I have been pondering in my head and praying on how to share our personal journey down the road of living with Juvenile Diabetes. As God has walked us along this path, I want to share humbly how grateful I am for lifesaving advances in medicine and technology that have allowed our son Carter to live a typical life and truly just be ALIVE because 100 years ago that would not have been the case. On one of the blogs I love to read, the following was flashing today and got my attention. As God has pulled on the strings of my heart, I decided that it was time to start writing about what God has taught us through this journey.
Insulin Is Used to Treat Diabetes (1922) In 1869, spurred by a medical student's observation of cells in the pancreas called "Islets of Langerhans," scientists began working to identify insulin's role in the body and to extract and purify it. Today scientists know that insulin is a hormone that regulates carbohydrate metabolism and that patients with diabetes have a decreased ability to either produce or absorb it. What happened when a 14-year-old diabetic was given the first insulin injection in 1922?
On January 11, 1922, Leonard Thompson, a 14-year-old diabetic who lay dying at the Toronto General Hospital, was given the first injection of insulin. However, the extract was so impure that Thompson suffered a severe allergic reaction, and further injections were canceled. Over the next 12 days, Collip worked day and night to improve the ox-pancreas extract, and a second dose injected on the 23rd. This was completely successful, not only in not having obvious side-effects, but in completely eliminating the glycosuria sign of diabetes. Children dying from diabetic keto-acidosis were kept in large wards, often with 50 or more patients in a ward, mostly comatose. Grieving family members were often in attendance, awaiting the (until then, inevitable) death. In one of medicine's more dramatic moments Banting, Best and Collip went from bed to bed, injecting an entire ward with the new purified extract. Before they had reached the last dying child, the first few were awakening from their coma, to the joyous exclamations of their families. However, Banting and Best never worked well with Collip, regarding him as something of an interloper, and Collip left the project soon after. Over the spring of 1922, Best managed to improve his techniques to the point where large quantities of insulin could be extracted on demand, but the preparation remained impure. The drug firm Eli Lilly and Company had offered assistance not long after the first publications in 1921, and they took Lilly up on the offer in April. In November, Lilly made a major breakthrough, and were able to produce large quantities of purer insulin. Insulin was offered for sale shortly thereafter.
This Day in History provided by The Free Dictionary
To learn more :http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/insulin
Monday, July 28, 2008
Friday, May 2, 2008
Jay Cutler quarterback of Denver Broncos
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3378906
Jay Cutler was diagnosed this week with Type 1 diabetes. Here is a quote from him "The 25-year-old quarterback met with doctors last month, who told him he's an insulin-dependent diabetic. He got a crash course in the disease and its ramifications if uncontrolled.
"It's a little overwhelming to get that news and realize you're going to have to completely change your life," said Cutler, who accepted his fate after a few days.
"It's not something that's going to go away," Cutler said. "It's something I'm going to have to deal with my entire life and you've got to come to grips with that." As for his changes in diet, no more eating, as he put it, "anything and everything." "It's a big adjustment," Cutler said. "You're 25 years old, you're used to eating whatever you want, doing whatever you want. If you want to go out to lunch, go ahead and go. Now, you're counting carbs and eating healthier and injecting insulin at the table. You've got to have your insulin, your needles, your glucose meter, yeah, it's a big change. But it's something you have to deal with."
Eating less fast food is a silver lining to his diagnosis, said Cutler, who is looking into getting an insulin pump in the next month and plans to expand his charity work to include juvenile diabetes. He also wants fans to know he's going to be all right.
"This is a serious, serious disease, and I'm going to have it for the rest of my life," Cutler said. "It's not going to change me on the field. I'm going to have some lifestyle changes, but I'm probably going to be a better quarterback this year than I was last year."
Carter wants to send him a letter this week and let him know that he is going to be praying for him. He also wants to tell him to take good care of himself because Carter is going to be watching this fall.
Jay Cutler was diagnosed this week with Type 1 diabetes. Here is a quote from him "The 25-year-old quarterback met with doctors last month, who told him he's an insulin-dependent diabetic. He got a crash course in the disease and its ramifications if uncontrolled.
"It's a little overwhelming to get that news and realize you're going to have to completely change your life," said Cutler, who accepted his fate after a few days.
"It's not something that's going to go away," Cutler said. "It's something I'm going to have to deal with my entire life and you've got to come to grips with that." As for his changes in diet, no more eating, as he put it, "anything and everything." "It's a big adjustment," Cutler said. "You're 25 years old, you're used to eating whatever you want, doing whatever you want. If you want to go out to lunch, go ahead and go. Now, you're counting carbs and eating healthier and injecting insulin at the table. You've got to have your insulin, your needles, your glucose meter, yeah, it's a big change. But it's something you have to deal with."
Eating less fast food is a silver lining to his diagnosis, said Cutler, who is looking into getting an insulin pump in the next month and plans to expand his charity work to include juvenile diabetes. He also wants fans to know he's going to be all right.
"This is a serious, serious disease, and I'm going to have it for the rest of my life," Cutler said. "It's not going to change me on the field. I'm going to have some lifestyle changes, but I'm probably going to be a better quarterback this year than I was last year."
Carter wants to send him a letter this week and let him know that he is going to be praying for him. He also wants to tell him to take good care of himself because Carter is going to be watching this fall.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
