TCSE: Ted Corpus Search Engine

Recorded at	January 15, 2022
Event	TEDxHopeCollege
Duration (min:sec)	15:20
Video Type	TEDx Talk
Words per minute	146.97 very slow
Readability (FK)	66.97 very easy
Speaker	Brooke Bennett


1	00:04	It was October 6, 2012, and I would have killed for Wendy’s frosty.
2	00:11	I've been craving that frosty for about two days, but it always seemed just out of reach.
3	00:18	See, after urgent care turned into "tomorrow after school," which then became "we need to go back to urgent care now."
4	00:27	And finally in the car on the way to the hospital, I realized that, unfortunately, I would not be getting that frosty.
5	00:35	Because that frosty would have skyrocketed my blood sugar signaling the beginning of a journey with an illness known as type 1 diabetes.
6	00:45	The car seemed to hold an overwhelming silence that night, but the world outside was loud.
7	00:51	Everyone outside seemed to be going on with their everyday lives, while my life seemed to be on pause as I tried to understand my new reality.
8	01:01	I was hungry and upset and tired, and I made that well known by sprawling out in that back seat and whining just a little bit.
9	01:11	I was only allowed one thing to eat.
10	01:13	Green apple.
11	01:15	Not a frosty, a green apple.
12	01:19	But honestly, as much as I would have killed for that frosty, that frosty probably would have killed me.
13	01:30	Now, I'm sure you won't be shocked to find out that diabetes is expensive.
14	01:35	There's my 5,000-dollar insulin pump, the 250 dollars a month for infusion sites for that insulin pump.
15	01:43	And some insurances won't even cover the 1,500 dollars every 90 days for a constant glucose monitoring system, or CGM.
16	01:55	On average, type 1 diabetics need three to six vials of insulin a month.
17	01:59	Each one of those vials costs around 250 dollars.
18	02:04	That's 750 to 1,500 dollars a month for a drug that is vital for life.
19	02:11	A drug that costs only 3.69 to 6.16 dollars to produce.
20	02:18	I'm fortunate enough to have insurance that covers most of these expenses, but I have a lingering fear that's shared by most young diabetics: of turning 26.
21	02:30	Of aging off of my parents' insurance.
22	02:33	I'm only 19, and yet my 26th birthday has been an ongoing conversation in my house.
23	02:40	What are ways I can get insurance?
24	02:43	How will I be able to afford my insulin?
25	02:46	How can I keep myself alive?
26	02:50	I experienced that delicate system in which diabetics operate on the night I dropped and shattered my last vial of insulin.
27	03:00	It was a Sunday night, and our usual pharmacy wasn't open.
28	03:04	So my mom began to search for a 24-hour pharmacy near us while my dad attempted to get a hold of my doctor's office after hours in order to get my insulin prescription sent over to whatever pharmacy we were able to find.
29	03:18	I was able to get enough insulin to last me to my next refill.
30	03:22	My parents had the money to pay the 300 dollars for that tiny vial.
31	03:30	But the unlucky ones, the diabetics that can't pay, they have to worry about whether or not they will be able to afford their insulin every month.
32	03:41	Sometimes they have to go without paying.
33	03:44	Sometimes they have to go without their insulin.
34	03:49	This is insulin rationing.
35	03:52	It's exactly what it sounds like.
36	03:55	It's skipping meals, it's skipping doses, it's taking less than you need or using a more unstable type of insulin just because it's cheaper.
37	04:05	Between 2017 and 2019, 14 type 1 diabetics were identified as dying from diabetic ketoacidosis, a deadly complication of high blood sugar, also known as DKA, due to insulin rationing.
38	04:25	I want to take a moment for them.
39	04:29	Monique Moses.
40	04:32	Shane Boyle.
41	04:35	Antavia Worshman.
42	04:38	Jesse Lutgen.
43	04:40	Allen Rivas.
44	04:43	Micha Fischer.
45	04:45	Meaghan Carter.
46	04:48	Stephen Alford.
