Transplants let diabetic forgo insulin shots

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For 46 years, Kathy Keller took insulin shots every day. For more than a month, she hasn't needed one.

"I feel really good," said Keller, 52, of Edgerton. "But it's strange. I feel like I'm forgetting to do something I always did."

Keller, who has a severe form of diabetes, had a second islet-cell transplant at UW Hospital in July, three months after receiving her first such transplant there. She is the 10th person to get the transplants since Wisconsin's only program to offer them started in 2002.

In the procedure, doctors infuse insulin-producing cells from donor pancreases into the livers of Type 1 diabetics who have struggled to control their blood sugar levels despite careful monitoring. Most of the patients, including Keller, have faced life-threatening episodes of low blood sugar that frequently cause seizures.

The transplanted cells have helped most of the patients reduce or eliminate their need for insulin shots, though some have had to resume the shots.

Keller, diagnosed with diabetes at age 6, took insulin shots four times a day before her first transplant, which allowed her to scale back to one shot a day. After the second transplant, she continued her daily shot, at a lower dose, until she was able to go off insulin completely at the end of August.

"It's totally different," she said. "I have a lot more energy than I've had in a long time."