Category: Feel Good Story

I was sitting in my living room last Wednesday, basking in the aftermath of a solid supper of two jalapeño cheddar burgers. I’m totally kidding. Not about eating two burgers; I totally demolished those! I’m kidding about the fact that I was basking in anything but pain. The jalapeño burgers were painful to eat, digest and think about. But I digress… Shortly after supper, while I was in the living room with my wife and infant son, I received a text from a friend of mine.

Now, one might be inclined to ask, “But Shawn, don’t you ALWAYS get texts from friends?” First of all, shaddup! Second of all, texts rarely have this level of importance or solicit as much of a reaction from me. This text message contained a link to an Edmonton CTV article indicating that there is a possibility that a cure for Diabetes may have been discovered. No, that’s not a typo. You read that right.

The article, published on November 17th by CTV News Edmonton, opens with a bold statement in its first line, “Scientists at the University of Alberta say they may have discovered a cure for Diabetes.” Apparently, their new process has already cured Diabetes in mice and the research team is hopeful that they’ll eventually be able to test it on human test subjects. You can read the article for yourself here.

The lead researcher is Dr. James Shapiro, who is a well-known rockstar in the Diabetes community as the creator of the “Edmonton Protocol” some twenty years ago. This protocol involved injecting Diabetes patients with insulin-producing islet cells in order to allow their bodies to produce and regulate blood sugars without daily injections. This was a fantastic breakthrough and an amazing step forward in Diabetes treatment. I had even looked into it myself, when it first came out.

One of the big problems is that the protocol doesn’t work for everybody. There are conditions that make the patient receptive to the treatment, and even for those who can get the treatment are usually stuck using anti-rejection meds for the rest of their lives in order to keep their bodies from rejecting the injected cells. Dr. Shapiro and his team have apparently found a way around this obstacle.

According to their new claims, the research team have somehow found a way to turn a patient’s own cells into islet-producing ones, circumventing the need for all the anti-rejection meds and side effects that accompany the Edmonton Protocol. Their current research has shown that they’ve been able to reverse the effects of Diabetes in mice to the point where the Diabetes is effectively cured. If successful in human trials, there is a very real possibility that we could see a cure for Diabetes within our lifetime.

Just reading the article brought tears to my eyes. After all, finding a cure for Diabetes is the “hopeless hope” of every T1D. And I’d be lying if I said that I even remember what life is like without Diabetes. But it’s gotta be better than this. Watching the video made even more misty-eyed (Thanks, Kristen!). As is the case with most scientific research, funding is the main issue. Dr. Shapiro requires additional funding for equipment and research in order to perfect this new treatment.

The video that accompanies the article discusses a man, whose son has Type-1 Diabetes, who has decided on a goal of raising 22 million dollars by 2022. He made a pretty good point; if every Canadian with Diabetes donated simply $22, Dr. Shapiro would be well beyond the funding required to make this work. With over 400 million people with Diabetes worldwide, it would really suck if there’s a cure on the horizon but no one could get it because of funding.

Between drying all the tears the article caused, I tried finding where one can donate for this specific cause. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything so if one of you does, please include it in the comments so I can share it and pass it on. Diabetes has taken up such a large portion of my life and has helped mold me into the person I am today. I’ll admit that I would likely feel a bit lost if I suddenly found myself clear of it. But I’d adjust. Definitely. Read the article. In case one link wasn’t enough, HERE! ☯

I know I harp on many of these so-called “holidays” that seem to riddle the calendar with every passing month. But this one just happens to be personal to me, for obvious reasons. Every year on November 14th, which is the birthday of Sir Frederick Banting, we celebrate World Diabetes Day. November is already Diabetes Awareness Month in most medical circles, but today is a day where focus is brought to the growing number of people being diagnosed with type 1 Diabetes.

World Diabetes Day was created in 1991 but the International Diabetes Federation and the World Health Organization, and is often recognized by the signature blue circle logo and is usually accompanied by a different theme every year. But rather than get into all the hubbub that is yet another yearly holiday, I thought it would be a good idea to remind folks about the actual discovery of insulin and a bit of its history.

As most may know, insulin is a peptide hormone created by beta cells inside the pancreas. Insulin helps with the processing and regulating of carbohydrates by absorbing glucose from the blood into various tissues of the body. Beta cells release insulin into the body in response to blood sugar levels, specifically high ones. Insulin plays a number of different roles outside of this, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll keep it simple.

Although the discovery of insulin is attributed to Sir Frederick Banting and his lab assistant, Charles Best, it should be noted that the road to insulin’s discovery started over 50 years before Banting made the discovery. The relationship between the pancreas and Diabetes was therefore established during the late 1860’s and 70’s, with a number of experimental treatments never quite hitting the mark. It also surprised me to discovery just how many of these experiments were performed on dogs. Whether this is because they constitute a large mammal or because they were simply available is beyond me. Oh, how they were different times!

Starting in the early 1920’s, Banting and Best began experimenting with islet cells and injecting them into a Diabetic dog, which resulted in a dramatic drop in blood sugar levels. In January of 1922, the first injections to human patients were given and the rest is history. Banting won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923, for the discovery of insulin. He shared the prize with Charles Best and sold the patent for insulin to the University of Toronto for a dollar.

