![[0065] 2.8 Weeks Later](/comics/2009-06-08-[0065]-2.8-weeks-later.png "[0065] 2.8 Weeks Later")
The current story arc started with this strip: Addicted.
Forests in comic strips. Now more awesome than in reality. (It’s true. The third panel looks definitely more impressive than everything I’ve seen on my last hike some weeks ago. I’ll never walk that boring route again.)
If you are missing him: Woo will be back on Wednesday.
- Sandra: Tomorrow is the last day of your suspension, isn’t it?
- Larisa: Yep. But it’s forbidden to bring insulin to school now. So I guess you have to go without your favorite pyromaniac for a while longer.
- Sandra: At least you’re the most famous girl at our school now. Say, how’s it going in your new school?
- Larisa: Ugh, don’t ask…
- Larisa: …… Yesterday, a sixteen-year-old tried to sell me crack during recess.
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…Why has nobody post yet?
Because the new strip has been online for only 14 minutes before your post.
That day hasn’t arrive yet here!
Second panel should be “in our school” 😉
Does she have diabetes?
(I still <3 woo!)
I wonder what Woo would say of all this. That is, if he isn’t forced to look up hypoglucemia (or is it hyperglucemia?)
oh man that “punchline” is spot on
oops up till now I thought the girl with the long ponytail was a guy >.>
I suppose the hair should have been a dead giveaway but I can be slow to catch on sometimes 😛
hehe loved the pause before the last panel, great job 🙂
I hope she turned in the crack peddler.
what, was she kicked out of school or something. if so, why didn’t her mom get involved
And this actually happened in the 90s somewhere?
Tom Mazanec: Its still going on. Check out http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/parents-challenge-school-policies-for-diabetic-kids-rights.aspx?googleid=252926
This rings so true to reality….
School drug policies have left diabetics and many others (such as athsmatics) with but one option: 1) Hope you don’t die at school, good luck.
Ah, public education: breeding one generation of misanthropists after another…
Sigh….
@Frank
hypoglucemia is the lach of insulin hyperglucemia is the excess.
Second Panel: Sounds like my old school system…….
This brings up issues that not many are willing to touch upon. And yet, you go boldly ahead with it. I take my hat off to you.
Hmm… can’t bring insulin to school anymore, but said nothing about starting fires. 😉 Mwahahaha!
Yes, the irony of the last panel proved to be the punchline to the strip. Of course a sixteen year old hanging around somebody ten to twelve (I believe that is suppose to be the character’s age) should have alerted school officials of a problem.
A well done series.
I love the story thus far. The artwork is amazing, too.
Side note: isn’t she going to die now? I’m assuming that Larissa and Sandra’s school is the standard 8 hour school schedule? Even with a leeway of two hours, how is Larissa going to survive during school without insulin? How horrible! D=
Oh, last panel: that’s the picture they should put in the dictionary for irony.
@Cairn: I’m not sure of the American school systems (They’ve always confused me) but in England Secondary school has the kids from 11 through to 16. If the one Larissa goes to has a similar system, then it wouldn’t exactly be suspicious.
That being said, wouldn’t the parents of every diabetic kid in Larissa’s old school have had something to say about the outright ban?
@MrGBH: US system is 6-11 years for elementary school, 12-14 for junior high or ‘middle’ school and then 15-18 for high school, as I remember it. Kid could make more money at McDonalds than he can selling rock, too.
@Novil: If you’re ever in the US pacific northwest, stop by the Hoh rain forest for a hike. It is very picturesque and sometimes otherworldly.
“Forbidden to bring Insulin to school?” I know the whole “Zero Tolerance” policy most schools have nowadays is out of whack, but that’s a bit far-fetched. The school may as well raise a nice big flag with bold, red letters on it saying “SUE US!” on the flagpole out in front.
And that’s part of the problem: the only reason these “Zero Tolerance” policies exist is because many “modern” parents won’t even take an iota of responsibility anymore – they send the kid to school with their medical condition, no note, nothing, and when something goes wrong, like “why’d my kid overdose?”, or “why’d you let him have peanut butter/milk/ect, they’re allergic!?”, the school gets the blame, and quite often, sued. No ******* common sense anymore. = (
@ Frank & Shippo: Actually, it’s hypogl*y*cemia. (Or hypergl*y*cemia.) <⁄pedant mode>
As was stated when the strip began, this arc is based on a *real story* that we’ll get the details on in the end. I googled it and found only references to, but not the, actual news story. The punishment apparently consisted of exactly what is referred to above: 2 weeks suspension AND several says in an “alternative school.”
Days, even
dawwww… gonna have to wait to see the principal get it in the neck
or at least, i hope he does.
what kind of dumbass doesn’t twig that life saving medicine and narcotics are delivered in the same way? what other essential meds would he ban?
@tahrey: Well, you heard him “…aspirin!”
