Juvenile Diabetes shock
That includes challenges in her personal life as well. In late January, Cruz and her husband, Dr. Steve Cruz, spent several days at Children’s Hospital in Madison as their oldest son, 9-year-old Manny, battled the effects of juvenile diabetes.
The diagnosis had come on a Sunday morning at an Appleton clinic after Manny had grown increasingly fatigued, headachy, nauseous and thirsty. Since the disease doesn’t run in either of their families, the diagnosis was not one Cruz was prepared to hear.
“It was like somebody went WHAP, right to my stomach,” she recalls. “I just started crying. I thought juvenile diabetes? I could have taken appendicitis, I could have taken influenza, but I wasn’t thinking life-long disease.”
As Manny’s condition stabilized, the family quickly got up to speed on living with the disease. They became familiar with insulin shots and finger pricks, and then Cruz’s public relations instincts kicked into gear.
She realized that everyone Manny came into contact with on a daily basis, from his teachers to his classmates to his grandmother, needed to know about managing his condition. She put together a care plan, met with school officials and spoke to his class.
“It’s a whole new way of thinking about life,” she says. “You’re on this track with your kids, you do everything possible to help your kids be independent, and then all of the sudden it felt like we took a lot of steps backwards. Now we just have to shift gears a little bit, and we’ll get back there again.
“It’s also a lesson in how quickly life can change.”
Moving Out
Change has been something the 38-year-old Cruz has thrived on since graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in 1994. The Stevens Point native moved first to Florida and then to Orange, Calif., where Steve was stationed as a Navy doctor.
In California, Lisa worked in a media-intensive public relations environment. Her duties involved everything from helping organize the launch of a retail center, which included a concert by Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, to helping manage media relations for the funeral of Florence Griffith-Joyner.
