An Artificial Life

Uncomfortable reality. 

One of the things that really worries me is that I live an artificial life.  I think all of us T1’s think about this from time to time. Scenario: We’re on a ship, the ship sinks, we are; in a lifeboat/on an island/clinging to wreckage…. with very limited supply of insulin. How long until we die?

A Dying Economy 

The issues of Climate Change, of Fuel Descent and a dying economy (as in the paper that I read yesterday, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse), are becoming my personal reality.  I'm only alive because I have access to insulin and the moment that access stops, my life stops. So the realities of our economic model crashing, the difficulties that might mean for manufacture of medicines and medical aid, the difficulties of transporting things around the world in a fuel descent scenario, the difficulty of getting supply are becoming a critical factor in my thinking. On a deeply personal level, I ask, “Will I survive?”

A Window in Time

Someone said to me the other day, when I commented on what a privileged life we lead in the ‘Western’ world, “It’s just a window of time, in history, it can’t last”. I think about the work of Insulin For Life,  www.insulinforlife.org. IFL is supporting many people who don’t live in this golden window, who face my reality check EVERY day of their lives. Will my life end like theirs? Will I have a few years where I scratch around eking out supplies of insulin, as and where I can get my hands on it, gradually becoming sicker, weaker, until I no longer have the strength to fight to get supplies? What’s happening to T1’s in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq? Did they get out? Are they scratching around for an ever less stable supply of insulin? Are they all dead?

What do you think?

Are you a T1, reading this? What do you think, does this ugly fear raise itself in your conscious thinking from time to time? How do you rationalise it? Have you thought about Climate Change and the descent of the fossil rule economy as affecting your supply of insulin? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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