Family's Devotion to Saving Teen Daughter's Life

Lindsay Powers
·Writer
Updated

A quietly devastating documentary, Midnight Three & Six, shows a mom’s struggle to keep her daughter, Grace, alive despite a medical condition that could kill her in minutes.

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Midnight, Three & Six

"Do I fear sleep? Yeah, if I’m on duty I do,” Grace’s mom, Patricia Chamberlain, explains, in a clip first shown on The New York Times. Chamberlain and her husband take turns waking up at midnight, 3 a.m., and 6 a.m. to check their daughter’s blood glucose levels. Grace has a volatile form of Type 1 diabetes and there is no cure.

In the past 5 years, four of Grace’s friends of the same age have passed, Patricia recalls. Three of them at night, while they were sleeping, and one in the morning. At a recent “surreal” funeral for a girl three days younger than Grace “a lot of kids came from all over the United States and they all sat together and… they all had a wisdom beyond their years…. They knew that they could be in that casket. So remembering it, I get emotional,” Patricia says.

Midnight, Three & Six

At 15, Grace has undergone 34,000 blood tests, 5,500 shots, and 1,660 medical tubing injections to save her life, the Times reports. She was diagnosed in 2006.

"It’s just scary," Grace admits. "One day I could here, and one day I could just not. So I guess I kind of appreciate the little things more." Grace has a diabetic alert dog that helps monitor her blood sugar levels. In the video above, you see the dog urge Grace to test herself. If her levels drop below 20, Grace explains, then she’ll go into a seizure, and then a diabetic coma. "And if I’m not rushed to the hospital, then I’ll just die."

Midnight, Three & Six

Patricia admits that her daughter’s diagnosis has turned her into a different type of mom.

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"I hover," she admits. "It’s the opposite of what I used to be as a mom… and she rolls her eyes, especially as she’s becoming an adolescent."

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