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Insulin Dependent Diabetics When TSHTF, by AERC
About five years ago, my husband started worrying about many things happening to our country and the world in general. Bird flu, inflation, resource grabbing, bank bail outs, government policies, Peak Oil… and more provided fuel for his concern. As I listened to him talk about what was happening in the world, I began to think about what to do in a situation that would dramatically alter our “way of life”. We already had goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits and chickens. We already had a nice sized garden and I already canned what we didn’t eat fresh, but it wasn’t done with a plan to store anything for more than a few months. We started working on our food storage and stockpiling animal feed until we hit a huge wall: How would I deal with having diabetes if I couldn’t get my monthly insulin and blood checking strip refills?
I have been a diabetic since the age of 6 – so about 40 years. I became diabetic when all insulin was derived from pork or beef pancreases. Blood checking machines weren’t even available until I turned 14. Back then, I had to collect urine and use an eye dropper to put a certain number of drops of urine and add a reagent to see if I was spilling sugar in my urine. Unfortunately this is one of the least accurate methods of checking how the body is processing food and if the person needs more insulin which is why I would need to go into the hospital for a finger prick and blood test once a week. As a child, my blood sugars would vary from 200mg/dl to 350mg/dl and higher (normal is around 70). Control was very difficult to achieve, particularly in a young person who is growing and going through hormone changes.
Today, we are fortunate in that we can buy blood checking machines in several different brands and blood checking strips to go with them. These wonderful devices give a result in 5 seconds and tell the person what is going on in their body right now (taking blood from a finger actually shows what happened 10-15 minutes prior, but it is the most accurate result that is available at home). We also have different kinds of insulin available, from insulin that will react within a couple minutes to insulin that will last 24 hours. All insulin available in the US right now is human insulin (it is human derived insulin which is grown in the laboratory using e-coli bacteria that is genetically modified to make insulin that is virtually identical to the insulin made by human pancreases) We also have insulin pumps that can include a device to give up to date blood sugar readings. A diabetic has so many options that they can have extremely tight control and can live very normal lives with few complications.
Unfortunately, all of the supplies needed to keep a diabetic under control would soon run out if anything interrupts the system needed to run the laboratory that makes this lifesaving hormone and all of the paraphernalia a person with diabetes needs to keep good control.
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