Diabetes Details 12: By The Numbers

On October 31, it will be fourteen years since I went to Sparrow Hospital in Lansing and was officially diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. (Tip: Halloween is a crappy day to become a diabetic.)

I’ve talked about the disease before, because yay education and knowledge! Those entries are available by clicking on the diabetes tag.

I thought it would be interesting to try to figure out some numbers as of the fourteenth anniversary of my pancreas calling it quits. As of 10/31/2012…

I will have tested my blood sugar approximately 28,000 times. (That’s 2800 times per finger.)
By the time I switched to the insulin pump in 2006, I had taken about 15,000 injections.
On the pump, I’ve switched sites about 840 times, rotating to different spots on my belly, and occasionally the hips.
I’ve worked with three different endocrinologists, one of whom I dumped because he was a prick, and one of whom left his practice.
The lowest blood sugar I can remember was when I was in grad school, not too long after the diagnosis. I was walking to a class and started feeling really fuzzy. By the time I got back and tested, my blood sugar was in the 20s. (Normal is around 100, give or take.)
The highest was the night before my diagnosis. I went out to dinner with my family, then checked my blood on my dad’s meter to confirm whether I was right about being diabetic. The meter errored out because it couldn’t read that high, which means my blood sugar was above 600.
Blood sugar as I write this blog post: 96.
I’ve had between 40 and 50 blood draws for labwork. (Most of which have gone very smoothly. Props to the Sparrow Lab on Pennsylvania.)
Best guess as to the total cost of medicine and equipment to keep me alive these past 14 years: $86,000.

$33,000 (test strips)
$8000 (lancets)
$18,000 (insulin)
$1000 (syringes)
$16,000 (insulin pump sets)
$10,000 (insulin pumps - 2)


Cost of the initial hospitalization, visits to the endocrinologist, pump education, and dietician, and miscellaneous labwork: I have no freaking idea. Let’s just call it “a lot.”
Average number of years this disease shaves off of my life expectancy: 5.

But screw that. I plan to live forever.


Number of additional years of life I’ve gained thanks to a century’s worth of research into insulin and diabetes treatment: 14 and counting.

All of which makes me very grateful to be in a position where I’m able to get reasonably good health insurance, as well as for living at a time when this disease is manageable, as opposed to being a death sentence.

A cure would be nice, and sometimes diabetes is a significant pain in the ass, but given the alternatives, I will happily keep jabbing my fingers and pumping insulin into my belly.