Grand Prix driver tames diabetes along with road courses
Via Orange County Register
April 12, 2014
ORANGE – The brown-haired, brown-eyed boy in a green Transformers T-shirt sat cross-legged in the middle of his hospital bed.
The room was quiet. Jonathan Aranivia stacked Legos to build the base of a spaceship, an IV tube snaking from the inside of his left arm and two bandages bookending a faded temporary tattoo of a cartoon character on his right.
He sipped a diet soda through a straw between snapping blocks into place.
He was also expecting a visitor who’d bring hope.
Two days earlier, Jonathan of Pico Rivera had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. His body was failing to produce insulin. He was being cared for at Children’s Hospital of Orange County.
Doctors told him his diet would have to change: no sugary soft drinks, less candy, less “fun stuff.” They said he’d need to learn how to check his blood sugar with finger pricks and help his body convert food to energy with daily injections of insulin.
His mother, Tahtiana Keel, is still overwhelmed by Tuesday’s news, tears rolling from her tired eyes when she starts to talk about it.
She wants to tell her son that everything will be OK, that they’ll manage it together and that his new normal will result in a long, healthy life.
But she couldn’t see what that would be like until a woman drew open the curtain on their side of the dimly lit room.
At the foot of Jonathan’s bed stood a 5-foot-10, fit, slender, 29-year-old man with strawberry blond hair and tight beard. He wore a racing-team navy polo shirt and gray slacks. He had thrill-seeker eyes and a big, electric smile.
“Hi, Jonathan, I’m Charlie, and I drive race cars,” said Charlie Kimball, who will compete Sunday in the 40th Long Beach Grand Prix, a Verizon IndyCar Series race.
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