Cooking Insulin in the Microwave - For Real? #04
In this emotional and eye-opening episode of DiabeticReal, Deborah E shares a harrowing experience of being hospitalized due to a horrifying discovery. She delves into a chilling incident where her insulin was inadvertently cooked in the microwave, leading to a life-threatening situation. As she candidly recounts the shocking series of events, listeners uncover the gravity of the situation and the subsequent investigation involving law enforcement. Join us as Deborah E sheds light on the importance of vigilance and the unwavering support of loved ones in the face of adversity.
Chapters
- 00:00 Intro (and Disclaimer)
- 02:50 ICU: The Hospital Found an Issue with Insulin
- 06:48 Microwaving Insulin Can Damage It Without Exploding
- 11:43 FBI Suspects Insulin Tampering
- 15:14 Closing
Research Links
Community
A community just for you! DiabeticReal.net, where you can...
- discuss these podcasts, or any other topic you want related to well-being;
- find events, their times, and the direct links;
- listen to recordings, watch videos;
- meet great people :)
And, right now it is free!
Episode Credits
Visit us at DiabeticReal.com to learn how you can participate (and to contact our team or ask for support)!
© 2023-2024 Social Web Cafe (Seaside Records, part of Michael T. Anderson dba Anderson Creations)
00:00 - Intro (and Disclaimer)
02:50 - ICU: The Hospital Found an Issue with Insulin
06:48 - Microwaving Insulin Can Damage It Without Exploding
11:43 - FBI Suspects Insulin Tampering
15:14 - Closing
Deborah E:
I'm living inside of this perfectly wonderful world.
Deborah E:
We're past the point of just simply ER.
Deborah E:
It's ICU.
Deborah E:
So I was, and I was going, by this point I was going in and out of consciousness.
Deborah E:
It was not good.
Deborah E:
I was very fortunate that I had a loving husband that was looking out for me.
Deborah E:
I was no longer able to advocate for myself because I was in
Deborah E:
and out of consciousness.
Michael Anderson:
Join Deborah E, multi-award winning singer, podcaster, and
Michael Anderson:
speaker, who proves that being diagnosed
Michael Anderson:
with a life-changing illness
Michael Anderson:
as a child, along with countless hospitalizations, and a
Michael Anderson:
family who told everyone she'd be dead before she reached puberty does not have
Michael Anderson:
to stand in the way of life well-lived.
Narrator:
The DiabeticReal Podcast and the content of its websites are presented
Narrator:
solely for educational purposes, and the views and opinions expressed by guests
Narrator:
are there as all they do not necessarily reflect that of the host of the podcast,
Narrator:
the content is not intended to substitute professional medical diagnosis, advice,
Narrator:
or treatment ongoing or otherwise.
Narrator:
Be sure to always seek advice of your physician or other qualified
Narrator:
healthcare provider with any questions regarding your healthcare.
Deborah E:
Okay, cooking insulin in the microwave, for real?
Deborah E:
Yeah, I know.
Deborah E:
I couldn't resist as far as the title of this podcast, but the title came to
Deborah E:
me because, well, you know, it's a true story and, um, there's a lot of things
Deborah E:
that a lot of stories and true stories I might have, uh, that I have to share
Deborah E:
with you, but this one came to me today.
Deborah E:
I was having my nails done and I was chatting with Tim and nice,
Deborah E:
bright Barbie pink nails, by the way, we were sitting there.
Deborah E:
He just looked at me.
Deborah E:
He goes, seriously, for real.
Deborah E:
And I said, well, I wasn't the one cooking my insulin.
Deborah E:
I wouldn't be that crazy.
Deborah E:
I mean, why?
Deborah E:
Okay, I will say that when I was young, and I would carry my insulin
Deborah E:
with me because, hey, wasn't when I wasn't feeling well, I wanted to take
Deborah E:
insulin so that I would feel better.
Deborah E:
And I realized that in the hot desert in California, the sun gets to the
Deborah E:
insulin and it breaks down the insulin and then the insulin doesn't work.
Deborah E:
Because, well, it gets cooked.
Deborah E:
So I knew that it's better if you keep the insulin at a nice temperature.
Deborah E:
Don't freeze it.
Deborah E:
Don't have it too cold, but definitely don't have it out in the hot sun.
Deborah E:
Don't have it in the desert.
Deborah E:
And yeah, uh, no duh.
Deborah E:
Don't cook it in the microwave.
Deborah E:
Don't cook it in the oven.
Deborah E:
Don't, I mean, come on, this is common sense.
