I am 32.  I have three small children. 

Two years ago, I made $15 dollars an hour; the most I have ever made since I began working as a metal-shop worker 15 years ago.  Two years ago, I had health insurance, through my employer.  Two years ago, I had access to a doctor, to the latest medicines available.  Two years ago, I could afford the best insulins technology offers a Diabetic.

I was diagnosed at age 13 with Diabetes Type 1.  From age 13 on, I was taking two insulin shots a day, just to eat and stay alive.  To not--means to go into a coma.  It also means agonizing pain, long term damage, and almost a definate life of complications, which usually creep up at the end anyway.  The key is to put it off as long as possible; the amputations, the loss of feeling, the increased damage to your circulatory system, the heart disease I already have been told I have early stages of.

But then I lost my job.  My income.  My ability to pay for the best medicine.  With that, within a month I lost my Health coverage.  My insurance.

I had been going to a relatively new clinic, at a local hospital.  It was a center for Diabetes care, and its primary goal is to help Diabetics not only get check ups, but to change their life.  To help patients make life changes to undue bad habits, learn good ones, and to bring forth the latest and most effective medicine to make life as healthy and normal as possible.

When I lost my insurance, I lost this.

They had me taking the newest type of insulin, which had me feeling better than I had in years.  I could actually feel parts of my lower legs that had pretty much gone numb in recent years, and reduced pain in my feet.  I was a happier and healthier person. 

But now, I could no longer afford these medications; I would have to go back to my older insulins.  I wouldn't have my new leg treatments. 

 I would no longer feel better.

In the year since, I have gradually gotten worse.  My feet hurt worse than ever.  My legs have unexplainable pains and tightness.  My sugar levels are out of control.  The exhilaration from better insulin, better life strategies, and access to a doctor who specializes in Diabetes is gone.  I can feel my body going downhill.

I am not eligible for Medicaid; I collect unemployment, and they count that as "income."  I exceed the amount one can make to have access to Medicaid.  So for over a year, I have had no doctor.  No health coverage at all.  I buy my insulin, test strips, needles out of pocket.

The only advice I could get from the Medicaid office was this; go on disability. 

If I wake up in the middle of the night with pain, I don't have a doctor to go see what the problem is.  I can't even afford an ambulance ride if my sugars get into comatose levels.  I just have to ride it out.  That is the health care I have.

Alot of people in Congress need to know that while they enjoy health benefits, and have zero chance of a layoff in that position, people like myself are dying slowly, and we see it and want to live.  Live a long healthy life like everyone else.

This bill is for me.