When my wife was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in the late 1990s, at the age of 9, the technology available for giving her body insulin, which her pancreas is supposed to make but can’t, was relatively primitive: Mollie measured her blood sugar with a device the size of a TV remote. It took a full minute to process the blood sample she provided, which could be obtained only by pricking her finger once for every reading. Administering the insulin required a syringe, a vial, and the assistance of an adult. The hardest part of jabbing herself throughout the day, she says now, was learning to ignore the child’s natural instinct to avoid pain.
It was also frighteningly easy back then to take too much insulin. When she was in middle school, my father-in-law found Mollie unconscious from hypoglycemia, a condition that can cause brain death and cardiac arrest. Her first year after college, she ended up in the E.R. again, this time because she hadn’t taken enough insulin.
It could’ve been worse: Until the mid–20th century, Type 1 diabetics seldom survived adolescence.
Although I don’t agree with the headline (I would rather have a working pancreas), diabetes technology has come a long way. While having type 1 diabetes changed my life, I’m glad to be living at a time when technology can reduce the burden of diabetes management.