Deborah E:
Don't cook your insulin.
Deborah E:
So, anyway.
Deborah E:
So, of course, I wasn't cooking it in the microwave.
Deborah E:
But, anyway.
Deborah E:
So, it turns out that somebody did cook my insulin.
Deborah E:
But I didn't know that.
Deborah E:
Because I would have stopped them.
Deborah E:
I ended up in ICU.
Deborah E:
This was many years ago.
Deborah E:
And I was getting sicker and sicker.
Deborah E:
And I had, you know, this story for another time.
Deborah E:
Forgive me, you'll get sick of hearing that.
Deborah E:
But I will tell you the stories.
Deborah E:
I will get there.
Deborah E:
I have so many different stories to share with you, so I will
Deborah E:
definitely share them with you.
Deborah E:
And I knew what it was to have high blood sugar.
Deborah E:
I knew what it was to almost die from high blood sugar.
Deborah E:
And that is definitely a story that you'll want to hear.
Deborah E:
Um, I knew what it was to be sick.
Deborah E:
I knew what it was to ask for help when you're getting very close
Deborah E:
to the end of your life because the blood sugar is too high.
Deborah E:
You're in diabetic ketoacidosis.
Deborah E:
And Insulin is not working.
Deborah E:
For whatever reason, your body has gone too far, and you need
Deborah E:
the help of medical professionals.
Deborah E:
So, I went to the hospital.
Deborah E:
They're looking at going, what on earth?
Deborah E:
This is going wrong.
Deborah E:
I mean, this, this is like, we need IV.
Deborah E:
We need insulin going into this woman's body.
Deborah E:
We're past the point of just simply ER.
Deborah E:
It's ICU.
Deborah E:
So I was, and I was going, by this point I was going in and out of consciousness.
Deborah E:
It was not good.
Deborah E:
I was very fortunate that I had a loving husband that was looking out for me.
Deborah E:
I was no longer able to advocate for myself because I was in
Deborah E:
and out of consciousness.
Deborah E:
The The hospital had a lab, as most hospitals do.
Deborah E:
It was a, it was a fair sized hospital in a fair sized city.
Deborah E:
It was actually, um, this hospital was in the Phoenix area.
Deborah E:
And, uh, the hospital thought this was so strange.
Deborah E:
I mean, they said, hey, is she taking her insulin?
Deborah E:
And my husband's like, of course she's taking her insulin.
Deborah E:
She wasn't feeling well.
Deborah E:
I mean, when, when her blood sugar is that high, of course she's taking her insulin.
Deborah E:
They said, we gotta check this out.
Deborah E:
And they said, when it wasn't working, did she take insulin from a fresh bottle?
Deborah E:
And it's like, yes, she has had diabetes for decades.
Deborah E:
And that's one of the things you do.
Deborah E:
You know, if you take insulin and it's not working, go take insulin
Deborah E:
from a fresh bottle of insulin.
Deborah E:
Because it could be that the bottle you're using might have gone bad.
Deborah E:
It might have somehow been exposed to the sun for some reason,
Deborah E:
or have gotten hot somehow.
Deborah E:
And so, Get a fresh bottle.
Deborah E:
We'd done that.
Deborah E:
And that wasn't working.
Deborah E:
So the hospital said, you know what?
Deborah E:
Bring in all of your bottles of insulin.
Deborah E:
Well, at this point, I was already in ICU.
Deborah E:
The doctors were taking care of me.
Deborah E:
The nurses were taking care of me.
Deborah E:
So, I was being taken care of.
Deborah E:
So my husband went home, and he brought in all of the bottles of insulin that we had.
Deborah E:
And I don't know, ten bottles, whatever it was.
Deborah E:
You know, good chunk.
Deborah E:
The bottles were from different lots.
Deborah E:
So it's not like somehow in the manufacturing of the
Deborah E:
bottles, there was a bad lot.
Deborah E:
There wasn't anything that we could go after Eli Lilly and,
Deborah E:
and say, hey, you messed up.
Deborah E:
And they, they took it to the lab and they studied it and they said, you know what?
Deborah E:
We know what's wrong.
Deborah E:
My husband's what?
Deborah E:
How do you know what's wrong?
Deborah E:
I mean these are, you told me these bottles are from different,
Deborah E:
lots are from different batches.
Deborah E:
What's wrong?
Deborah E:
And they said, see this little, now I can't remember because
Deborah E:
of course I was unconscious.
