Last Sunday, a 65-year-old St. Louis man was kicked off a train by Amtrak personnel in the middle of a national forest in Arizona, mistaking his diabetic shock for drunk and disorderly behavior. As a result, he was missing until he was found last night.
He is now recovering in the hospital. This man had been recently diagnosed with diabetes, so I can relate to what happened to him: within weeks of having being diagnosed myself, I had my first “low” (40 mg/dL) and it wasn’t funny. And a blood sugar of 40 is NOTHING compared to what this man was going through at the time he was left to his fate!
Enough is enough! We have to put a stop to this madness, people! There’s an unacceptable rise in cases of diabetic people mistakenly getting treated like crap because private or public officials are not trained to identify blood sugar lows or diabetic shocks.
Help get the word out about this (thanks to Marston, from SugarStats, for the link to Amtrak’s contact us form):
-Digg the story
-Contact any media people you know about this.
-Let Amtrak know what you think about their actions (this is what I just wrote to them).
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Last night I learned about the event with a senior person in diabetic shock that was kicked off one of your trains by your personnel in a National Forest in Arizona!
As a diabetic, I feel outrage to learn about this. But as a human being it simply escapes me how the people who did this could be OK with their conscience. Although I cannot understand how your personnel may not be trained to identify a diabetic shock, much less I can understand that anybody would be fine with leaving someone (even if they were drunk) to their own fate in the middle of nowhere.
You guys should take action to make sure this never happens again. This is an embarrassment!!
