Thread by @EvieAsterwyn

Regarding @LillyPad and the false announcement that insulin would be free. From a girl living in a country (NZ) where insulin costs me, through our big pharma subsidisation program $5 per insulin type per quarter, and OTC around $40-60 a vial. A Thread. /1

@LillyPad First of all, I'm tagging you in every tweet of this thread. Hopefully all your rich disgusting shareholders will read this and realize the true cost of the money you feed them. After hearing what I went through, I hope your black hearts give out. SHAME ON YOU ALL! /2

@LillyPad I am a 38 year old, who was diagnosed in '85 at 3 yrs old with this nightmarish, unforgiving, difficult to control, and stressful disease, Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). As with most diabetics I was put on a regime of 2 insulins per day, a long acting twice a day, which /3

@LillyPad lasted about 12 hours, designed to cope with fasting times where glucose would rise and fall die to hormones and stress/exercise i.e. without food. Nowadays, those on insulin pump therapy call this a 'basal' rate. The second insulin was short acting, and lasted about /4

@LillyPad 2-4 hours and helped with the sudden rise in sugars caused by food, or other bodily impacts of adrenaline rushes, anxiety, and would stop or correct the rise to help stabilize sugars in the body. Now, a normal sugar reading level for non-diabetic is between 4.0mmol/L /5

@LillyPad to 5.4mmol/L (72-99mg/dL) fasting, up to 7.8mmol/L (140mg/dL) 2 hours after eating. As a diabetic my sugars could range between 1.9mmol/L to 30+mmol/L (35 - 540mg/dL. My control could swing drastically as anything could send me higher than expected, or I would drop /6

@LillyPad like a stone when dinner was delayed more than 15 mins (activation time for quick acting at that point) after my 'bolus' (food/correction for high sugars) jab. So despite my mother's best efforts, my sugars were far from 'normal' or 'stable'. All my life I was warned /7

@LillyPad about the complications that could arise from bad control:nerve damage bodywide, blindness, damage to feet leading to amputation, kidney/liver disease, heart failure, body weight issues & assoc. disease, list goes on. even with funded insulin, stress of dealing with /8

@LillyPad my diabetes nearly tore my family apart. Personal stress hounded my childhood and I suffer Generalized Anxiety Disorder now, most revolving around health. My parents could afford insulin. I was lucky. I heard about how people survived for short periods before Insulin /9

@LillyPad by drinking alcohol to lower their sugars, and using coffee to stay sober enough to be aware of what was happening around them. Short periods of 3-6 months, extended under harsh low carb diets to 2-3years, all suffering slow painful deaths. I'm not sure I believed /10

@LillyPad the stories until age 7 when I met elderly folk, blind and missing their feet, lower legs, going through transplants. That hospital visit scared me. I've never forgotten their faces. They were the users of the early insulins. And then, age 9, I started getting pain /11

@LillyPad in my stomach during school. It was enough to send me to nurse's office at school. Every Sat morning I would vomit once or twice, then be fine for rest of the weekend. I started losing weight. The pain came more often, until mum picked me up early from school daily. /12

@LillyPad during this time dad was working long hours to save for a holiday for us in a few weeks time. Mum had a dying tooth nerve so was distracted. We joked I was pregnant, but knew I couldn't be. Mom got a dentist appointment and I got a vomiting 'bug' that day, so had no /13

@LillyPad choice but to go with her. The receptionist watchec over me while I'm had a root canal. I remember feeling out of it. I was hallucinating, in pain from throwing up and the ongoing cramps. My legs and arms hurt. I figured I had fever as I couldn't stop shaking. /14

@LillyPad At home afterwards I was fading in and out of consciousness. Mumwas on a lot of painkiller so put me to bed then herself. Dad came home early, as our holiday was about to start. He looked in on me and later told me, "It was like looking at a third world child." /15

@LillyPad Mum heard what dad said and really "looked" at me and, as a lab tech who had told the docs, when I was diagnosed, that I had diabetes before they believed her enough to do the bloods to confirm it, she suddenly realized what was going on.
She called my specialists /14

@LillyPad who confirmed, after checking my blood sugars and ketones (which were at the highest level the tests would show) that I needed to go to hospital NOW!
By this point I WAS WRITHING AND SCREAMING IN PAIN! Can you even imagine the sight that met my parents eyes as they /15

@LillyPad struggled to get their severely underweight, screaming, potentially dying, child who wouldn't stop clutching her guts, into a dressing gown, into our little car, and to the hospital. Imagine the thoughts running through their heads while I screamed all the way from /16

@LillyPad home to hospital (a 16km/10mile trip that I'm sure we travelled quicker than the usual 20mins). At hospital I begged for relief. But to my dismay they could only give me ice chips, in case I needed surgery. They loaded me up with IVs and monitors, and ran bloods. /17.

@LillyPad During this I was incessantly thirsty, but unable to drink. In agony but no painkillers yet. And the sugar test? Off the chart (theirs read to 44mmol/L (720mg/dL). I had Diabetic Ketoacidosis (look it up, it's deadly). The cause? A faulty batch of insulin. Only one /18

@LillyPad of the two I took multiple times a day. So, I STILL HAD INSULIN GOING INTO ME. AND THIS WAS THE RESULT. I NEARLY DIED!!! The Drs said I only lasted this long because of the other insulin I was continuing to take on Dr orders. My sugars were OVER 44mmol/L(720mg/dL)!/19

@LillyPad I. SHOULD. HAVE. BEEN. DEAD! THIS IS THE WARNING! this is the fate you are delivering to thousands of people by keeping your insulin prices so high many cannot afford to buy or take the amounts docs recommend - EVEN WITH INSURANCE it's over $1000! Your shareholders/20

@LillyPad can afford to keep this fate from their children, but your huge prices kill children and adults - real people! - daily. Your greed is murder! Their blood & agony is on your heads. You need to take action! INSULIN is LIFE-SAVING medication! #DropThePriceOfInsulin! End/

@LillyPad P.S. I forgot to mention I now have autonomic (bodywide) & periphial (legs/ arms) nerve sensitivity & damage, vision issues caused by blood vessels bursting in my eyes, constant pain in my feet and legs, & kidney issues. A #T1D survivor 35 years, thanks to #insulin.

Sorry, that's meant to say while Mum had a root canal.

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