In a case of stunning ineptitude, staff at an Orange County branch of Bank of America locked in an elderly diabetic woman after closing at the end of the day on Wednesday. The woman, Marian R. Prescher (73), went to the bank late Wednesday to access the contents of a storage box she keeps there. The bank shut up shop at 6 p.m., and employees apparently forgot to check the private room that she was in before leaving.

Around that time - I'm not clear on whether it was before she was locked in or perhaps as a result of being locked in - Prescher's blood sugar dropped into the danger zone. Fortunately, Prescher was discovered around midnight by a cleaning crew, whose members found her in diabetic shock - "unconscious and cold to the touch," according to a spokesman for the OC Sheriff's Department. The woman was treated in hospital for hypoglycemia and later released.

The is pretty serious. If she had not been found when she was, Prescher could have died. A friend told a reporter that Prescher's blood sugar had dropped to 20, which is dangerously low.

A statement came from Bank of America on Friday to say the incident is under investigation. I'm thinking they are justifiably sweating over the bad publicity this has brought the bank.

St. Louis resident and diabetic Roosevelt Sims was on an Amtrak train Sunday night, speeding towards his destination - Los Angeles. He never made it to that fine city, however, because he was forced off the train by a conductor. It seems Amtrak personnel found Sims disorderly, presumed he was drunk, and decided to eject him before he disturbed other passengers. His family members, however, say Sims was diagnosed with diabetes just the day before leaving St. Louis, and they think he may have been in diabetic shock. That, rather than intoxication, they say, may have been the reason for his alleged unruly behavior.

Initial reports made this episode sound like a horrible abuse against this man had been committed by Amtrak. Stories were filled with descriptions of his being dumped in the middle of nowhere amidst 800,000 acres of pine forest. The details were faithfully repeated by various websites. Okay, so the police helped out when a local lieutenant provided the following juicy quotation: "You don't put anyone off in an area like that. There's no water up here, we're at almost 8-thousand feet." Meanwhile, MyFox St.Louis quoted Sims' irate wife saying of his treatment, "I wouldn't have put a dog off like that."

The reality, it seems, wasn't quite as awful at the gushing headlines indicated. Sims was put off the train and, yes, this did occur in the middle of a pine forest. However, he was not alone: a conductor got off the train with him and waited for the police, who had been notified, to come and pick Sims up. But when police did arrive, Sims took off into the woods alone, leaving his bags and meds behind. He did take his cell phone, though, and used it to call his family. Also, Sims was not put off literally in the middle of nowhere; rather, he was escorted off at Williams Junction, a regularly scheduled stop along the way. Sims was found Thursday night walking along the railroad track and was taken to a hospital for a checkup.

All-in-all, sounds like a case possibly bungled by Amtrak, but one that the media seized upon and reported (embroidered?) with great relish. Amtrak has issued a statement saying its staff merely followed company policy in their handling of the Sims incident. Can you say public relations disaster?

Footnote: I was surprised to notice that the WLTX report describes Sims as an "elderly man." I wonder how many people these days consider someone in their sixties to be elderly? I don't. Guess it makes the story sound all that more exciting, huh?

Well, now. Here's a sad update on a sad story: the East Chicago, IN, diabetic man involved in a recent violent altercation with police is not doing so well. I blogged a post about this back on August 31. Jerome Clement went into diabetic shock while out in public. Police officers attending the scene, thinking Clement was just being your typical belligerent drunkard, "subdued" him. Seemed to make sense to them at the time, I guess, as Clement was struggling with them and otherwise resisting arrest. Next thing you know, however, he went into cardiac arrest and suffered a lack of oxygen supply to the brain for a short period - enough to cause irreparable damage to the brain.

Anyway, that's the background. Here's the update: Clement's family has announced (via their lawyer) that he has been in a coma since the incident and has now been taken off life support. Apparently, test results show Clement is exhibiting little brain activity and is unlikely to recover brain function.

I had read that Clement's family plans to sue the East Chicago police. It will be interesting to see if this makes it to court and, if so, what a judge and jury would conclude regarding the extent to which (if at all) the police's treatment of Clement contributed to his current sad state.

I recently blogged about an Ohio man who was assaulted by police whilst experiencing diabetic shock. The police failed to recognize the signs of shock and thought he was just a difficult drunk. The man ended up in hospital with two broken ribs after than incident. Well, that guy was lucky compared with this next one.

Jerome Clement (39) of East Chicago, IN, went into diabetic shock on Friday. Because they did not recognize the signs of shock he was exhibiting (including slurred speech), four police at the scene thought it was just a case of belligerent drunkenness. Admittedly, Clement did not help them out any - he started punching and kicking the officers. He then appears to have gone into cardiac arrest, and the oxygen supply to his brain may have been cut off for a time. He is now in critical condition in hospital and his doctors think he may have suffered brain damage. Of course, the family plans to sue the East Chicago Police Department.

Isn't this awful? On the one hand, you can see why the police assumed the guy was just drunk and I guess that's usually the case in a situation like this. On the other hand, cases like this are coming up in the news with alarming frequency. Isn't it time police officers received some serious training on diabetes and the signs of diabetic shock?

An Akron, Ohio, man who was beaten by police whilst in diabetic shock has settled his lawsuit against the city, accepting $35,000 in compensation. The police officers in question failed to recognize the signs of shock and thought instead that the man, Merle Belford (57) was resisting arrest. The incident took place following a traffic incident involving Belford.

