Titans GM Jon Robinson fights his biggest battle at his house

After the Easter egg hunt a few years back, Taylor Robinson dove into a package of Peeps marshmallow candies and ate two before the 6-year-old girl bent over and announced she had a bellyache.

Her father, Titans GM Jon Robinson, was dubious.

“We thought she just wanted to skip church and eat candy all day,” he said.

Then again, Robinson thought, some other things had been bothering him and his wife, Jaimie, about their older daughter.

Taylor had been drinking a lot of water lately and using the bathroom a lot. And she’d lost six pounds in a month.

Robinson went online and put “excessive thirst,” “excessive urination” and “weight loss” into Web MD. And Google. And Yahoo.

All three websites came back with the same answer.

A few hours later, emergency room physicians confirmed the Robinsons’ fears: Taylor has type 1 diabetes. She likely would be taking insulin for the rest of her life.

The two parents stepped out into the hallway and cried.

“Here this is hitting me upside the face,” Jon Robinson said.

Scared, questions swirled around his mind – Will Taylor be able to live a normal life like any other kid? Will she be able to go to the ice cream shop? Will she be able to go to sleepovers? Will Taylor be accepted?

Since then, the Robinsons have learned how to manage the disease and – just as important – they’ve plugged into communities of families of children with diabetes.

They’re active with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and the Robinsons on Saturday (April 21) are hosting the first black-tie fundraiser on the field of Nissan Stadium.

While manageable, life with diabetes can be challenging and, sometimes, scary.

Robinson, 42, loves overseeing the Titans battle on the field, but his biggest fight is to find a cure for his daughter’s disease.

“She’s very comfortable with it, and it’s just a part of her now,” he said.

“But we all know what she deals with, and we’re not accepting of it. We’re trying to help her beat it.”

A bouquet of positive pregnancy test sticks

The family was built on football: Jon and Jaimie met in the late 1990s at sports bar Bubba’s II, in Thibodaux, La., where Jon was a football coach at Nicholls State University.

Several years after the couple got married in 2002, Jon found out his wife was pregnant. That happened when he came home from a scouting trip for the New England Patriots, and there were a dozen positive pregnancy test sticks in a basket.

“She knows me,” Jon said, smiling. “I’d have asked, ‘Did you take more than one?’”

A tough player and coach all his life, Jon expected to be the disciplinarian with his kids. Soon after Taylor was born, both parents realized Jon was the softie.

About five months before the diabetes diagnosis, the Robinsons started noticing Taylor asked to have water by her bed. They’d hear the toilet flush several times overnight, but didn’t think much of it.

“We were oblivious,” Jon said.

After doctors confirmed diabetes in 2012, Taylor cried during the first few insulin injections. Within weeks, though, she insisted on giving herself the shots.

The girl learned about food, sugars, portion size, controlling carbohydrates and taking care of herself. She learned how to use an app on her phone that lets her and her parents know at all times what her sugar level is.

Going back to school was, well, kinda cool for the first-grader.

“Our nurse came and talked to our class about what diabetes is and how it affects me,” Taylor said. “It felt good. I almost felt kind of proud of it because I was different.”

A year later, the tears flow

There were many sleepless nights at first, as Taylor and her parents obsessed about the numbers and the beeping alarms.

Jon was emotional at first, and he worked a lot. So Jaimie saw herself as the tough-minded caregiver who had to execute plans to keep their daughter healthy: “There was not time for tears.”

Until there was.

About a year in, all the emotions of the ordeal caught up with Jaimie, and she found herself crying often, for nearly a month.

“It’s just hitting me now,” she told her husband then, “that Taylor has to deal with this her entire life.”

The most frightening moment happened in a parking lot of an outlet mall.

Taylor said she wasn’t feeling good, and she doubled up on the floor of the family SUV, in and out of consciousness.

Her parents shouted, “Taylor! Taylor!” and fed her Gatorade when she was awake enough to drink.

Eventually, the girl threw up and felt much better.

Taylor said her life is pretty normal, and yes, she has been able to go to sleepovers at friends’ houses.

She said she just keeps her blood sugar alarm under her pillow so it won’t wake her friends up if it goes off.

Jaimie agrees that things are pretty routine now with diabetes care.

“A lot of people feel sorry for us, but I’ll be honest, once you get the swing of it, it’s not hard,” she said.

“It’s difficult to tell her, ‘No, you can’t have that second cupcake,’ because her sugar would be through the roof. But she’s amazing. That’s what makes it easy for Jon and me.”

In fact, sometimes the Robinsons consider the disease a blessing.

It has given them purpose, to raise awareness and to raise money for research.

“Fate, call it whatever you want to call it,” Jon said. “God picked us because we now by his grace are financially in the position to where we have a bigger shovel to find a cure.”

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com at 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.

The JDRF Promise Gala – on the field

What: A black-tie fundraiser dinner for diabetes research for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation

When: 6 p.m. Saturday (April 21)

Where: Nissan Stadium, 1 Titans Way

Cost: $350

Info/tickets: JDRF.org/PromiseGala