insulin

Standing in her kitchen, Therese Richardson is making her favorite recipe. “The honey dijon roasted pork tenderloin. I like that one,” the 50-year-old Indianapolis woman says.

Richardson has Type 2 diabetes, meaning that cells in her body are resistant to insulin, causing her blood sugar levels to rise. Eating vegetables and other healthy food helps her avoid serious complications — and lowers blood sugar levels.

Economic problems caused by COVID-19 hit diabetics especially hard. The American Diabetes Association says about a quarter of people with the disease are tapping savings, loans or stimulus checks to buy insulin. And some are taking big risks to get the life-saving drug.

The pandemic has left millions of Americans without jobs, and as a result, nearly 14 million people lost employer-sponsored health insurance.  For the one-in-10 Americans with diabetes, this poses a potentially life-threatening problem. 

William Rentel, a nurse practitioner in Ohio, has Type 1 diabetes but has been able to keep his blood sugar well-managed.

That changed when he and his wife contracted COVID-19 this spring.

“I found myself needing to use double the amount of insulin I would normally use to get my blood sugar levels as close to normal as possible,” recalls Rentel, who works at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “That’s when I knew something was very wrong.”

Indianapolis-based drug company Eli Lilly says it will soon start selling a cheaper insulin for diabetic patients. The move comes amid outcry over high drug prices.

Nicole Smith-Holt’s son Alec was 23 when he started feeling sick. His muscles cramped. He was lethargic. He woke up multiple times every night to use the bathroom. After two weeks, Smith-Holt encouraged him to go to urgent care.

For many people, life goes on after a diabetes diagnosis. But for others, the high price of insulin has forced them to devise dangerous and sometimes deadly workarounds to make ends meet. On this episode: the lengths to which some diabetics go to survive, and why insulin is so expensive.

"We want to tell you now about a device that's still in the investigational phase, which means it's hasn't yet even been submitted for FDA approval. But when we heard about something called a bionic pancreas, we thought you might be interested, too" says host Barbara Lewis.