Episode 4: Hope for 12-year-old diabetic with allergy to insulin

Abstract

"What would you do if the medication that kept your daughter alive also caused her unbearable pain?

12-year-old Emmy Reeves from Columbia, South Carolina had Type One diabetes, a condition shared by over 1 million Americans. It is usually treatable with insulin medication. But Emmy had an extremely rare problem: An allergy to insulin medication.

The Reeves family eventually connected with Dr. Raja Kandaswamy, a transplant surgeon at the University of Minnesota Department of Surgery. Dr. Kandaswamy’s proposal was to make Emmy the youngest pediatric pancreas transplant recipient in the United States in nearly 25 years."