Dear god, this topic is dredging up some old memories. Yes, I used to do that too. I think my doctor recommended it as a way to extend your supply.
It all seems so crude, but then the descriptions of earlier methods really make me glad my T1 waited until '84 to move in and make itself at home. Vials and test tubes are definitely not my thing. I sucked at doing labs in high school and there are good reasons why I majored in English, not science in college. Bad enough getting handed the syringes and vials and all that back then. If they’d handed me that chemistry set some of you guys were using just a few years earlier, I think I would have just about given up right on the spot.
Yep, that was my starting point as well, I think I still have one of those kits saved for posterity unless current GF made me get rid of it last spring cleaning, hmm.
Well Richard, I want you to know that you are one of my D Heroes, with the incredible example you set for all of us.
Who could have thought that that little boy, suffering socially because of D, would become a guiding light for other diabetics in a broader community of friends? There are silver linings, amigo.
I don’t know you very well, but I really do look forward to getting to know you better here.
Did you all also go out each night and club small animals for food? Was “dating” bonking a woman on the head and then dragging her back to your cave by her hair?
Kidding aside, man, we have really come a long long way.
Wow, and I’ve been on the woe is me wagon lately.
These stories really put things in perspective for me, sure I’m a type 1 LADA but wasn’t diagnosed until I was 35 and then didn’t have to start insulin for another 8 or 9 years. Its a long story but everyone thought I was T2 for all those years because the BGs were kept “under control” with diet. It was all an illusion as the beta-cells just hadn’t been killed off completely yet. Even now though I’ve got all this technology that make it so much easier than what you others had to deal with, especially the guys like Richard. You are an inspiration!!!
Hi Richard! What a story you have to tell. Thank you for sharing. Am grateful for not being dx’d T1 until last summer…and yet, am curious to see if/when we’ll be talking about the ancient tools we had in 2014!
Here is an email that I received from Diabetes Queensland early May.
New Zealand woman sets world record for living with type 1 diabetes
In 1935, when New Zealander Whinsome Johnson was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, Joe Lyons was Prime Minister of Australia, Vic Richardson was the Australian cricket captain and cinema goers were thrilled by the swashbuckling exploits of Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty. And the outlook for people with type 1 diabetes was quite grim. In fact, Whinsome’s twin sister, who also had type 1 diabetes, died at only 16-years-old.
But through a combination of good diabetes care and technological improvements Whinsome has defied the odds and this year she celebrated her 80th year of living with the condition, making her currently the person who has lived longest with type 1 diabetes in the entire world. Congratulations Whinsome. We have reports that previously a man from New South Wales lived with the condition for 87 years. Hang in there Whinsome and the record could be yours.
I often wonder if I would have survived if I had progressed to Juvenile Diabetes in the late fifties as a child. I would never been able to participate as an athlete, play football or go to an agriculture college and life would have been very different.
My son who was diagnosed at the age of 14 in 1996 was told that the life expectancy for someone with Type 1 was only about sixty years and expect complications if you did not control your diabetes. May be this was a strategy used by the GP to make children comply with the dramatic changes that had to be made. My GP tells me Feet Neuropathy can not be reversed and I say to him, “Only if you let it go to far and I am proof of the fact.”
When I was first diagnosed in late 2008, I was told to expect to see large rises in BGL after meals. I very quickly developed sore feet and to the stage where it was difficult to walk because of the pain. Even if there was no pain, my toes would feel numb and it felt like I was walking on lumps under my feet. By changing the GI for my breakfast to match the day’s activity and by making sure BGL were below 6.0mmol/L (108) and falling before I ate, I solved my feet problems.
I still have issues with sore feet and I know it is then time to tighten BGL control. My work as a farmer and a fisherman involves a lot of walking which also helps solve this problem. I do not walk if my BGL is above 10mmol/L as, for me, it can aggravate my symptoms.
Congratulations Shoshana and Richard. It goes to show that you have both beaten the odds. Who knows, with new medications and treatments that the life expectancy of over 100 for some with Type 1 will be achieved in the near future.
