IOH - Personal stories of adults with LADA



		Islets of Hope real people - stories from others living with type 1 diabetes

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"We made choices that most business people would say doomed us before we started. We could not afford to create a standard nonprofit organization. Also, we did not want our suggestions on how to save money to be biased, so we developed the nonprofit Slash Drug Costs Organization using our own quite limited funds.

The best way to freely share knowledge in our age is by using the internet. We created our website with free software and run it using very little money. It also allows the organization to exist without an office or even a phone. Everyone with the Slash Drug Costs Organization is an unpaid volunteer. Also, since no money is ever accepted and no one is paid; we have none of the paperwork that often bogs down many groups.

An unconventional decision made the Slash Drug Costs Organization completely unique. Unlike any other web site that helps people get the medications they need, we decided to help anyone. It does not matter if they are poor or not, they will get help. Some of the people who come to us must make daily choices between using their money for the most basic living expenses or for paying for their prescriptions that keep them alive."

Jim McMahon, Founder
SlashDrugCosts.org

Real people
Stories of children living with type 1 diabetes

Jim McMahon - One man making a difference in the lives of many
diagnosed with latent autoimmune diabetes in adults in 1998

My name is Jim McMahon and I am the administrator for the nonprofit Slash Drug Costs website (www.slashdrugcosts.org/forum/index.php). We have the simple mission of bringing down the costs of prescription and over the counter drugs for consumers. This is accomplished by giving a place for people to share their methods of reducing overall medication costs and directly answering requests for help from anyone.

My father was type 1 diabetic who got it when he was a teenager. He took as good of care of himself as was possible in the late 1930’s until he died from complications at age 42. In those days you had to use inaccurate urine test strips and did not have the range of insulins and medications that are available today. He never had a bad infection but he did go blind a few years before he died.

I used to be one of those people who never required medications and never thought I would. I took good care of myself. Watching my father slowly degrade taught me to watch my diet and have blood sugar tests done every three months. I thought I was safe. Unfortunately I settled into the common desk job lifestyle that included little exercise.

Nine years ago I got results showing I had become a type II diabetic. I did not want medications for it so I tightened my diet and started exercising. Over the next four months my blood sugar readings averaged 123 and I thought I had it licked.

I get my medical treatment at Veteran’s Administration Hospitals (VA). There I was given Cyproheptadine for an off-label experimental use and it appears my islet cells were killed. After 5 days I became a brittle insulin dependent diabetic and no diabetic medications helped. I have had no sign of internal insulin production since. I searched the internet and found Dr. Lawrence Fisher, a prominent diabetes researcher, who had used that drug to induce diabetes in test animals for a number of his studies. I contacted him. He told me that large amounts of Cyproheptadine should never be given to a person. I connected my local doctor with Dr. Fisher. The VA quickly stopped experimenting with Cyproheptadine in that fashion.

The Islets of Hope website (www.isletsofhope.com) was the first place where I found information about Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults (LADA). My symptoms make it seem likely that is what I had before the administration of Cyproheptadine 9 years ago. It might explain why several people before me got the experimental treatment using Cyproheptadine without inducing insulin-dependent diabetes.

Since then I have had great difficulty controlling my blood sugars even though I have tried every combination of insulin available. My diabetes has caused problems to flare that I never even knew I had. The result is that I am now very uncomfortable with the large number of medications I require.

My wife, who also requires a lot of expensive medications, began researching on drug interactions and cost reduction methods in order for both of us to remain safe and be able to stay on the medications we needed. At this same time, our aging parents were requiring more and more expensive medications. The amount of research we personally had to do to find the most affordable and safe methods to save was becoming overwhelming. Various health care professionals helped us accrue a pretty huge amount of knowledge about reducing costs.

We found other people with the same problem and together we shared our methods of saving money with each other. The nonprofit Slash Drug Costs Organization was not even an idea until the fall of 2006. We realized that if we could help each other reduce medication costs then it would be wonderful to share this knowledge to help others. It was easy to see that if more people added their knowledge then the extra ideas would reduce costs further and help even more people.

Please read our Press Release to learn more about SlashDrugCosts.org, it's volunteers and our exciting and rewarding training program for volunteers!

From the SlashDrugCosts.org website:

A 2006 Kaiser Family Foundation poll indicated that about half of all doctors ignore the soaring medication costs of treatment. Among the reasons named; 53% of them said that they don’t have enough time and 51% said they don’t know how to help patients lower their out-of-pocket costs. The National Library of Medicine states, "Physicians have always known that an informed patient who takes an active role is a 'better' patient”. What we do is simple. We present reasonable methods to reduce costs that you can discuss with your doctor.

To help you we need only a very small amount of information that discloses nothing about your identity to allow us to search out reasonable methods to get your costs to the absolute minimum. If you currently cannot afford your medications and would like quick responses with reasonable methods to substantially reduce their costs then click on: Give us your list of drugs then we will give your specific ways to save.

The non-profit Slash Drug Costs Organization is less than 1 year old. This concept is working because people not only want to help each other; they find that this cooperation saves them substantial money. Please find out how good it makes you feel when you share your ideas that might possibly help someone else. Unlike most websites you can give your ideas without registering, joining, or revealing anything about yourself. Before you post ideas you need to read about the restrictions covering the information here, please click on: Posting Restrictions.

There are dozens of Subjects and hundreds of Topics about saving money on your drugs. If you want to look into specific techniques then you might want to click on: Ideas to Cut Costs.



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