Imagine finding out that you have a chronic disease that will require a strict diet and daily monitoring for the rest of your life.

Now imagine learning that as a freshman in high school.

This was reality for Zack Wetzel, now a senior at Westlake High School, who was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes. Later this month, for the second year in a row, he and his mother will participate in Ride to Cure Diabetes with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foudation.

“I didn’t want to just sit down and take it,” Wetzel said. “I wanted to do something to fight back.”

The mother-son team hopes to raise $5,700 for the charity by their race date, Nov. 21. And if the prospect of riding nearly 70 miles on a bike and raising thousands of dollars while keeping up a continual mental carbohydrate count and an insulin regime weren’t daunting enough, Wetzel is also doing this less than six months after massive back surgery.

“Zack had back surgery in June for scoliosis,” said his mother, Travis County Assistant District Attorney Allison Wetzel. “It took a while to build his stamina back up. We took a break for a big part of the summer and started riding again in August.”

Zack grew three inches overnight, shooting from 6-foot to 6-3 during the surgery in which steel rods were inserted along his spine.

“A couple of times early on, the roads were too bumpy, and it hurt my back, but the biggest hindrance was the lack of stamina after the surgery,” he said.

Last weekend, the Wetzel team rode about 50 miles.

“It’s not a problem,” Zack said of the long hours spent with his mother. “Me and my mom get along really well. We have the same sense of humor.”

While Zack talks about overcoming these major hurtles like most people would casually mention what he or she had for breakfast, the pride from his mother is obvious. With no family history of diabetes and Zack’s active lifestyle, the news was a shock to everyone.

“It was devastating news,” Allison said of the initial diagnosis. “But he very quickly started treating this like a really important biology project, with the attitude, ‘We’re going to get this right.’ He has given himself every shot, calculated every carbohydrate, from the very first one.”

For the first few years, Zack gave himself the multiple injections of insulin every day, but meeting with other diabetic riders at last year’s event led him to get an insulin pump, an automatic device that is connected to his stomach and sits in his pocket giving him the correct dose of insulin based on his blood sugar.

This will be the last year in the near future the mother-son team will ride together, as Zack heads off to college next year. He said he’ll likely major in something involving physics or philosophy.

To support the Wetzel’s ride visit ride.jdrf.org/donate and enter Zack’s name under search for a rider or send a check to JDRF c/o Leslie Knudsen, 3420 Executive Center Drive, Suite 108, Austin, TX 78731.