My husband picked this up at the library the other day… just curious if anyone has read it and thoughts? Thanks!
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Other book(s) have been written about her, but I haven’t encountered this one before.
She’s one of those diabetic kids who lived on a starvation diet long enough to see the day of insulin development. Then she went on to lead a full and kick-■■■ life. So to speak.
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Actually she wasn’t just “one of them”; she was the first successful one. Patient zero, in a manner of speaking.
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I’ve read it. The book gives incredible insight into what life before insulin was like. Most kids diagnosed lived weeks or months before dying of DKA. Elizabeth “lived” years, but her life was nothing like normal. She had to be secluded away with a nurse and protected from all stress. Every cold she caught was life-threatening and took weeks to recover from. She was so weak that she couldn’t get up from a chair or walk without assistance. She had sugar in her urine even eating virtually no carbohydrates. The book makes you grateful even on your worst diabetes days.
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I didn’t read this book, but I have read others. I thought Elizabeth Hughes lived a totally amazing length of time on the starvation diet, at the brink of death. But as one of the earliest recipients of insulin treatment she went on to live a surprisingly long life. She almost never confided that she had diabetes. To me that was perhaps the saddest part of the story.
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