Dear readers, I need your assistance in making a profit-for-science decision involving diabetes research.\u00a0 This would especially apply\u00a0to other people who have lived with diabetes for fifty or more years.\u00a0 Hear me out.\u00a0 Help me to decide.<\/p>\n
To begin, after having applied for and received the rare and renowned bronze “Victory Medal” and Certificate this past January, my boasting capacity is limited.\u00a0 Through the Joslin\u00a0Diabetes Center (JDC) in Boston, Massachusetts, these\u00a0specifically recognize “the remarkable achievement of a successful life with insulin-dependent diabetes\u00a0for half a century.”\u00a0 Okay, fine.\u00a0 I am alive with most of my original parts, excluding\u00a0my appendix and my virginity.<\/p>\n
Now the JDC\u00a0would like me to participate\u00a0in a study.\u00a0 My succumbing to this ‘study’ would assist the JDC\u00a0to receive funding for a special research project from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).\u00a0 They have demonstrated that there is still insulin being made in [the bodies of] several 50-year medalists.\u00a0 Furthermore, this would allow the JDC\u00a0to gain a “grant (money) to examine factors protecting against complications and complete destruction of insulin producing cells.”<\/p>\n
Of course the American Diabetes Association (ADA) is involved along with “international leaders” and “experts from Europe and the United States.”\u00a0 It is a study.\u00a0 That word worries me.<\/p>\n
If I submit and fly to Boston, the\u00a0one-day, 8-hour, study “will include\u00a0studies of the\u00a0amount of blood flow in [my] eyes associated with protection from diabetic neuropathy, continued evidence of insulin production in the [my] pancreas, auto-immune diseases, and…”\u00a0<\/p>\n
The tests that they perform\u00a0involve a “mixed meal tolerance test that would challenge my pancreas to excrete any insulin that is there.”\u00a0 Something\u00a0about C-peptides and islet cells.\u00a0 Blood tests every thirty minutes\u00a0are also necessitated.\u00a0 So far, their studies “suggest that there is a mechanism preventing the immune system from destroying all the cells with insulin.\u00a0 This makes identifying individuals who are like this crucial to finding how to resist auto-immune destruction.”\u00a0 Hmm.<\/p>\n
Those are most of the facts that I have been told.\u00a0 Sure, my flight expense\u00a0would be re-imbursed, a one-night stay at a nearby Holiday Inn re-imbursed along with the taxi fare to the hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My negations involve #1<\/strong>. Coming up with the fares in the first place; #2.<\/strong> Traveling alone, which I do not like doing, especially cross-country; #3.<\/strong> Affording a rent-a-car to visit family and friends while I am there – if<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0I go.\u00a0 Why can’t “they” come out here and do their testing?!\u00a0 Does not California have state-of-the-art\u00a0scientific diabetes study facilities and capabilities of its own?\u00a0 I guess Joslin wants to shine.<\/p>\n All in all, this study does not claim to procure\u00a0a cure.\u00a0 That is the end-product I would\u00a0like to parttake\u00a0in.\u00a0 From what I am to understand, “they” want to find out how come I lived so long with this disease.\u00a0 I can answer that: I take care of myself.\u00a0 I’ll just have to have them read my book.\u00a0 This whole medalist thing will be mentioned in one of my next books as well!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear readers, I need your assistance in making a profit-for-science decision involving diabetes research.\u00a0 This would especially apply\u00a0to other people who have lived with diabetes for fifty or more years.\u00a0 Hear me out.\u00a0 Help me to decide. To begin, after … Continue reading