| Huh--I guess it's pretty much different for everyone, eh? I was on beef/pork insulins from diagnosis in 1965, until I was put on the "rDNA human" insulins in the late 80s or early 90s--not sure exactly when. Up until that time, I'd been fairly well-controlled, had lows but always caught them and treated them myself. After going on Humulin R & NPH, I went out of control. I'd pass out cold with no warning, forget where I was or what I was doing and wander off during work, had several car accidents, and sometimes would not awake in the morning until my wife called 911 and they sent the medics up. The doctors chalked it all up to the many decades I'd had diabetes, and claimed the loss of awareness of my lows was something that came with the territory. They advised that the only way to stay safe was to run my sugars high.
I didn't like that, and began to do research. It seemed there was an outbreak of "hypo unawareness" shortly after the introduction of human insulin, but it only affected people who had been on animal insulin for a long time--not newer diabetics. What saved my life, after missing out on most of the 1990s in a fog of hypos, was changing from the rDNA insulin to the "analog" insulins when they came out--Novolog and Lantus. I actually got back my early warning symptoms for lows when I switched off R & NPH. Since switching two and a half years ago, I have not had one single low I did not recognize and could not treat myself. I'm no longer a ticking time bomb, waiting to detonate. I don't have those early-morning hypos that soak the bed, or the middle of the night ones that sent me naked, shivering and sleepwalking into the kitchen, only to find myself at 3AM sitting in a pile of oreo cookie crumbs, with matted bits of cookies tangled in my hair... I thank medical science and the lord every day for getting me off that roller coaster with Lantus and Novolog.
Michael
T1 since 1965  | 
