The Durable Diabetic: Gladys Dull Relies On The Basics To Make Medical History

by james s. hirsch

She was three years old when both her parents died from the Great Influenza. Her four siblings scattered to live with relatives, but she was taken in by neighbors in Granville, North Dakota. She grew up on a wheat farm, which fell on hard times during the Great Depression. The Dust Bowl finally drove the family off the land.

Gladys Dull ended up in Walla Walla, Washington, and now at 90 years old, she is an American survivor – but not just for the hardships endured by so many of her generation. In November of 1924, at age seven, Gladys became deathly ill and was diagnosed with diabetes. Her doctor didn’t know how to treat it, other than to instruct the girl to eat meat. (Carbohydrates would further raise her blood sugar.) Insulin had been discovered two years earlier, but very few clinics had the drug and certainly none on the wind-swept plains of North Dakota. Her parents scraped up the money for a train to Rochester, Minnesota, where they took their adopted daughter to the Mayo Clinic.

There, Gladys received her first insulin shot. Since then, she’s taken 60,000 more and has been on insulin therapy for 83 years – longer than any person in history.

“I’ve never missed a shot in all those years,” she says. “Not one shot.”

Gladys Dull’s longevity is partly attributed to genetics, which can play a role in protecting against diabetic complications. Dull has virtually none, so her genes have clearly served her well. But other long-time patients have taken full advantage of the new tools and technology in diabetes care, giving them maximum opportunities to reduce their health risks and extend their twilight years. Oddly enough, Gladys has avoided therapeutic advancements for most of her life. She began using disposable syringes only five years ago – she was still using glass syringes with replaceable steel needles – and she began home-glucose monitoring only five years ago as well. (She was still testing her urine.)

So for 78 years, Dull had little idea what her actual blood sugar was and, truth be told, she would just as soon go back to the urine tests. “I liked that more,” she says. “The finger sticks don’t feel so good, and you can’t get the blood out.”

Her durability is a tribute to her rigorous self-discipline, a commitment to an old-fashioned ethic that is easily lost in the high-tech age of downloadable glucose meters, synthetic analogs, and continuous sensors. What’s her secret? A strict diet, regular injections, and a healthy lifestyle.

The result has been a full and rich life. Growing up, she farmed wheat and rode horses, motorcycles, and snowmobiles; later she held a full-time job at a photo studio and helped found a humane society in Walla Walla. In 1943, she married George Dull (he would work in construction after the war), and four years later Gladys delivered their only child, Norman. “The doctor said I would never have any children, but I showed him,” she says. And she remained physically active, tending to a family cottage in the Blue Mountains. “Hiking and camping – that was her greatest love,” Norm says.

Dull is part of dwindling cadre of “insulin pioneers” who were among the first to use the drug in the years following its discovery in 1922. There are only five patients in the U.S. who have been taking insulin for at least 75 years, according to Eli Lilly, which manufactured the product after its discovery. Lilly only found out about its most loyal customer last year after Dull’s principal caretaker contacted the company. Lilly confirmed her medical history by investigating the records at the Mayo Clinic; she then received a Lilly for Life Award for 75 years on insulin. Never mind that she passed that milestone the previous decade. “The award doesn’t go high enough,” Norm says.

That she survived her childhood is itself a miracle. Had she developed diabetes even one year earlier, the Mayo Clinic may not have had the insulin to save her. When she was 9 years old, she had her appendix removed, after which she went into a coma. Few diabetics survived surgery in that era. “They took me back to Rochester,” Dull says. “I think I was in a coma for couple of days. I still remember my good old doctor, Russell M. Wilder. He picked me up and kissed me after I came out of that coma. I’ll always remember that, I guess.”

Her mother played a large role in helping Gladys adjust. By today’s standards, for example, the early needles were large and painful, but they do not inspire bad memories for Dull. “A 7-year-old doesn’t like shots,” she says, “but my mother wouldn’t let me have one bite to eat unless she gave me that shot. And I got on to it . . . It didn’t hurt that bad, I guess.”

From the outset, Mayo’s clinicians emphasized a strict low-carb. Wax figures of food demonstrated portion size. Scales were used at every meal. Thick books gave calorie counts. “I followed the whole deal,” Dull says. “But I’ve done it for so long, I don’t weigh anymore. I don’t even have the scales. But I can look at something and know how many grams.”

While she likes ice cream – “I will cheat every once in awhile” – she rarely strays from her diet, nor does she drink alcohol or smoke. As Norm says, “In 1993, for her fiftieth anniversary, I saw her eat one piece of cake, and I just about fell to the floor.”

Most striking is how rigid Dull’s care has been over the years. As a girl, her mother would test her urine by mixing it with Benedict’s solution, bringing it to a boil, and observing the color. “You’re supposed to stay blue, but if it’s a brick color, you’re loaded with sugar,” Gladys says. But the family couldn’t adjust her insulin without consulting the doctors at the Mayo Clinic, and even as an adult, Dull says she never really changed her regimen – two shots a day, same insulin doses.

By the time she was in her eighties, she began experiencing more hypoglycemia, but she was reluctant to adjust. Then five years ago, her husband died, and three days later, she suffered a stroke. Things had to change. When a doctor asked Norm what her mother’s blood sugar was, he said, “Grayish-brick” “He couldn’t understand what I was talking about,” Norm says. “He couldn’t believe that she had never taken a blood test.”

The home glucose monitoring has helped stabilize Gladys’s blood sugars; the glass syringes were also discarded. She continues to live by herself, in the house that she and George had shared for most of their married lives. And she remains fiercely independent. She does her own laundry, occasionally gardens, and does not use a cane. Her walker stays in the bedroom. She does acknowledge some limitations: with impaired vision from non-diabetic causes, a caretaker comes twice a day to prepare her meals, give her injections, and straighten up. “I’m not a very good house keeper anymore,” she concedes.

Her black dog, a Schipperke named Coalie, is her protector.

Her four siblings have all passed away, so Norm, who runs a video production company in a nearby town, takes her to dinner each Tuesday, and Gladys calls him each evening at 9 p.m., to tell him her blood sugar and confirm she’s eaten her snack.

Says Norm: “It’s peanut butter and jelly – sugarless – and it holds her through the night.”