@shippo: I was wondering which one Larissa has, because of the whole “I’m low” discussion a couple weeks back. Sort of wanted to get out there that *hyper*glycemia does exist, and I believe it’s treated with insulin as well (to quicken breaking the sugar apart, and thus rid the system of it)
@reynard: spelled it correctly this time 🙂
It’s a small wonder that nobody has thought to use the mighty stick that is the American’s with Disabilities Act. Diabetics are tied to their testing supplies and (in some cases) insulin just as much as a paraplegic is tied to their chair, probably more so. In theory a paraplegic can still crawl around, a diabetic without the tools to monitor blood sugar might die. Adjustment to so called “Zero Tolerance” (Zero Sense?) rules falls under Reasonable Accommodation.
One thing that would be interesting is if non-diabetic kids brought insulin to school.
After all, insulin is taken by some bodybuilders to increase their anabolic phase. Little Hercules may have taken some.
At the Highschool in the city I used to live in there was a funny after affect to a Zero Tolerance policy.
A girl in school was having some bad cramps from “that time of the month” & another girl gave her a Midol (I think that is how it is spelled). Both girls were suspended for “passing out drugs” & “accepting drugs” or something like that. Anyways, a bunch of the students, not knowing the details, figured that Midol must give you some kind of drug high. For a brief bit of time there were a bunch of students taking menstrual cramp medicine trying to get high!
It’s almost that bad at our school. A kid got suspended for holding “weed” for another guy, and this stuff happens occasionally.
I highly recommend the “school sucks” podcast series; it will reveal that the public school model was intentionally designed to do the opposite of what it currently claims to do; it is intentionally bad.
Okay, as someone with Type 1 diabetes who ran across this strip, I think there needs to be some clarification of what a school can and cannot do as far as insulin administration, as well as what they can and cannot do as far as forbidding a child to take prescription medication. I’ve had this condition for over 30 years (diagnosed at age 11). I realize that the strip’s creator is using the example of school’s overreaction to OTC medication useage on the part of their students (aspirin, for example, which isn’t as benign as people think it is, BTW). However, Type 1 diabetes (which I assume is what Larissa has, given her age and the fact that she mentions that she can’t survive without the injectable hormone) might not be the best illness to use to point this out.
When I was a child, bringing one’s insulin to school wasn’t an issue. The protocol for treating a child with Type 1 diabetes was to give the child a shot of a mix of short-acting (Regular) and long-acting insulins (NPH) once or twice a day. These were not administered by the schools, but done at home, before school and before dinner if the child needed a second shot. To combat ‘lows’, the child needed to eat at a regular, set time to match the effects of the various insulins and keep some form of fast-acting sugar on them at all times. As I became a Type 1 diabetic berore home blood glucose meters were common and before the current treatment protocol of multiple shots and intensive insulin therapy (1-2 shots of very long acting basal insulin supplemented with rapid-acting insulin at mealtimes as a bolus or for correction, monitored with testing one’s blood sugar every two hours) became standard procedure for all Type 1 diabetics, I didn’t have to worry about the supidity of school administrators thinking I was injecting heroin with my syringes. For some of my bullying classmates, it was a different story, but that’s a separate issue.
These days, a child with Type 1 diabetes (an autoimmune disease in which the insuin-producing beta cells in the pancreas are killed by the body’s own immune system, making the child dependent on injected insulin for life – it is NOT brought about by anything the child ate, or by obesity, or any of the factors that contribute to the far more common condition called Type 2 diabetes) who must inject insulin has to let the school know that they’re on insulin. To not do so would be suicidal. They’ll usually tell their teachers, privately, what the symptoms of low blood sugar look like and that they have the condition. IF there is a school nurse, that nurse may or may not be the one that administers the child’s shot. Often, a parent is the one that makes the trip to the school, each day, and gives the child his or her lunchtime shot, depending on the age of the student in question (this is far more common with elementary-school-aged kids). Of course, the most common scenario is that the Type 1 diabetic child will be the one to test her own blood sugar, load her own syringe, carry her own ‘kit’ with her, count her own carbs at lunch and inject the appropriate amount of insulin by herself. Type 1 diabetic children have to grow up quickly and they shoulder far more responsibility than their peers as far as their health is concerned.
The attitude of the prinicpal in this strip is, I realize, supposed to represent the idiocy as far as the no=tolerance drup policies our public schools have in place. However, NO school administrator who values his job would EVER try to keep a Type 1 diabetic child from administering prescription medication. And insulin IS a prescription medication. There are a few kinds of insulin one can buy without a prescription from an M.D., but those are the old, non-patented, less effective insulins that were common when I was a child, none of them are OTC medications and you have to ask a pharmacist for them, meaning that ifyou’re under 18, good luck getting your hands on a vial of Regular or NPH insulin. The good stuff (Humalog, Novolog, Lantus, etc.) used with the intensive insulin therapy treatment protocol is prescription-only. I also find, as a commenter above has pointed out, the absence of a snarling, ready-to-kill parent somewhat puzzling. Every parent of a Type 1 diabetic child that I’ve met stands ready and willing to take apart any school administrator or principal that would take this kind of attitude towards their child, with their bare hands. Then, as another commenter pointed out, there is the Americans with Disabilities Act. While diabetes falls into a bit of a grey area as far as its classification as a disability goes (though Type 1 diabetes is much more of a disability than Type 2, at least as far as trying to manage one’s blood sugars from hour to hour is concerned), I’m pretty sure that Larissa’s school would want neither the negative publicity, nor the costly lawsuits that would result from trying to deny a Type 1 diabetic child her insulin.
