Insulin

We all sometimes wonder what it might be like to live in a different time. The past and the future somehow seem more exciting than the present, or maybe just more survivable. 

My mother was born at the right time. It was 1922. Insulin had just been discovered and was being isolated and chemically characterized at the University of Toronto. They experimentally injected it into dogs who had been 'depancreatized'. After I was born, my mother developed type-1, or adult-onset, diabetes and by then, medical researchers had figured out an effective dosage regime to replace the insulin her body no longer made. 

This was a daily ritual: She sterilized her glass syringe and steel needle in boiling water in a saucepan on the stove twice each day. The fridge door always held a supply of serum bottles beside the eggs. She held the bottle up against the light of the window, stuck the needle through the rubber cap and drew up the liquid, tapping the barrel to release air bubbles. She sat on her padded stool with its fold-out foot rest, wiped her arm or her leg with rubbing alcohol and efficiently injected the drug under her skin. When I was older, we would chat about my day at school while she went about her preparations. I looked away when she injected herself. It was so normal. 

She carried a flat, round plastic case in her purse that rolled out a strip of paper that turned blue or pink when she wiped her pee. If it was time for an injection, she would mentally re-calculate her dosage to keep her blood glucose and the drug in balance. Strips of used test paper sometimes were forgotten on the counter top, like cigarette butts or coffee grounds, distasteful by-products of adult life.

When her glucose and insulin were badly out of balance, my mother had what we called 'a reaction'. With a mild reaction, she developed a demented grin, slurred her words, and forgot to close her mouth as she chewed on the carbohydrate-rich snacks my father stuffed into her in an attempt to correct the imbalance. When the reaction was more severe, she would stumble and giggle like a loopy drunk. Although my mother had a wicked sense of humour, there was something about her at these times that was totally out of character, a lightness of spirit that I found quite engaging. I did not know then that these were physiological crises, that fainting or a coma would have been the next stage, to be avoided at all cost.

The arrival of pre-sterilized, disposable syringes simplified my mother's life and made everyday life simpler. I sometimes wondered what people thought when they saw the needles in her purse or if anyone noticed the needle marks on her arm. To most people even then, needles meant drugs and drugs meant addiction. 

We use these same syringes in the lab for adding antibiotics to flasks, and sometimes buy chemicals or enzymes that come in serum bottles. The smell and texture of cotton balls soaked with rubbing alcohol still brings back memories of her daily life-saving injections in the kitchen. 

Today's diabetics benefit from more sophisticated monitoring, superior physiological understanding, and a variety of delivery mechanisms that means fewer need daily injections. But my mom was born at the right time. After her diagnosis, she was able to continue her life, getting some things right and some things wrong, as the medical system followed her and her cohort, the first generation to survive diabetes.