I really don’t know for sure, except he was diagnosed at age 23 (I believe). And my Mom always said he was pretty sick and couldn’t work much. She said my diagnosis reminded her of her father.
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I read a book about her experience. I didn’t realize until reading it just how bad even being alive without insulin was. She wasn’t able to stand to get out of a chair and could barely walk without support. Catching a cold took weeks to recover from and almost killed her. She had a nurse taking care of her 24/7, and had to live away from her family in a secluded location because the “excitement” of normal life was too much and caused her to spill more glucose into her urine. I think she ate about 800 calories of zero-carb foods a day. Apparently, when insulin was discovered she was very close to death and her family managed to get her in to see Dr. Banting shortly after hearing news of its discovery (many patients had to wait a year or more after its discovery to get it, and obviously many didn’t survive that year).
Reading that book definitely made me thankful for insulin.
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Oh wow! Thank you for remembering Leonard. Usually that girl gets the credit even though she wasn’t the first, because she was American and Canadians get overlooked even when we’re FIRST IN THE WORLD. Here’s a little story about Leonard Thompson from my local paper.
http://www.beachmetro.com/2017/01/10/canadas-150th-miracle-boy-beach/
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the lady lived till 1981 
…now that is awesome…im sure her stories about diabetes were memerable and nice to hear about how it was back then
From what I’ve heard, I think she kept quiet about it and I think people around her may not have even known that she had diabetes? I imagine that the years she lived before insulin was available were pretty dark for her.
mustve of been. her story does sound interesting tho and makes me wanna read more about her
Funny, I do not know my diaversary. The date wasn’t important to me at the time, now my pumpversary I know, it was a couple of days ago on Dec19 six years ago that I first strapped on an infusion set.
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My pumpversary was around Sept 1996. I had been thinking about it for a couple months, and an overseas business trip came up that convinced me it would be easier with pump.
When I started pump, they wanted me to do several days with saline, while still doing injections. But convinced them it was better for me to go straight to insulin, and it worked fine.
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i did the straight saline while still on injections. i messed up the first time i used the pump. then i got the hang of it. now im a pro at it…im even getting to know what the error messages are without calling animas as i learned from them what they are.
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