Deborah E:
So now at this point, I'm telling you what I understand from, from what
Deborah E:
my husband told me, but there's some kind of little red dot or something
Deborah E:
that, that pops when you put.
Deborah E:
insulin in the microwave and cook it, it pops like this little red dot thing.
Deborah E:
And it's, it's in there specifically so you can tell when
Deborah E:
it's cooked in the microwave.
Deborah E:
Because you see, if you cook it, if you cook a bottle of insulin in the microwave
Deborah E:
too long, the thing basically blows up.
Deborah E:
I mean, and that's what I had heard.
Deborah E:
It's like, why would you put insulin in the microwave?
Deborah E:
It's got metal in this bottle, and it's gonna cause a problem for the
Deborah E:
microwave, let alone the bottle.
Deborah E:
I mean that, that, oh, and of course the insulin.
Deborah E:
I mean, that's just, that is three times not something that you want to do.
Deborah E:
And you'd probably injure the human being putting it in there.
Deborah E:
But, I guess it turns out you can put a bottle of insulin in the microwave
Deborah E:
and cook it for a small amount of time.
Deborah E:
And all it will do is damage the insulin, but the bottle won't blow
Deborah E:
up and the microwave won't blow up.
Deborah E:
And this is why they put this little mechanism in the bottle that will
Deborah E:
turn it red so that people can tell that that bottle of insulin has
Deborah E:
been tampered with so that they know that that insulin is bad.
Deborah E:
It's an easy way to tell without having to take the insulin into the
Deborah E:
lab and actually test the insulin.
Deborah E:
It's an easy way to tell that the insulin has been tampered with and has
Deborah E:
been put in the microwave and cooked.
Deborah E:
And it's because there have been nefarious people out there that have tried to
Deborah E:
harm diabetics by cooking insulin.
Deborah E:
Go figure.
Deborah E:
You have nefarious criminal minds out there that try to harm diabetics.
Deborah E:
And so Eli Lilly and other companies have figured out a way to be able to
Deborah E:
demonstrate whether or not a bottle of insulin has been tampered with or not.
Deborah E:
Well, it turns out every single one of my bottles of insulin had been microwaved.
Deborah E:
Now the question is, at that point, who had cooked my insulin?
Deborah E:
Well, I mean, the other question is, who would want to, who wanted me dead?
Deborah E:
Because, I mean, you, you don't cook insulin to get your jollies.
Deborah E:
Well, it certainly wasn't my husband, because there's easier ways to kill me.
Deborah E:
And besides that, we've been married another 20 years past that.
Deborah E:
I'm still alive, and we love each other dearly.
Deborah E:
But anyway, it wasn't my husband.
Deborah E:
Um, it wasn't our kids, because it's not like a one-year-old.
Deborah E:
I was gonna toddle over there.
Deborah E:
She barely could walk, let alone, the microwave was above the stove,
Deborah E:
and it's not like she could climb up there, or push the buttons on
Deborah E:
one of those, you know, touchscreen kind of things on the microwave.
Deborah E:
She couldn't open the door on the microwave.
Deborah E:
I mean, how, how can a kid even use the microwave?
Deborah E:
She'd never use the microwave.
Deborah E:
Besides that, A child of one is going to end up blowing up the microwave
Deborah E:
before she's able to figure out how many minutes to do it to tamper with
Deborah E:
the insulin without blowing herself up.
Deborah E:
So, it's not the child doing it.
Deborah E:
It's not the husband doing it.
Deborah E:
I'm certainly not going to cook my insulin.
Deborah E:
Do you know how painful it is to die from diabetic ketoacidosis?
Deborah E:
I'd been there before.
Deborah E:
I'd be further ahead to ask somebody for a gun and shoot my head.
Deborah E:
I mean, come on.
Deborah E:
I'm not suicidal.
Deborah E:
But still, that is a painful way to die.
Deborah E:
To die from diabetic ketoacidosis.
Deborah E:
I'm not going to sit there and cook my insulin.
Deborah E:
But, there had been two people in her house.
Deborah E:
Actually three, if you want to count my friend's baby.
Deborah E:
But, we're talking toddler here.
Deborah E:
And it's not like a toddler did it.
Deborah E:
So, she's out of the running.
Deborah E:
But, that was my trusted friend.
Deborah E:
There was no reason that I had not to trust this friend or her husband.
Deborah E:
I'm just telling the story as it is.
Deborah E:
I certainly do not mean any ill harm against her, but it happens
Deborah E:
to be that friend and her husband.
Deborah E:
So this friend and her husband had been at our house, and it just so
Deborah E:
happens we were headed out to church with our kids, and it was like, hey,
Deborah E:
uh, are you going to church with us?
