Back in 2018, when Brooke Shields’ oldest daughter, Rowan Henchy, was a freshman in high school, she started noticing serious health issues.
“First of all, I lost weight really fast,” says Henchy, 21, whose father is Brooke’s second husband, comedy writer and director Chris Henchy. “But I ate two meals [for] every meal. I was consuming so much food and I was just losing weight even faster the more I ate.”
“The other thing is that you pee all the time,” she adds. “And then my vision started to fail and then I got a really bad toe infection. So these are resounding, red flags for undiagnosed type 1 diabetes.”
Diagnosed later that year, Rowan has been dealing with the condition ever since. Now a senior at Wake Forest University, where her younger sister Grier, 18, just started her freshman year (leaving mom an empty nester), Rowan has been known to post photos of her Dexcom patch on Instagram as a way to normalize the condition.
Rowan Francis Henchy wears a diabetes patch.
Brooke Shields/instagram
Brooke Shields’ 2 Daughters: All About Rowan and Grier
But as her mom, Brooke, 59, says, “It’s been an adjustment.”
The diagnosis was one reason, but Rowan also changed schools that year. “The first few months were hard 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 was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. So all in all it was just a tough year.”
“That school ended up being my favorite place and I have the best friends in the world, and Grier went there, so it worked out,” she says. “But the first year – it was shit. It was more like, ‘This happened. How can I go on living my life and not be sad and depressed?’ ”
Learning about the condition and having the tools to manage it made a big difference.
The fact that she has matured also helped her, her mother recalls. Brooke says: “I felt helpless because we didn’t know what to do and then she became completely independent about it. She was old enough to give herself insulin. And as a 14-year-old, giving injections multiple times a day is a very fast maturation process. She became very competent. She had to grow up fast.”
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Brooke Shields and her daughters Rowan and Grier were shot at a home in Southampton, New York on July 21, 2024.
Michael Schwartz
Brooke Shields and her daughters: How the star raised 2 strong women she’s proud to call her friends (Exclusive)
Rowan agrees with mom.
“Sometimes I wished I was diagnosed at the age of 5 because I knew about life without it,” she admits. “But even after four years of having it, there have already been so many advances in technology.”
“I have a pump on my stomach and a Dexcom patch on my stomach,” she says, of the continuous glucose monitor that sends readings to a smartphone app. “It’s a 24/7 job and I’m never off,” she says of monitoring her sugar levels. “But at the same time, it’s in the back of my mind. It only controls my thoughts when my blood sugar is too high or too low. Regardless of the headache, you will find a way around it. That’s something I have and now it’s just about managing.”
Brooke says it took her a while to get comfortable. “She wouldn’t wear a monitor for a long time either, and then the pricking of her fingers all day long eventually started to annoy her. So, having a monitor and having it on the phone [to monitor the levels]now I can look it up on my phone and then I don’t have to bother her.”
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From left: Jae Trevits, Kelsey Bascom, Brooke Shields and Rowan Henchy at Tribeca X in June 2024.
Jason Mendez/Getty
Brooke is also doing her part to raise awareness. She just finished the movie, Fourtha coming-of-age comedy about a young woman living with type 1 diabetes, written by and starring Kelly Bascom, based on her experience living with the condition. Brooke and Rowan were part of a film panel at the Tribeca Film Festival last spring to talk about normalizing the condition. “Kelly Bascom is the young woman who wrote and directed it and stars in it,” explains Brooke. “It’s one of the first films about type one diabetes. There are no diabetes movies out there. It is interesting from the perspective of a young girl. So I think it will be an important film.”
For more on our exclusive interview with Brooke Shields and her daughters, check out this week’s PEOPLE cover story, on newsstands Friday.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education