The world would be a significantly different place if insulin had never been discovered. Obviously, I wouldn’t be here. But the millions of people who have been diagnosed with Diabetes certainly wouldn’t be either, as that diagnosis was basically akin to a death sentence before insulin came along. This isn’t really a “celebratory” holiday; you won’t likely catch people throwing parties or going crazy in any significant way. I mean, good on them if they do! Hopefully, they take the time to count the carbs in their drinks while they celebrate… ☯

Okay, I’ll be the first one to admit that maybe I need to lay off the YouTube for a while, because I personify the type of person who slips down the rabbit hole and finds way more than he expects to. Then I keep watching, and watching… And watching… But I found this video interesting, because it involves someone I’ve been watching on television over the past few months that I wasn’t even aware has Type-1 Diabetes! This catches me with a bit of egg on my face, because one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone tells me, “You don’t LOOK Diabetic…” What the fuck is someone “supposed” to look like if they have Diabetes?

The video depicts the Diabetes journey of American actress Mary Mouser, who has most recently played Samantha Larusso, the daughter to protagonist (depending on your perspective of the storyline) Daniel Larusso, in the popular web series, Cobra Kai. Now, being a long-time fan of the original Karate Kid movies, I jumped on this series without hesitation and watched both available seasons within days and am greatly anticipating the third season, which is said to be coming out in early 2021.

In the included YouTube video, Mouser describes her discovery of Type-1 and how it affected her life. She was diagnosed in 2009 at the age of 13, which I can say from having many friends in the same boat, is incredibly rough. I had the benefit of being diagnosed at the tender age of 4, which means I had barely a clue as to what the hell was going on. But you can see Mouser become visibly emotional at certain points in the video, and it definitely brings it home for me. Check it out:

Mouser talks about the tenth anniversary of her diagnosis and the video was posted on YouTube by Mouser herself, last year. I can’t help by note the similarities in the fact that although she’s only portraying it in a role, she plays a character who grew up in a karate environment. This rings true with a great deal of my own upbringing, as I grew up training in karate, as well.

I was diagnosed with Type-1 Diabetes in 1982, after passing out in a bowl of Froot Loops. Honestly. That’s what got me diagnosed. There were a number of symptoms that presented themselves for months before that incident, including weight fluctuations, severe mood swings and I even started wetting the bed again. One of the big problems with having a brother with Epilepsy, kidney failure and Fanconi Syndrome (a post for another day), is that my aches and pains often went ignored. Despite all of these symptoms, nothing appeared to be “seriously” wrong, so it was chalked up to growing pains or being a moody kid (which I was).

This wasn’t a slight on my parents’ part, it was simply the result of my brother constantly being on death’s doorstep where I was not. At least not that they knew of… Apparently, they were wrong. Imagine passing out on a Tuesday and waking up on a Wednesday… Of the following week! That’s how my journey started. And it was all downhill, from there.

When I woke from that first incident, I had severe Diabetic Ketoacidosis and my blood sugars were being slowly lowered and I was being rehydrated by way of an IV infusion. I had a number of family members present, including my parents, brother and grandparents. They already knew what the doctor hadn’t yet told me: I had Type-1 Diabetes. My life and my future were effectively changed, forever.

Over the two weeks that followed, I was taught a number of things including how to test my blood sugars, how to take insulin injections, dieting (which basically just involved avoiding sugar) and what would be involved in my day-to-day life for the rest of my life. It was hectic and stressful. I can admit that at the young age of 4, I only understood a small percentage of it. A lot of it went over my head, which created strange combination of indifference mixed with anxiety.

To my mother’s credit, she practiced injecting saline water into her own arms as opposed to practicing on an orange, which is what doctors and educators would provide, back in the day. Her perspective was that she wouldn’t allow anything to be done to her child that she hadn’t experienced herself. She bruised herself up pretty good, before starting to help me take my daily injections.

It was a disgustingly rough journey and over the years that followed, which included no less than 5 comas (the longest of which lasted almost two weeks), multiple changes in therapies and doctors and constant adjustments, I faced the inevitable lack in most of the advantages that kids my age enjoyed. I never joined sports, never had sleepovers and never enjoyed the usual social normalcies that kids my age had. But I adjusted and fought through all of it. My brother, who is now deceased, saved my life in almost every instance of the comas I mentioned, as he shared a room with me and would be the one to alert my parents that I was in distress.

In 1988, I faced a situation that no child should ever have to. I was told I was going to die. It wasn’t said in those exact words, but the reality sunk in regardless. Severe Diabetes complications including insulin resistance were causing my body to fail. Doctors really had no solution at the time, other than changing up my insulin type, which did absolutely nothing. Insulin resistance can be dangerous, since it prevents the proper use of glucose in your body.

That’s when I took matters into my own hands and joined karate. I started taking responsibility for my own diet and fitness and started to develop myself, physically. It worked for me. It may not work for everyone. But the important thing is to keep fighting and find what works for you. The nay-sayers over the years, have stated that they don’t believe that martial arts and fitness would help overcome medical complications. But the question is, how could it not? There may be no cure for Type-1 Diabetes, but you can still kick its ass. There are tons of ways to improve your health and stretch your life expectancy as opposed to what we faced, even 20 or 30 years ago. Keep fighting. Keep looking for a way.

And if Mary’s video inspired you or touched a chord, be sure to check her out on Cobra Kai, which is currently available on Netflix. There are only two seasons, with Season three coming out soon, but it’s definitely a hard-hitting show that covers martial arts, karate, the social condition and stars a lot of talented people from the 1980’s and modern day. ☯