Back in February this year I received the phone call that all parents dread, my 6-year-old son Max had been rushed to hospital after suffering suspected high blood sugar levels.

Max has always been an unbelievably active child who just loves the outdoors and never really gets ill, not even a cold! My wife puts this down to the all the worms and mud he eats, killing any germ that comes near him.

Once at hospital samples were taken and tests were run to try and discover what was wrong with Max, After what felt like forever the Doctor came to see us and said “Right we have written up a prescription for Max’s Insulin and booked you into the Diabetic Clinic so they can run through everything with you” Confused and shocked we had to double check what the doctor had said. Max was now a Type One Diabetic.

In state of complete shock, we walked out of the ward (well Max ran) over to the Clinic to meet with the Children’s Diabetic Team. It was here that Max was given his Rufus Bear. Rufus is a special teddy bear that shows children like Max where the best place to inject their insulin is.

Leaving the clinic with bags of equipment, needles, prescriptions and vials of Insulin it felt just like the moment we left hospital with a newborn Max; realising we are responsible for keeping a little person safe however this time round we had to administer a potentially lethal drug to keep him alive.

On the way home, Max asked us who we had to pay for his Rufus Bear? We explained to him that the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund (JDRF) pays for the Rufus Bears with money raised by donations. “Ok then” said Max. “I will raise some money to help them!”

So, here we are almost 5 months on and we can definitely tell you that Max is still our amazingly active outdoors kid, who still eats worms and mud – they are carb free you know! As parents we have learnt so much since Max was diagnosed – especially that you should never underestimate a child! 

Max always wanted to be a Red Arrows pilot but sadly now he cannot. But that doesn’t matter because after watching the Six Nations and discovering that England Rugby Player Henry Slade is also a Type 1 Diabetic, Max is now determined that professional rugby is the way to go!

- Michael Davision, Max's Father

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We love Rugby, well all sport for that matter, at  Firstaid4sport – so we came up with a plan to raise money for the JDRF by adding a new tape range to our line of products! So MAX Tape was born!

With every roll we sell through our website we will be donating to the JDRF. 

Each Rufus Bear costs £25 and our target is to help purchase 200! If you would like to help us reach this target you can do so through this page.

Thank you for reading,

Max Davison (age 7) and the team at Firstaid4sport