47	04:52	Kayla Davis.
48	04:55	Josh Wilkerson.
49	04:58	Jada Lewis.
50	05:01	Jesmiya Scherer.
51	05:04	Jeremy Crawford.
52	05:06	And probably so many more.
53	05:10	But tonight, I want to tell you the story of just one of them.
54	05:16	Alec Smith.
55	05:18	When he turned 26, he could no longer be covered by his parents' insurance.
56	05:24	His job, however, didn't provide insurance, and with the cheapest insurance plan having a 7,500-dollar deductible, he decided just to go uninsured.
57	05:35	His insulin and supplies cost almost half of his salary.
58	05:40	So he resorted to rationing his insulin.
59	05:43	Less than one month after going off of his parents' insurance, Alec died from DKA.
60	05:52	He instead paid for the price of insulin with his literal life.
61	05:58	But odds are, you know about the price of insulin.
62	06:02	Odds are, you know it is considered one of the most expensive liquids in the world.
63	06:09	The price of insulin is something you can, at the very least, conceptualize.
64	06:13	1,000 dollars a month's worth of insulin, that's a new phone.
65	06:18	5,000 dollars every four years for an insulin pump, those are some really nice vacations.
66	06:25	These numbers, while large, aren't foreign.
67	06:29	They're bad, but not completely abstract.
68	06:34	On my arm is my CGM.
69	06:37	It has saved my life more times than I can count.
70	06:42	Knows my blood sugar every second of every day.
71	06:46	And knows what I need, even when I don't.
72	06:50	It has the most obnoxious beeping noise -- think: worse than a fire alarm -- for when my blood sugar is low.
73	07:00	And when that alarm goes off in the middle of the night, I would kill for it to have a snooze button.
74	07:08	But it doesn't.
75	07:09	So I drag myself out of bed, drink juice and deal with that beeping until my blood sugar comes up.
76	07:19	This device saves me because I can't detect the signs of low blood sugar, the shaking, the world feeling fuzzy, the feeling of a body that's no longer mine when I'm asleep.
77	07:31	And if I were to drop too low, I’d seize, and I'd die.
78	07:38	Now there's a more subtle notification for when my blood sugar is high.
79	07:45	An obnoxious vibrating.
80	07:49	But if I were to spike too high, it's DKA.
81	07:56	And this device on my arm that's saving my life, it's considered a luxury.
82	08:04	It's considered something that I could live without.
83	08:09	To put my CGM on, I first clean and prep my skin.
84	08:13	Then I stick an inserter to my skin and press a button that releases a needle.
85	08:19	That needle punctures the skin and retracts, leaving a wire behind.
86	08:24	Then I remove the inserter and click a transmitter in on top.
87	08:29	It's a similar process for my pump.
88	08:31	Clean, stick, stab.
89	08:34	Two little puncture wounds, two little scars.
90	08:40	My body is covered in those little scars.
91	08:45	Each one representing the CGM or pump site that had been stuck to my body.
92	08:52	Each one representing the needle poke that went with it and the wire or cannula that needle left behind.
93	08:59	Imagine years and years and years' worth of scars.
94	09:06	And the anticipation of all of the years to come.
95	09:10	Little pokes over and over and over again.
96	09:17	Now imagine those pokes don't go the way they're supposed to every time.
97	09:23	Imagine you hit a vein and now blood is dripping down your leg or you hit a muscle and it burns.
98	09:30	The needle doesn't retract and gets stuck.
99	09:33	The sticky doesn't stick.
100	09:37	Now you have to do it all over again.
101	09:41	Or the tubing is caught on a door handle ripping itself out.
102	09:46	Do it again.
103	09:48	The CGM loses signal, do it again.
104	09:52	Even if those things don't happen, I still have to do it again.
105	09:58	Every three days for my pump site and every 10 for my CGM.
106	10:03	Somehow I've managed to go nine years without any major incidents.
107	10:11	But I know just how much I hate experiencing the highs and the lows.
