Josh Wilkerson and his fiancé Rose Walters were planning to have a wedding.
To make their dreams come true, they needed to save enough money.
But Wilkerson, a Type 1 diabetic, had already used his stepfather’s health insurance. He had to pay almost $1,200 a month for insulin he needed.
The 27-year-old made $16.50 per hour at a dog kennel, and like other young diabetics, it was difficult to afford the price tag.
So he asked his doctor if there are other insulin options. Wilkerson was told about lower-grade insulin that was available at Walmart – ReliOn.
Both Wilkerson and Walters tried over-the-counter insulin.
“We figured: Hey, it’s $25. We can do that. And we’ll just work with it and try to do the best we can,” Walters, who also has Type 1 diabetes, said.
Even though the lower-grade insulin is more affordable, it can take up to four hours to work without definitive success rates.
“The fact that it takes so long to kick in? It scared me a little bit,” she expressed.
The hours it required to work means users need to have a strict schedule and make sure that they take the correct dosage.
In 2015, another woman who also used the OTC insulin said to NPR that she struggled if she did not get the right amount of dosage.
“It’s a quick high and then, it’s a down,” Carmen Smith said. “The down part is, you feel icky. You feel lifeless. You feel pain. And the cramps are so intense — till you can’t walk, you can’t sit, you can’t stand.”
After Wilkerson started taking the Walmart insulin, he experienced mood swings and severe stomach problems.
“Something in him, you could just tell, was different,” Walters told The Washington Post. “I would tell him, ‘Check your blood sugar,’ and he would check it, and it would be high.”
Four months before their wedding, Wilkerston was asked to work overnight at the dog kennel while the manager was on leave. He agreed as it was a great way to earn extra money.
But when his fiancé didn’t hear from him for some time, she went to the kennel where she found Wilkerston unconscious.
“I just remember smacking him on the face, saying, ‘Babe, wake up. You have to wake up,’” Walters said.
It was discovered that he had suffered strokes a few hours after taking a dose of the OTC insulin. He had fallen into a diabetic coma as his sugar levels were 17 times higher than normal.
After five days, Wilkerston was taken off life support.
“It’s very hard,” Walters said. “How many more young Type 1 diabetes patients have to die before something finally changes?”
Wilkerson’s mother, Erin Weaver, said: “It’s pretty much a death sentence. They have no health insurance or good jobs to afford what they need, so they’re left with the pittance that is left.”
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