Deborah E:
No?
Deborah E:
Okay, well, what are we doing?
Deborah E:
And they just wanted to hang around, and we were thinking,
Deborah E:
you're acting a little bit peculiar.
Deborah E:
We're not just gonna leave you.
Deborah E:
At our house, we were trying to figure out what they were doing, and
Deborah E:
they were being very, very strange.
Deborah E:
So it was like, alright, either you go home, or you come to church
Deborah E:
with us, but we're not leaving you in our house unattended.
Deborah E:
We just knew that the vibe was off.
Deborah E:
We weren't going to leave them in our house unattended.
Deborah E:
Now normally, family, friends, people you trust, you can leave them in your house,
Deborah E:
but we knew something was off, so we We didn't want to leave them unattended, but
Deborah E:
we left them unattended enough to go pack our kids in the car and ready for church.
Deborah E:
And that seems to be the window when the insulin was cooked.
Deborah E:
Now that's just by process of elimination.
Deborah E:
Those were the only adults in the house.
Deborah E:
The FBI warranted that that's who cooked the insulin.
Deborah E:
But, of course, as you know, the law I cannot just assume that that's who
Deborah E:
did it, because maybe, you know, the neighbor snuck in the house in the middle
Deborah E:
of the night and did it or something.
Deborah E:
I mean, you can't prove that some other person didn't do it.
Deborah E:
Of course, we know no one else was in her house, but
Deborah E:
because we didn't actually see this person cook it, she wasn't put in jail.
Deborah E:
But the FBI said stay away from her because that actually was not the
Deborah E:
only time that that an attempt was made on my life The FBI came to me.
Deborah E:
Oh, yeah.
Deborah E:
Did I mention the FBI?
Deborah E:
Oh, yeah the hospital actually run they ran the tests on the insulin and then they
Deborah E:
called the FBI and the FBI came and talked to Us and they said yeah, by the way This
Deborah E:
isn't the only time that an attempt has been made on your life and this friend of
Deborah E:
yours is actually involved And all that.
Deborah E:
And, uh, you should probably stay away.
Deborah E:
Yeah, so, uh, it's a little tricky to absolutely prove unless we saw them, but
Deborah E:
considering there were three attempts by, uh, this person on my life, and my
Deborah E:
husband's, um, but mostly on my life.
Deborah E:
The FBI just said, stay away from her, because we have evidence that
Deborah E:
she has made attempts on your life.
Deborah E:
So, they actually offered us WITSEC.
Deborah E:
That was kind of interesting, but we didn't want WITSEC.
Deborah E:
So, It was, uh, put to us to just simply make sure that we stayed away
Deborah E:
from her and so that's what we did.
Deborah E:
Yeah, I told you at the beginning of this series that we had some
Deborah E:
interesting, uh, autobiographical stories, like five books worth each.
Deborah E:
So anyway, um, yes, cooking insulin in the microwave
Deborah E:
and, uh, fortunately, That hospital saw me through it, and I did not die
Deborah E:
of diabetic ketoacidosis that day.
Deborah E:
I lived through that one.
Deborah E:
So, you never know, even though you think that somebody is your friend,
Deborah E:
or you think that because someone is related to you, that you're safe.
Deborah E:
Make sure you always keep a keen eye on your surroundings
Deborah E:
to make sure you stay safe.
Deborah E:
And keep those that love you, close.
Deborah E:
Because they're pretty special.
Deborah E:
This is Deborah E signing off on DiabeticReal.
Michael Anderson:
Thank you for listening to this episode of DiabeticReal.
Michael Anderson:
For more information about this podcast, as well as links and fun
Michael Anderson:
stuff related to DiabeticReal, visit us on our website at diabeticreal.com.
Michael Anderson:
com.
Michael Anderson:
Now we'll listen as Deborah E herself sings one of her favorite songs.
Michael Anderson:
The song is called Perfectly Wonderful World, written by Denny Martin
Michael Anderson:
and Jaimee Paul, engineered by me, of course, your host, Michael, in
Michael Anderson:
our Seaside Records studio here in lovely Los Angeles, California.
Michael Anderson:
It was on the number one ReverbNation charts for over a
Michael Anderson:
year and still charts very well.
Michael Anderson:
So, have a pleasant moment and listen to Perfectly Wonderful World.
Deborah E:
Yes, I'm living inside of this perfectly wonderful world.
Deborah E:
Oh.
Deborah E:
Mmm.
