some comments on juvenile onset type 1

My wife and I went to the Lone Star in Garden City, Kansas, with another couple (Sheryl and Larry).

My wife and I took our evening pills and I remarked "I have to check my blood when we get home."
Sheryl asked: "Are you a diabetic?"
"Yes".
"So is Larry."

I had no idea that he was diabetic. Larry and I both said we were type 2 and we discussed the pills we are on, We are both on metformin and glyburide and one or two other drugs as well.

Sheryl said they had a 38 year old son, who is a type 1 from the age of seven. He had "tried to be good" for many years but had "fallen off the [diabetic] wagon". Finally got a nice job, in his field (high class piano player for ballet), with medical and dental insurance. Then, he got talked into moving in with a friend in a different city. He gave up this good job and health insurance. He got a not so nice job with piss poor medical insurance and then his friend lost his job and could not pay his share of the rent. So, the son lost his apartment and had to move back in with Mom and Dad.

He ate the wrong meal choices, drank sugar drinks, smoked and drank too much. He went into a bar one night and only remembers entering the bar. He woke up in the center of a busy street with "paramedics working over him". He was extremely lucky that he was not run over. He spent three days in hospital being treated for hypoglycemia and this cost him like $8,000.

He recently got a good job with medical, dental and glasses insurance. When we heard this, Kathie and I both said "tell him to keep the job!" Sheryl said "we did". Unfortunately, this company decided they could cut costs by leaving Blue Cross for another insurance "provider". His costs have gone up and his coverage is worst. Still, he has medical coverage...

This sounds like my youngest brother Charlie's story. Charlie got fired from a good job and could not get another good job after that. He kept taking jobs with either piss poor medical insurance or no medical insurance. He went via ambulance to the emergency room and then checked himself into the diabetic ward. Of the three "visits" I know of, he owed $96,000 to one Portland, Oregon, hospital. (This hospital wrote off the debt as noncollectable. I had not expected such compassion or good sense from a hospital!) He ate a lot of pizza, drank Coca Cola or Budweiser and my wife once found a used insulin syringe in a pan of brownies. (A photo of this would have been an excellent example of irony.,)

Charlie finally got accepted by medicare and was accepted for Social Security payment for those who can not work.

Sheryl said she had given up on her son and did not want to know what he was doing, My Mother got the same type of despair about her youngest child and did not want to her about his health.

My brother, Charles Andrew Bell died of congestive heart failure at age 44 years, 1 month, 8 days on 10 December 2009. I still haven't gotten over his death...