.

“When I went to look, nothing was there and I had nothing on me. It was a long bus trip, but we made it through it and got it under control.”

NOT SO DIFFERENT

Pavia is a normal high school kid.

He enjoys going out after games with his teammates and friends, and, yes, he can usually eat what they eat.

“Sometimes people see me eat something they think a normal diabetic shouldn’t be eating, and I probably wouldn’t be if I didn’t have a pump,” Pavia said. “I just check the facts. I’m a nut when it comes to nutritional facts.”

Pavia knows the ins and outs of being a diabetic, and he’s not shy about helping others with the same disease.

“There’s kids in school who are diabetic and sometimes they’re a little shy about things,” said Pavia, who even talks with younger kids about juvenile diabetes in the area as well as in Pittsburgh. “They might tell me their sugar is low, so I’ll take them to the nurse’s office.”

Pavia will continue to check in at Children’s Hospital until after his freshman year of college. From there, he will visit an adult doctor.

Pavia is still looking at colleges. He plans on playing football and hopes to major in either biology or physical therapy.

More than anything, he has no worries about continuing his life like anybody else.

“The doctors have always told me as long as I keep it under control, there’s no restrictions,” Pavia said. “They’ve always told me there’s nothing I can’t do or that this should ever hold me back.

“So I do pretty much everything everybody else does.”