My passenger, Mr. "Who Are Your Lifelines" [0], was turned into a type 1 diabetic as an adult, seemingly through his interactions with the family court system.

My passenger, Mr. "Who Are Your Lifelines" [0], was turned into a type 1 diabetic as an adult, seemingly through his interactions with the family court system. At one point I spoke to his sister, who said he was repeatedly thrown in jail when he couldn't pay his assessed child support. He was 18 or 19 years old at the time, and had previously made $100k/year (computer-something, in the 1990's probably), then lost that job. The judge didn't have the ability to reassess the child support amount. The sister said the law was later changed, but it was too late to prevent the destruction of my passenger's pancreas. Maricopa County Jail did a A1C test on him on intake, and decided this passenger needed a daily time-release insulin injection. If he tried to refuse the injection, he would be sent to solitary confinement. When combined with the jail's starvation diet, this forced use of insulin is a form of torture: I understand insulin without carbohydrates -> low blood sugar -> cortisol release -> muscle wasting. When he got out he told me he'd developed an intestinal blockage that required surgery. When he was locked up again 2 years ago (on account of missing a drug court hearing, 2.5 years before), I took pity on him and deposited some funds on his jail account so he could buy snacks to sort of keep himself out of stress-induced deterioration. I have a postcard that said it was incredibly helpful knowing someone on the outside cared about him. He supposedly sent me three postcards, but I only got one. "Do the most expensive thing possible" seems to be the guiding philosophy for the American approach to Medicine. The doctors quoted in my recent submission [1] pointed out that they can do expensive things for their patients, but have no ability to provide what their patients actually need. My step-sister's husband is a type 1 diabetic. I just learned he had a bad case of the chicken pox just before he was diagnosed as a 3 year old child. A friend's 2 year old daughter became a type 1 diabetic soon after her first weekend at her biological father's house -- this was the first interaction with her birth father; I'm sure the kid was like "who the hell are you and where is my mother????". I bet in 20 years the new myth of Diabetes will be that it's a chronic condition that can only be treated palliatively. "Stress" seems to be the cause behind the symptoms of diabetes. If doctors treated stress instead of the end result of stress (pancreas dysfunction / insulin resistance -> high blood sugar levels), people would certainly have much better outcomes. [0] https://www.taxiwars.org/p/who-are-your-lifelines.html https://www.taxiwars.org/p/who-are-your-lifelines.html [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21728864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21728864