Type1 arrested in NYC for injecting on subway

Did you see this article? A friend sent it to me since she knows I have done this very same thing on the DC Metro and on the NYC subway system. I cannot believe he was held so long without insulin! Or even arrested in the first place!

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/subway_insulin_shock_xX97aRrhJQ87gffBPlDmbJ

Horrible injustice but something about the story confuses me. I’m a type 2, so I don’t get the part of it where he almost died. Why couldn’t you just not eat for a while if you were penned up with no insulin? Would BG still skyrocket?

Insane, and scary!

Yea, insulin doesn’t just transport glucose around, it also inhibits hepatic gluconeogenesis, the annoying tendency of the liver to convert the body’s proteins (muscle, organs) into glucose. So in the complete absence of insulin, even if you are fasting, your bloodsugar will still shoot up. Not to mention he was probably pretty stressed out!

This is pretty outrageous, my heart goes out to the guy.

It’s too bad that there are ignorant people out there. I had T1 friend that was put in a cell for acting drunk when he was really just low. Scary. But I watched one of those ‘reality’ TV shows about booking in TX and they always ask the ‘drunks’ if they are diabetic. I was pretty heartened by that, at least some people out there are informed…

T1s have absolute insulin deficiency, which is different from T2 where it is a relative deficiency. Not only would his bg skyrocket from the liver dumping glucose, but w/o insulin the body freaks out, thinking it’s starving, and breaks fat into ketone bodies to keep the brain and heart alive. Unfortunately those ketone bodies will acidify the blood stream at a certain point and will invariably lead to death if untreated.

Because he was going into Ketoacidosis and he needed insulin to bring his blood sugars down.

Without insulin his BG would go way up if he ate meals. However, without being able to eat his BG went way down and he could have died.

Give some people a little power . . . .

After all the publicity and after so much education directed at people who now should know better, this still happens? I’m truly shocked!

No. This is patently untrue. This man had type 1 diabetes; his BGs would have begun to rise as soon as that shot of insulin wore off. What is the point in making such an uninformed comment?

I know with the G20 there are a couple of issues filed on the behalf of a couple of T1s that got detained (no idea on the outcome as yet as nothings hit the news feeds that i’ve seen yet), but I know for myself its one of the most scary deals that I deal with when it comes to having to take insulin in public … the “what if” factor its been bad enough with one cop thinking I was shooting up while down in the US with hubby (lucky for me DH handled things for me or I’m sure I’d have been calling the Canadian Embassy for something or another).

Thanks! I didn’t know that.

I inject through my clothes all the time, sometimes even jeans. You find a gap in the threads and away you go. No messing around with finding bare skin. And it doesn’t leave holes in clothes, those needles are small!

Outrageous! Grew up in NYC & visit family there frequently. Spent half my life on the F train & never once saw a cop on the train & have witnessed plenty of real disorderly conduct. Staggering he was held for 30 hours.

No, Lee. His BG went sky high, not down. The man was in DKA (in & out of consciousness & vomiting). He would have died without medical intervention to bring his BG down & that took two days in a hospital.

Those cops should be charged with attempted manslaughter.

But…Hepatic Gluconeogenesis happens only in cases of extreme starvation. You have to have burned through all of the body’s glucose, then through all of its fat stores (which will produce massive amounts of Ketones hence DKA) and only then will Hepatic Gluconeogenesis set in. But at that point, you have a LOT bigger things to worry about than your body turning your muscle tissue into food for cells.

Also you don’t have insulin on board, so the cells really cant use the energy anyway…so its really pointless

I smell 2 things: Lawsuit and BS!!!

I was thinking the same thing. I lived in Queens for 10 years and don’t remember seeing cops on the train except for a couple of times. There are a lot of things that they could arrest people for that happen frequently on a train ride, but they don’t waste their precious time on such nonsense. I am wondering if there is more to the story like profiling.

Simply unbelievable.