108	10:17	But I know that I am one miscalculation, one CGM or pump failure, one misstep, one mistake from paying the ultimate price.
109	10:31	I've mentioned DKA a few times as a deadly consequence, but I want to walk you through what that looks like.
110	10:38	You are literally dealing with blood that is toxic.
111	10:43	Blood that feels like it's on fire.
112	10:46	Blood that feels too heavy for your body.
113	10:48	Your body is turning against you, again.
114	10:53	Then organs shut down one by one, usually the kidneys first, then the rest to follow.
115	11:00	A domino effect in slow motion.
116	11:05	If you were rationing insulin. maybe you could delay this.
117	11:09	But you have one more thing to consider.
118	11:12	If you take that insulin now, you won't have enough to take when you eat tomorrow.
119	11:19	And that was the way Alec Smith died.
120	11:23	And every other diabetic who's had to make that decision for themselves.
121	11:31	Now I have the privilege to pay most of these tangible prices.
122	11:38	But I still experience the smaller prices every day.
123	11:45	I've talked about some of those physical scars, but I want to talk about the ones that aren't visible.
124	11:52	Imagine running out of class, missing part of a lecture to grab a juice from the fridge; missing out on high-carb meals, because I just know that’ll mess with my blood sugar; delaying a workout because my blood sugar is not in range.
125	12:06	Even worse, stopping in the middle.
126	12:09	Being in the heat skyrockets my blood sugar and swimming drops it.
127	12:12	Being sick makes it do weird things, and any medication they put me on when I'm sick only makes it worse.
128	12:18	I'm spending so much mental energy doing math.
129	12:21	Calculating every second of every day, From the literal prices to the prices that I pay.
130	12:29	Because I miss moments.
131	12:32	So many moments.
132	12:33	Look ...
133	12:35	Standing here and trying to describe these parts of my life is hard.
134	12:41	I experience these things on a daily basis, and yet I can't seem to find the right words to try and describe to all of you what it's like.
135	12:50	The words I do seem to find don't fully depict the gravity of these situations.
136	12:56	What it feels like to be in them.
137	12:58	Situations that I got one singular day of education for.
138	13:04	One day to account for a lifetime of managing a chronic illness.
139	13:09	Now I can tell you the exact cost of that frosty.
140	13:15	Ninety-nine cents.
141	13:18	Fifty-four grams of carbohydrates, nine units of insulin and a heck of a headache when my blood sugar spikes.
142	13:25	It was a price I didn’t understand 10 years ago.
143	13:29	It was so much more than I could have ever guessed.
144	13:31	But now I know that every time I eat food, I am paying both the literal and metaphorical prices of insulin.
145	13:38	It was a price I was willing to pay nine years ago.
146	13:43	But now I get it so much more intimately than I did the first time.
147	13:47	And some of these prices, like the financial ones, are ones we shouldn't have to pay because we pay enough prices already.
148	13:54	Exactly 100 years ago this month, insulin was tested on a human for the first time.
149	14:04	And type 1 diabetes went from being a death sentence to treatable.
150	14:10	We took giant steps forward in improving the quality of life with diabetes.
151	14:17	Frederick Banting, the creator of insulin, sold the patent for just one dollar, so that anyone who needed insulin could have access to it.
152	14:27	And yet, diabetics are still losing their lives to the astronomical cost of something that we can't live without.
153	14:38	The idea of affordable insulin isn't revolutionary.
154	14:41	It's 100 years old.
155	14:46	Every day, myself and millions of diabetics experience a roller coaster that is type 1 diabetes.
156	14:55	We worry enough about keeping ourselves alive.
157	15:00	We shouldn't have to worry about whether or not we can afford our insulin.
158	15:06	Because I want to eat that frosty.
159	15:10	And have to worry about only one price.
160	15:15	That headache?
161	15:16	That's sometimes worth it.
162	15:21	Thank you.
163	15:22	(Applause)

Brooke Bennett: Why the price of insulin is a danger to diabetics