Episode #5 of the podcast -- “The Juice IS Worth the Squeeze. Embrace It: 56+ Years as a Type 1 Diabetic, and Still Counting”, lays out some of the uncommon medical facts that preceded my diagnosis as Type 1 in Fall, 1968. At the end of the prior podcast #4, I recounted the events of a “violent and fateful night” in Summer, 1968, that triggered the physical changes leading to my T1D diagnosis 3 months later. In some ways, the origins of my condition were almost as unlikely as the lifetime I’ve experienced. More on this in later podcasts.

The physical injuries I suffered one night in June of that year, resulted in trauma with lifelong consequences. However, the consequences were not all bad outcomes, either health-wise, personally or professionally. To the contrary, the consequences led to lifetime opportunities and events I could never have imagined when I experienced a truly unexpected “life quake” in Fall, 1968. Stay tuned for more details in future podcasts on my life as a Type 1 diabetic for 56+ years, and still counting.

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This podcast recounts events of a violent, fateful first day in June, 1968, in my 55+ year journey as a Type 1 diabetic. A growing part of the medical community believe that Type 1 diabetes is triggered when a confluence of inherited genes combine with environmental factors, to cause the body's immune system to attack its own pancreatic cells, and terminate its normal functioning. In my case, whether I carried the genes is an open issue. But a key environmental factor is suspected to be the trauma I experienced one day in Chicago during the Summer of 1968. Luckily, the trauma was NOT fatal, only fateful, the consequences I live with comfortably 55 years later.

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Episode #2, Part 2, concludes this segment of the podcast --- “The Juice IS Worth the Squeeze. Embrace It: 55+ Years as a Type 1 Diabetic, and Still Counting”. Part 2 captures more details about the remarkable journey I’ve had being a T1D over 55 years, and more details about the part I’ve played in carrying the journey this far. With a life expectancy when I was diagnosed at age 15 in 1968 being 46 years, I’ve added 25 years to it. I am now a healthy, lucky 71 years old. This journey has been due in part to many medical, scientific and educational breakthroughs in T1D treatment since the early 1980s. But an equally, if not more substantial, part of this added lifespan can be attributable to my following 10 personal lifetime priorities in managing T1D for 55+ years, and making the best use of the breakthroughs I’ve been lucky to be alive during their development. The episode ends with a preview of the next episode --- I call it, “The Ambush”. It recounts an evening in Summer, 1968, in which I was the primary victim of a gang violence incident in Chicago --- no guns, luckily, just a fairly violent physical beating, that less than 3 months later, led to a series of events that triggered my T1D diagnosis.

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