Brooke Shields opens up daughter's struggle with debilitating disease

Brooke Shields’s eldest daughter Rowan Henchy received a shocking type 1 diabetes diagnosis when she was a freshman.

In 2018, Rowan noticed symptoms of the debilitating disease, such as weight loss, worsening eyesight and skin infections.

“First of all, I lost a lot of weight, really rapidly,” she told People. “But I was eating two meals [for] each meal. I was consuming so much food and I was just losing weight even faster the more I would eat.”

“Another thing is you're constantly peeing,” she added. “And then my eyesight started to go and then I got a really bad toe infection. So these are blaring, red flags for undiagnosed Type 1 diabetes.”

Rowan is now a senior at Wake Forest University, where her younger sister Grier, 18, just began her freshman year.

The Mother of the Bride actress said, “It was an adjustment.”

Rowan had to deal with the diagnosis, and adjust in a new school the same year.

“The first couple months were rough because all my friends at my old school were hanging out with boys and I decided to go to an all-girls school and then I got diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. So it was just a rough year all in all,” she recalled.

“That school ended up being my favorite place and I have my best friends in the world and Grier ended up going there, so it worked out,” she continued. “But freshman year — it sucked. It was more of just like, ‘This happened. How can I continue living my life and not be all sad and depressed?' "

She noted that learning how to manage the disease helped a lot.

Her mom Brooke added: “I was feeling helpless because we didn't know what to do and then she became completely autonomous with it. She was old enough to administer the insulin to herself. And as a 14-year-old, giving yourself shots multiple times a day is a very quick maturation process. She became very competent. She had to grow up quickly.”

Brooke shares her daughters Rowan and Grier with comedy writer husband Chris Henchy.