“I have diabetes, but I got to blue. I live with it and work hard: I want to win”

100 years of insulin are celebrated. The story of Nicola Mazzon, Treviso Volleyball adjuster: “Sick people can play sports at a high level”

The protagonist

This year marks the centenary of the discovery of insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugars: a discovery that has made it possible to save and treat the many people in the world suffering from diabetes mellitus, a disease that still remains among the top 10. causes of death around the world. November is the month of diabetes prevention (world day is celebrated tomorrow) and Nicola Mazzon, 18 years old from Volley Treviso, talks about it. Lifter, 203 cm tall, Nicola is the portrait of health, were it not for that white and round patch peeking out from the sleeve of his football shirt: “It is a sensor for blood sugar – he explains – from the patch a very thin filament reaches under the skin and measures the blood glucose value, just pass the reader over it and the data appears on the monitor: it lasts two weeks and monitors the levels at one minute intervals ».

Nicola, known to everyone as Mazzo, has been diabetic from an early age: “I was three years old, we were on holiday by the sea and one evening my parents noticed that I was particularly thirsty and that I often went to the bathroom: these are two of the first symptoms of diabetes . After the tests I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes mellitus: the cells in the pancreas that are supposed to produce insulin, the hormone that regulates blood glucose and that makes it go into the muscles where it is needed to produce energy, are destroyed “.

The routine that begins for him from there, made up of constant blood sugar control, maximum attention to nutrition and physical activity and insulin intake several times a day, could be scary for a healthy person. «For me it has always been like this, I have never asked myself so many questions nor have I taken it out on anyone. The sacrifices were made more than mine: I remember that my mother used to come to elementary school every day to give me insulin before the snack. Throughout my childhood and until a few years ago we were involved by the Treviso Antidiabetic Center in periodic meetings: I was in groups with other diabetic children and we were taught in a fun way how we should behave, parents were also given psychological support. Often it is they who suffer most from these situations: thanks to progress it is increasingly easier to manage checks and therapy, but it is still a disease that can cause serious damage and that will accompany a child for life “.

Growing up, Nicola begins to manage himself and learns to regulate himself on the basis of nutrition and energy expenditure, which for a teenager who does 5 workouts and 2 games a week (without counting the school commitment) is not a trivial matter: “Sometimes it can happen to eat a little more, or vice versa to take too much insulin and have to eat to compensate. But it hardly happens to me anymore, I follow the therapy that is assigned to me to the letter and after so many years I know how to balance myself in order to have an athletic condition equal to that of any of my companions “.

For him all the coaches he has had in Volley Treviso in seven years spend only nice words: he is a boy who has always been 110% committed, an example to his teammates, serious. He has a twin sister, Giada, who is also a volleyball player, and a younger brother, Tommaso, aged 8. Seeing him train, he has an almost professional attitude and one wonders if the control he is “forced” to maintain to stay healthy has somehow helped him to be more disciplined in sports, and also in school, since he attends with excellent grades in fifth grade at the Da Vinci Scientific High School: «I can’t say if things are related; in part the need to be disciplined for the disease may have “influenced” me, let’s say that I have more awareness of what I do, but in the end I think I would still be like that, after all I grew up considering diabetes to be normal ».

This season in the Serie B championship he is leading the orogranata team, which so far has obtained 3 victories out of 4 races: «I honestly did not expect these victories. Of course, there was and is on the part of all of us a great desire to do well, but we are not phenomena and we still have a lot to improve. We are proving that we can play it ». Last July he also received his first call-up to the blue: «I trained for about 3 weeks with the national team, I had a taste of what the atmosphere is like in retirement in the blue jersey. It helped me a lot, I was able to work on some things and keep trained during the summer break. I was really happy with the opportunity ».

As he tells it, he gives the impression that diabetes is an absolutely manageable problem: «If I had become ill at an older age, perhaps during adolescence, I would probably have experienced it badly. I grew up with it and have always lived with it, it wasn’t a trauma; but the point is that you can live with it, even doing high-level sports. It certainly requires more commitment and attention, but it also teaches us to get to know each other better and to become more independent, which is very important for a boy, even outside of sport ». –