Saturday, April 19, 2008

Week 1 - Training and research...

Not only did we start to read and look how insulin works, how to dose better, what to monitor, how to give the shots and all that. We asked our local doctor, and also a few second opinions, if there was something that could be done, if not to cure, at least to slow down the progress of the disease.

And we've got some shy answers like 'not really', 'there are some low efficiency drugs, but nothing that definitively works', 'just focus on the daily controls and shots, with good control the chances of future side effects are proven to be minimal', and so. Whilst I agree with what I've heard, I refused to think that with the huge quantity of things there are to deal with diabetes, no one is actually looking for the cure and root cause of it.

So I started my research, and found a few things:

1) Clinics in some countries, with different controls than the US, will offer transplants, self-transplants, xeno-transplants, cells injections, and some other treatments that to me looked a bit on the extreme side, specially for a kid. I'll add that I wasn't too convinced with what I saw here.

2) A few drug treatments in phase I. Yes, some might have a future, but I cannot afford the wait.

3) A few -even less- drugs/labs that were on FDA Clinical trial Phase II/III, that, at least looking in the Internet, did not seem to be attached to horror stories, and on top of that, were monitored by the FDA. Diamyd, Tolerx and Tepluzimab.

Well, that's a start...

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Week 0 - How it all started

The boy is 9 year old. Active, good student, he could sell health. One day he started to feel real bad, got him to the hospital, and was sent to ICU (Intensive Care Unit) at once. 2 days there, 5 more days in the standard room.
He was about to have a diabetic coma, his blood sugars through the roof (GC 400+, A1C 12.5). After the situation got stabilized, our local doctor started to train us all and define the best dose of insulin. So after we adjusted to this new way of life, we got back home where 2 things changed a lot: the need of the daily injections and blood tests, and the diet of all of us to 'do the thing' together with the boy.