There is also something that doesn’t quite jive here. When Larissa tests and says ‘I’m low’, she wouldn’t be reaching for her insulin. She’d be reaching for whatever fast-acting carb she ought to have on hand to bring her blood glucose back in line, back into the normal zone of 80-120 ml/dl. A low is anything below 60 mg/dl, and a high for a child (if the BG reading isn’t taken within two – 3 hours after a meal) is anything over 160 mg/dl. Ergo, no one would have thought twice about her reaching for a source of sugar, since they just would have assumed that she was reaching for a snack of some kind. They might have questioned the blood meter and the testing strips, though. Giving insulin to someone with low blood sugar is a great way to kill them, or at least send them into a severe hypoglycemic state (which includes sizures and unpredictable, violent behavior as the brain starts shutting down from lack of glucose).
@ CJ:
I understand where you’re coming from here, but this plot was based on something that ACTUALLY happened in the 90s, which is why insulin was the example used, and even by the time this strip was written, schools in the u.s. were still being extremely obstructive when it came to insulin usage, even banning the home-blood-sugar meters because they were seen as weapons by the school, preventing the diabetic children from being involved in physical education without a parent or nurse present, and needing either a nurse or the parent to be present to give the child the insulin. Some states may even still be like that, I’m uncertain as to current laws regarding this issue.
I find the idea of parents having to go to their child’s school to sort the insulin out ridiculous, given the inconvenience to the parent. They should be able to rely on the school for it.
Also, the principal’s obstruction here is because he’s an idiot and his thinking is limited by the concept of the ‘zero tolerance’ policy.
As for Larisa’s ‘feeling low’ comment, I believe she meant low on energy, which a hyper certainly causes (as I would imagine you would know, since you suffer from type 1 yourself) I’ve seen the effects hypers have on people, and fatigue – ie. feeling tired and low on energy – is one of them. I do agree that that was poorly explained in the comic, but the explanation would have spoilt the joke that she was taking insulin rather than illegal drugs.
Hope this clears a few things up!
@ Shippo:
You reversed Hypo and Hyper. “Glycemia” should be translated as “sugar level,” not “insulin level”. Hypo=Low Sugar Level. This happens when you take too-much insulin, and can kill you very fast. It causes sweating, loss of motor control, mental impairment, hostility, and eventually seizures, coma and death. Give somebody who is low a little simple sugar, like orange juice and they will be fine in a few minutes.
Hyper=High Sugar Level. This means you did not take enough insulin. Short-term it will cause irritability, very frequent urination (1-2 times an hour,) headaches, weakness, sleep, stomach and heart problems. After a day or two of that, your body will begin eating itself to get some badly-needed sugar, but without insulin your body cannot burn sugar. You will start to lose both fat and muscle rapidly, and die shortly thereafter. (I went from 6’3″ and 240 lbs. to about 125 lbs. before the doctors figured out what was wrong with me.) Older patients tend to go in a week, younger patients two or three.
Insulin is injected into fat, not veins. Back of the arms, legs, behind, or stomach.
The situation described in the comic happens ALL THE TIME in American schools. I am a Type I diabetic, and was nearly expelled because of my supply of emergency sugar packets. After P.E., I generally took some sugar packets to prevent a low, which which followed P.E. like clockwork. I was constantly harassed by school administrators for eating food or, once I explained what I was doing, taking medicine outside of the cafeteria. They ordered me to store my sugar packets in the nurse’s office. Diabetics on a serious low are like very aggressive drunks. If I had to walk across my school, wait for her to get there, and unlock my sugar packets, there is a good chance I would have forgotten what I was doing, broken my head open, or killed somebody on the way there. I refused to comply, and was issued with detentions. I ignored them. Eventually, I was met with the Principal, and told him that if they wanted to suspend/expel me, I would happily spend my free time contacting lawyers and the media, and let parents know that the school was putting their kids in danger. I won, and still ended up serving a week of detention for my defiance. My brother and sister took the less confrontational route, and hid their emergency medication (inhalers, heart medication,) while they were at school, so that they could carry it with them when they needed it. I had similar problems throughout college, and have seen it happen to others multiple times.
Why would teachers and administrators do this? Are they cruel? Idiots? Sometimes, but most do this because of lawyers. Imagine if the girl who was given an ibuprofen by her friend died because of some complication. Lawyers would file suit against the school district for failure to control the medication floating around their school, as they have in the past. Lawsuits are very expensive, so the school districts demand that all of the medication go under lock and key. It puts kids at risk, but it protects the school district from bankruptcy.
The sixteen-year-old trying to sell Larisa crack was obviously working for the principal.
@ Silverwolf:
Even principals have to augment their income somehow.
But, with Jose Mourinho in charge of Manchester United, Real Madrid chiefs are aware they will face a difficult challenge to bring him to the Bernabeu.