Insulin Prices Killed Josh Wilkerson. Now His Mother Is Taking On Big Pharma.

[babylonsister]

https://truthout.org/articles/insulin-prices-killed-josh-wilkerson-now-his-mother-is-taking-on-big-pharma/


Insulin Prices Killed Josh Wilkerson. Now His Mother Is Taking On Big Pharma.
“My son died at 27 because his income was insufficient for him to purchase insulin,” says Erin Weaver.
By William Rivers Pitt,
Truthout
Published August 24, 2019


When Josh Wilkerson was a boy, he would page through his family’s church directory to find people celebrating birthdays that day so he could call and wish them, “Happy Birthday!” He played Little League baseball and loved pro wrestling, often pantomiming the faux violence he saw on TV with his three brothers. One time, he peed on his brother’s bed after they’d fought and blamed it on spilled apple juice.

He was, in other words, a vibrant, lighthearted kid. “He was normally easygoing and liked to laugh,” his mother, Erin Weaver, told Truthout. “I was always able to tell when his blood sugar would go above average because he would become angry and combative. That wasn’t his normal behavior. I’d tell him that I’d like him to test his sugar. He would, and sure enough, his sugar would be high.”

Diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), affects more than 100 million people in the U.S. The disease is broken down into three main categories: Type 1, Type 2 and gestational. In January of 2000, Josh was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes, the rarer form of the disease, which affects 5 percent of people with diabetes. He was 8 years old and lived with the illness for the next 19 years.

On June 10 of this year, Josh began vomiting repeatedly. When he failed to answer repeated phone calls, his fiancée Rose went looking for him. She found him unresponsive in the shower and called paramedics immediately. Josh was suffering from severe diabetic ketoacidosis, a serious complication that arises when there is not sufficient insulin in the body.

His blood sugar, when tested, stood at a lethal 1,700, and his brain was swelling. He was placed in the intensive care unit, where a brain scan revealed he had suffered a series of profoundly damaging strokes. On Friday, June 14, after realizing there was no hope, his family made the excruciating decision to remove him from life support, and he died the next day. He was 27 years old.

Josh Wilkerson had been rationing his insulin because he couldn’t afford the $1,200 per month cost of proper care, and it killed him.

snip//

Erin Weaver and the family of Josh Wilkerson remain in deepest mourning. For Erin, life has a new and furious focus: Her son’s death must be made to count for something beyond another insulin-related square on the obituary pages. She will be in Indianapolis next month to call the wealthy pharmaceutical arbiters of life and death to account for the untimely and utterly unnecessary loss of her beloved son.

“It has to be made to mean something,” she tearfully told Truthout. “It just has to.”

[Dennis Donovan]

1. I pay $150/mo for my dog's insulin

He needs it to live so I don't have a choice.

[babylonsister]

2. Wow! Your dog is so lucky to have you.

OT...how are you feeling? I've been meaning to ask.

[Dennis Donovan]

3. I'm feeling better, despite a rough summer...

My brother passed last month and now it looks like my sister might not last until the end of the year (stage 4 liver failure). My only surviving brother said yesterday that we entered the 2010's with 6 of us (siblings), but it looks like we'll end the decade with just him and I.

Nonetheless, thank you for asking!

(...and thanks for posting Will's excellent story! )

[babylonsister]

4. Oh, no!

I'm so very sorry to read that. Getting older ain't for sissies. My condolences to you, but am glad you're hanging in there.

[onecaliberal]

5. The real death panels. Pharma and insurance companies.