18/09/2022
Before the discovery of insulin type 1 diabetes was a death sentence.
I’ve seen this picture so many times and it always stirs emotion in me.
The sobering reality is that without access to insulin my own son could be this child.
Doctor’s tried to prolong lives by putting children on starvation diets but it didn’t change the outcome and these children/adults died painful deaths. Without insulin the body cannot get energy from eaten food which causes the body to try to get energy from its own fat just to survive. They used to call it “the wasting away disease” and they would die from DKA, where to the outsider, it looked like they were “suffocating internally” and gasping for air.
Even almost 100 years later it is still a death sentence for people who don’t have access to insulin.
That is not ok.
Insulin is not a luxury.
Diabetes is not what people think it is.
Time to change perceptions.
