This year marks a century since three University of Toronto scientists discovered that life-saving protein that is also a vital hormone, to inject into people diagnosed with diabetes who, without daily injections of insulin would die an early death after a short and brutally miserable life of suffering. There are millions of people worldwide who owe their lives to Dr.Frederick Banting, Dr.Charles Best and Dr.J.B.Colip, in the laboratory of Dr.J.J.R. McLeod for their research and discovery of insulin in 1921.

It was what was then called Juvenile Diabetes, now 'Type 1', insulin-dependent diabetes that ravaged the lives of young people, children and babies in an abrupt degeneration of their body's ability to move glucose into body cells for energy. Instead, the glucose absorbed through food and drink remained in the blood stream sometimes causing convulsions, and eventually causing extreme organ damage, and early death. 

Death by heart attack as a result of unregulated diabetes; diabetic retinopathy and loss of eyesight; and nerve damage so severe that diabetics could step on nails and feel no pain until septicemia set in and then gangrene, necessitating limb-removal surgery. Not much to look forward to in life with a diagnosis of insulin-dependent diabetes. And not the same as adult-onset diabetes caused by overeating and lack of exercise.

The hypothesis was that a genetic disposition somewhere in the DNA bank of individuals was responsible for damage to the insulin-producing beta cells in the Isles of Langerhans resident in the pancreas going amok in the endocrine system, caused by an auto-immune response by the body to the presence of a foreign substance. In our case, when our oldest son at age 16 was diagnosed, we theorized that it was a routine tetanus update shot that had spurred the event.

Milestones in history, in medicine, in evolution of human survival, in one's personal life.

And today brought us pleasure, not pain and sorrow of the type we felt 45 years ago. Today, the sun shone, breezes tickled our faces, and light jackets sufficed to enable us to stride through forest trails with two little companions. Today our son is healthy, but not everyone must inject insulin two to three times daily and take innumerable blood-glucose tests daily ti determine how much insulin to inject, to ensure they remain that way.

We ventured out with Jackie and Jillie this afternoon on a perfectly lovely spring day, feeling good about life in general and our lives in particular. Humans are resilient, capable of moving on in their lives particularly when devastated at one time or another by something truly threatening that imperils life. And you know you're fortunate when you absorb the daily news from around the world detailing the misery that events in life can bring to so many.

In this day and era, though there is less poverty in the world, more people are living secure lives, all of this is now backgrounded with a global pandemic that takes innocent people's lives in unbelievable numbers while science and governments work frantically to reduce the level of threat.