I have really wanted to write this and not at the same time. It's not that I don't want it said, but more that I am not sure I have the exact words… I kind of think that there exists something in-between spaces. Like, when you enter an old house and touch a window frame: how many people before you stood and made contact with that point before you? It's like past, present and future all come together in that space. It exists, but doesn't. It's just kind of in-between. History? Memory? Connection, maybe? I don't really know that you can confine it to a word… or perhaps it is a different word for different people in different points of time.
People generally associate the discovery of insulin with the city of Toronto, but no event exists in isolation and there is a backstory to this story. Prior to moving to Toronto to begin his research into diabetes, Frederick Banting lived for a short while in the city of London, Ontario. After kind of a miserable start in private practice Banting also began to teach medicine at the University of Western Ontario. He had no relation to diabetes, but one day a colleague asked him to fill in and give a lecture regarding the pancreas. One evening he lay in bed reading material to prepare for the talk. At 2 am he woke up and wrote down an idea that came to him regarding a possible treatment for diabetes… and that is how his trek to Toronto and the eventual discovery of insulin treatment began. The house where this small moment took place still exist in London. It is now a museum. Most of the house covers various aspects of the site's history, but the bedroom where Banting dreamt his original hypothesis has been preserved.
I visited the space with a friend on Wednesday. As we entered the bedroom the curator told us of the various other visitors to the room. There are, essentially, three groups of people that come to the museum:
(1) the average cultural tourist, with no ties to the issue
(2) researchers:
- The rational bunch generally decried any sense of mysticism about the room. But eventually there came a point where they would lean on the bed to comment on the wall paper or some other detail of the room. "It's not the mattress," the curator would mention "it's the bed frame that's original" and invariably the researcher(s) would inch back to grasp the bed frame.
- Of course, there are exceptions to every rule: one gentleman from South America who had been doing diabetes research for over twenty years would was positively giddy as he sat on the bed. He managed to convince the curator that if he was just allowed to have a quick nap in the bed perhaps it would provide the inspiration he needed to cure the condition. The curator noted that if that was all that he needed to come up with a cure, he would sure oblige- and, so, he dimmed the lights and let the researcher have a quick rest in the room.
- A family with a 9-year-old girl who had been diagnosed with diabetes some five years earlier. Though the rest of the family entered to bedroom, she would not enter the room. She merely stood by the door, never crossing the threshold.
- A woman whose father had been among the first to receive treatment in Europe; this allowed her to be born 15 years later.
- A young mother whose baby had been recently diagnosed with diabetes. She came into the room, sat on the bed and began sobbing. The curator let her be, but after ten minutes, he could still hear her crying from down the hall. He grabbed a box of Kleenex from his office and went to the room. When he entered and offered a tissue the mother stood up and stopped crying. "No. I don't need that. I will not cry anymore now. I know that my child will be okay." At which, the curator took the Kleenex for himself as he started sobbing.
I sat on the bed. I held onto the railing and in that moment I felt like I was holding the hand of every other person that had entered and held onto that space... including the person that came up with the idea for the research that would eventually save my life just over 70 years later. I can't describe what that felt like and I rather suspect that every person that has sat in that same spot has experienced a different connection to that space. I can tell you this though: when I left that site I no longer hated my body and its misfunction. I will never again feel angry for the regimen that follows being diabetic. Somehow, at that moment I made peace with my body and its broken pancreas, because what I realized in being momentarily transported back to a time when there was no treatment for diabetes is that it was once a inescapable death sentence: that disgusting lethargy and thirst that I felt prior to being diagnosed and medicated is generally how people stayed until they eventually died of a slow starvation over six months to a year tops. January 16th, 1994 is when I was diagnosed and when that anniversary surfaces next Saturday I won't think of it as 16 years with diabetes, but 16 years of life I wouldn't have had if it weren't for insulin... And for that my note read: "Dear Dr. Banting: Have had diabetes for 15 years; thank you for saving my life.
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