The chaotic industry behind the insulin I need to live

In the winter of 2005, I was so severely underweight and starved of energy that I went to great lengths to provide my body with any source of sugar. That included chugging a brilliant cocktail of Skittles dissolved in warm water. My sisters thought it was gross. As I sipped my drink, we watched Law & Order: SVU on television, but my vision was so blurry that I could barely make out which characters were which. Their voices helped. Later that night, I was jerked awake in my bed by simultaneous charley horses in each of my legs. My calf muscles were so contracted that my feet flipped up towards my face, something you only see in exorcism scenes from horror films. And, just like in The Exorcist, I wet myself. This wasn’t the first time in...

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