Quite Frankly………Just Giving a Damn.

Click the picture and watch the clip, it is only 27 seconds long and return back here. The movie is Gone with the Wind (GWTW).  With the Oscars just a few days away, I thought I would give my feelings on a few classics and how they pertain to our lives.

GWTW was the best picture , Best Director and won 8 total Oscars way back in 1939.  It was way ahead of its time, and the most successful, for many reasons.  In 2012, when adjusted for inflation, the movie would have grossed 4 billion (with a ‘B’-billion) dollars.

If you ask your parents, and in some cases your grandparents, they will tell you that the main reason is because of the one little word uttered as Rhett walks out on our dear Scarlet, the word ‘Damn’.

Now most who hear that will say ‘Get out of town’….the word ‘damn’?  The word, as stated in the movie is the #1 line uttered in any movie of all time according to the American Film Institute and the rumor persists to this day that the producers were fine $5,000 for saying it.  When Clark Gable stated the sentence in 1939—-the theatres shook.

In 1939, the word ‘damn’ was not a word used on the silver screen.  Seriously.

A lot has happened since 1939 and I would imagine the word is even used in cartoons in today’s world.  Some may argue that is a bad thing, others would say change is good.
Change is good.

Sometimes those changes do not happen overnight or as quickly as we would like, do they?  In our diabetes world we want everything as fast as possible; better management tools, approval from insurance companies, a doc’s appointment, and a cure; are just all things that do not come fast enough.

If you have been diagnosed in the last 5 or 10 years here are a few things that you may not know (now some of these changes go back even further but here is just a taste). –Glucose testing was done by peeing in a cup and dipping a stick in it and the individual would be informed if there were traces of glucose–this WAS THE STANDARD for testing at one time. –insulin pumps, at one time, were bigger than a table with a microwave on it.  Many thought the idea of daily use was ridiculous, at best. –insulin was mixed together to give a proper dose for short-term and long-term glucose control and before you could mix them; it was two different shots EACH time. –the time waiting for a blood glucose reading has slowly moved to where we are today with 90 seconds, 1 minute, 46 seconds etc etc  each time a check of a blood sugar was done. –islet cell transplantation, even with immunosuppression drugs, was thought by some would never work for one second—and not the over ten years in some it has been proven to survive. –The concept of CGMs or continuous glucose monitors was a dream at best 15 years ago. –A shot using a pen was unheard of. –Originally, you had your choice of one insulin pump; love it or don’t use it.

There are more of course but you are getting the idea.  The idea here is that when something first ‘pops’ up, history has proven that the good ideas will turn into something very tangible for those in the diabetes world but it will take time; and other ideas will fade away (ask me sometime about the BioDyasensor and the Dream Beam).

No, things do not move as fast as we would like and we want things tomorrow (or yesterday).  But I believe there has been more advancement in the last ten years than in the 50 before it….and that is pretty cool for those of us involved in this diabetes world who quite frankly, give a damn.

I am a diabetes dad.

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