{"id":47734,"date":"2017-10-17T10:59:02","date_gmt":"2017-10-17T14:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=47734"},"modified":"2017-12-03T04:43:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-03T09:43:54","slug":"how-appellate-work-saved-me-from-diabetes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=47734","title":{"rendered":"How Appellate Work Saved Me from Diabetes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 44 years ago, on September 24, 1973, and have practiced appellate law full-time since 1989. Appellate law has played a major part in helping me live a longer and healthy life. In 1973, the life expectancy for a teenager diagnosed with diabetes was 50. I turned 59 last month. Here are some of the ways my career has extended my life and diabetes has made me a better appellate lawyer.<\/p>\n

Health Insurance<\/h4>\n

I joined a small Houston firm in 1987 and worked as a trial lawyer for a couple of years. In Texas in 1987, health insurance coverage was not a given for a person with diabetes, and the group insurer for my small firm would not cover me or my wife, Angie. This was a problem that led me to a new job in 1989 with a larger employer, the State of Texas, where I began work as a staff attorney at the First Court of Appeals, just before our first daughter, Audrey, was born.<\/p>\n

Health insurance has always been a key factor in my job choices. I\u2019ve mainly worked in law firms that had decent health insurance coverage. Without good health insurance, the annual costs of my diabetes\u2014quarterly endocrinologist visits; insulin; insulin pumps and supplies; test strips and meters; continuous glucose monitors and supplies\u2014would be more than $30,000 annually. Decent health insurance coverage has maintained my health and the ability to work long hours on complicated appeals.<\/p>\n

I know of many people with diabetes who have not been as lucky as me. I\u2019m endlessly grateful to the people that make appellate work possible\u2014judges, lawyers, and clients\u2014that I have almost always had good health insurance.<\/p>\n

Technology<\/h4>\n

There\u2019ve been vast leaps in the technology supporting appellate practice and diabetes management during my life and career. When I started, lawyers didn\u2019t have computers; we wrote briefs in longhand, and legal secretaries processed the words on Windows 3.0 and sent our work product to loud daisy-wheel printers. There was no email, texting, or video-conferencing.<\/p>\n

The same is true of diabetes management. When I started, people with diabetes took one shot of insulin every day and hoped for the best; there were no insulin pumps and the only way to test our blood glucose levels was to go to a doctor\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Working in offices with quickly evolving technology oriented me to finding and using new diabetes technology. Appellate lawyers have to keep up with ever-new tools for researching, writing, and collaborating. That\u2019s true of diabetes, too. I now have technology that permits me to continuously monitor my blood glucose level on an iPhone app<\/a>. If it\u2019s trending up, I can push a button on my insulin pump and lower it. The newest technology, the artificial pancreas<\/a>, allows an insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to talk to each other and make fine adjustments to insulin dosing in real time.<\/p>\n

As appellate lawyers, we consume new information and new technology every day at work, and this appetite for finding easier and better technology crosses over into diabetes management. It\u2019s no coincidence that I\u2019ve become an avid and early adopter of new diabetes technology. Practicing appellate law made me this way.<\/p>\n

Attitude<\/h4>\n

As I mature as an appellate lawyer and person with diabetes, it becomes clearer to me that the better habits of appellate practice and diabetes management are related.<\/p>\n

Managing life with diabetes has been compared to the swimming of a duck<\/a>. There\u2019s a great deal of effort, below the surface, underlying the appearance of a duck effortlessly gliding across the water. Good diabetes management is like that. There\u2019s a great deal of blood testing, carb counting, and insulin-dosing behind the scenes of the daily life of a person with diabetes. This is why the writer Scott Coulter calls his diabetes \u201cthe invisible disease<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

For appellate lawyers, our work is also like a duck swimming. Ideally, an appellate brief is an elegant document containing arguments whose persuasiveness flows from their beauty, simplicity, and truth. But the many long days and weeks required to produce a beautiful brief may in fact be filled with sweat, exhaustion, conflict, and anxiety.<\/p>\n

Diabetes has helped me keep perspective regarding the travails of appellate practice. As my law partner Blake Tartt used to say: \u201cWhy should I be upset about problems in my cases? It\u2019s not my problem, it\u2019s my client\u2019s problem.\u201d Appellate practice has helped me understand that diabetes may be managed with the same techniques we use to produce beautiful briefs: consistency, patience, research, analysis, and no more angst than necessary.<\/p>\n

Originally posted on the Texas Appellate Law blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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