Feeling it Out: Insulin Changes

I used insulin derived from pork and beef pancreas until about 1997. With the human insulin –called Humulin– having been developed and patented in the 1980's, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company made a concentrated effort to make pork and beef insulin obsolete with massive price gouging that made it cheaper for self-pay patients like me to switch ro humulin. A vial of animal insulin was $10.00 in 1992. The same vial approached or exceeded $20.00 by 1997 (maybe before then,) and had perhaps exceeded the price of humulin. Then Eli Lilly and its fine company just stopped making old-time insulin available because it was no longer cost effective to make for "so few" patients. (If this statement is factually wrong, blame the Walgreens pharmacist who said this at the time. It is possible that Walgreens just did not want to carry the extra product anymore.) Lobbying of doctors helped force the migration of patients to the patented product.
Insulins always seem to come with warnings not to change dose or type outside a doctor’s supervision . I could not afford a doctor back then. I just made the switch and paid attention to what my body told me.
In a big way,"Humulin" worked better. My body seemed to absorb it more efficiently. That was not entirely a good thing, especially for a diabetic who managed by feel. Humulin absorbed so well that physical symptoms no longer served as the first signs that my blood sugar level was hitting a relative low. Instead, the big change came in mood. On good days, I could say, "wow, this minor frustration is irritating me way too much. My sugar must be going down, so I’d better eat." On really good days, I would notice nothing until the sugar was critically low. On moderate days I could tell by a surge of temper if things had been calm for a while. On the bad days, escalating frustrations triggered explosion. Those fits always cause embarrassment. When they’re witnessed, or even worse, when they end up directed at people I care about, they trigger lasting bouts of depression. Here’s a secret of the psychology that has raised many eyebrows: I am "wound too tight" in overcompensation for that daily potential to always "lose it" because of constant changes and fluctuations in by biochemistry.
True enough, it’s easy to say, "it’s lunchtime" or "I shot up four hours ago" and stop what I’m doing to eat. Call me OCD or ADD, but I lose track of time easily, even back when I could easily see clocks.
The old pork and beef insulin was consistent in giving physical hints that the sugar was low. I felt them more readily. That does not mean that I was without that biochemical irritation or surge of black temper, but those things happened less frequently on the old insulin.
Being a financially desperate diabetic pushed me into self management outside accepted practices. Desperate lives lead to desperate living. I learned how to manage my condition by feel, and in so many ways, I did remarkably well. No doctor would agree: they manage by blood sugar numbers, not by how their patients feel.