Living with Type 1 Diabetes

My project is focused around my personal experience with type 1 diabetes and the insulin crisis. Insulin is a human right and should be accessible to all. The political and economic processes that preceded the frenetic rise of insulin prices and my personal experience with type 1 diabetes inspired me to make this project. Daily tasks that I do to ensure my survival would be considered mundane to me, but from another perspective quite the opposite. I want to offer educational and emotional components in my project for an audience that is diabetic, familiar with the disease or not. For that I would like for my audience to understand how much time is used in order to monitor my glucose levels, how reliant I am on insulin regardless of its soaring prices and how inhumane it is that insulin cannot be accessed by all. My written component discusses a negative situation that recently happened with a pharmacy- they rewrote my prescription so I’d receive less than normal but they were intentionally overcharging me. I was being taken advantage of by my local pharmacy. Also, I touch on the three dominant global manufacturers and how it all relates back to my experience with the disease. My research shows how insulin costs have rapidly increased and that it is the sixth most expensive liquid in the world. For my creative component, I have taken film photos documenting my relationship to my prescriptions as well as logging my blood sugar readings. The images exhibit me pricking my fingers and squeezing blood out of them, inserting my continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and my used prescriptions.