Potential

Today is World Diabetes Day, and a day we celebrate the birthday of Sir Frederick Banting. Ninety-seven years ago Banting, and his assistant Charles Best, discovered insulin and how to isolate it for medical use in patients with Type 1 Diabetes. Banting was only 30 years old at the time (and Best was only 22!). In 1922 the first patients were given insulin, and the lives of people with Type 1 changed forever. Prior to insulin the only treatment for Type 1 was starvation, and the life expectancy was 2 years at most.

And when pharmaceutical companies offered him a million dollars for the patent for insulin, Banting sold it to the University of Toronto for one dollar instead, stating that insulin belonged to the world and not to him.

Yet every day I hear stories of people having to ration their insulin, or choose between food on the table or their lifesaving medicine, because of the outrageous cost of insulin. One vial of insulin, without insurance, costs $360 dollars. Three-hundred and sixty dollars. For ONE vial. Our family of 3 T1Ds goes through 7 vials a month. Here, I’ll do the math for you: that totals $2,520/month in insulin alone. That doesn’t even include test strips or syringes or pumps or CGMs, luxuries many people can’t afford, especially those without insurance. That’s JUST INSULIN. It’s disgusting. (end rant)

So every year on November 14th we celebrate hope. We celebrate the amazing work that has been done, and continues to be done, to make the lives of people with diabetes better. We hope for a cure, but in the meantime celebrate the technological and medical advancements in care. All around the world amazingly smart and creative people are dreaming up ways to rethink an old problem. There are still people like Banting, doing this work for the right reasons. These are the things we celebrate today.

And when I think about Frederick Banting I think of the potential. Less than a century ago my children, husband, aunt, cousins, and father-in-law would have died within months of diagnosis. Instead, one man with the help of his assistant, changed the course for millions of people. All my T1Ds have been given the opportunity to act out their own potential. We are all capable of doing extraordinary things and touching countless lives in the process. And to do it with the grace and honor for the greater good, rather than personal gain.