The details of their assault on Belford is quite horrific and seems to have been way above and beyond what was required considering the nature of the incident. Belford suffered two broken ribs and a punctured lung after being sprayed with Mace, kneed, struck in the ribs and thigh, and shot four times with a Taser gun. This on a man who was apparently in a non-responsive state at the time. The judge presiding over the case dismissed most of Belford's claims against the city, but upheld his charge of excessive force, saying that the two officers who beat Belford "used brutal force."

Belford and his attorney say they accepted the $35,000 settlement so that Belford could move on from the event. However, they are angry that the city continues to defend the police officers in question even after the judge's comments that their behavior was "brutal." While I'll admit I don't know all the details of this case, that seems a fair criticism to me. What is wrong with the city officials that they don't feel this man is owed a big apology? Also, $35,000 doesn't sound like that much to me, considering most of it will go towards covering Belford's medical bills.

The marketing manager of a store in the Scottish city of Edinburgh saved a man's life recently. Her actions were all thanks to her knowledge of first aid, gleaned from a first aid course she had only just completed. Helen Lavin noticed a young man in a chair who seemed at first glance to be taking a nap. Taking a closer look, however, she saw signs that he was in diabetic shock: his skin color was odd and on closer inspection she found his breath smelled sweet. She gently revived the man, then raced him some sugary food and drink. She also helped him retrieve his meds from his jacket pocket and take them. Twenty minutes later, he was fine.

The first aid course was what did it, says Lavin. "If I'd never done that course or known first aid, I would've walked past that man and I don't think he would have been here today, she says.

The Press of Atlantic City reports on a quick-thinking police officer who helped out with a recent diabetes-related incident in the Lower Township area of Atlantic City, New Jersey. The officer, Joel Sanders, stopped a Chevy Tahoe whose driver was suffering convulsions after going into diabetic shock. In so doing, he stopped the car from heading towards a yard where children were playing. When Sanders saw the vehicle moving towards the yard he broke out the rear window, unlocked the door, jumped in and turned the car off.

The occupant of the car was treated at the scene for paramedics. I guess locals should be grateful not only that Sanders was there to save the day, but also for the fact that the driver somehow had taken his foot off the accelerator. If the car was traveling at normal speed, no one could have done anything but watch in horror, and that is exactly why crashes involving drivers in diabetic shock are so awful.

It's pretty common to hear about people coming to the aid of others who have gone into diabetic shock. This one's one of the more dramatic ones I've heard about: two little sisters, aged seven and five, saved their father when he went into shock - get this - in the deep end of the family's swimming pool! This happened recently in Lowell, Massachusetts.

The girls, Hailee and Hanna, screamed for help when their father, Gary Richards, lost consciousness. Help promptly arrived in the form of their neighbors, Alex (16) and Marcio Azevedo (19), who dragged Richards out of the water. The girls' dad ended up at the hospital on life support, but is now doing well. As for the girls and their neighbors, they were all honored by their town's mayor on Tuesday "for showing courage and level-headedness" during the incident.

A story that's all over the news at the moment relates to the death of a Colorado man who went into diabetic shock while driving his pickup truck. The outcome is often tragic when diabetics go into shock whilst driving, but this case is particularly sad.

The man, Scott Porter, who was forty-nine years old, kept his foot pressed down on the accelerator of the vehicle so much (and, I guess, for so long) that the engine overheated and went on fire. Porter died in the blaze. Investigators say he probably was unaware of what was happening. His death was ruled an accident.

Back on May 12 I blogged a post about a woman who was shot with a Taser stun gun by a police officer who thought she was resisting his instructions, when in fact she was in diabetic shock. Now, here's details of a similar incident: a man is suing the city of Charleston and two of its police officers, claiming they assaulted him on June 19, 2005. The man, Jeffrey Mark Bricker, says he went into shock while driving his car. The car ploughed into a guardrail on the side of a street. An investigating officer turned up and ordered Bricker to get out of the car. When he didn't respond, the officer sprayed Bricker with pepper spray at point-blank range then dragged him from the car and beat him, the suit alleges. You'd think this was all bad enough, but there's more: Bricker also says that another officer turned up and used a Taser gun on him as well. I guess if Bricker's account of the incident turns out to be true, those officers' careers are over.

Wow. After my previous notes about the Taser assault on the woman in diabetic shock, here's another nasty story. This time from the United Kingdom. According to the UK newspaper, the Daily Record, a diabetic man going into shock was refused the high-sugar snack he needed at a grocery store because he didn't have any cash with which to pay for what he needed. The man was out cycling when the attack came on. He staggered into the shop near Aberdeen and asked for a drink or candy bar to raise his blood sugar level, but was turned away by a cashier who, the man says, was "very, very nasty." The store spokeswoman said that the cashier in question "deeply regrets her error of judgment." Meanwhile, the man was okay after a passerby helped him out and gave him something sugary to drink. But isn't this awful? Where's the humanity, huh? Although you also have to ask: if you were not diabetic and knew nothing about the disease, would you have turned the guy away too? I suspect the answer would often be yes, especially in the US where I think people are mistrustful of strangers. The moral of the story? Be nice to strangers. And always carry your wallet with you...just in case.

Oh, Lordy. This is a truly awful story. When a Washington woman went into diabetic shock while driving her car, a police officer responded by using a Taser, or electronic stun gun, on her. The woman, Leila Fuchs, rear-ended another car back in July 2005 after going into diabetic shock. When the police turned up and instructed her to open her window or door she did not respond. Instead of realizing something was up, health-wise, one of the officers broke the window of the car and shot her with the Taser, shocking her with 50,000 volts of electricity. An inquiry into the incident has found that the officer broke his department's rules for using the gun and it also determined that the officer and his colleagues did not understand departmental policy on use of the weapon. Fuchs is suing the city, the police department and the officers involved in the incident for one million dollars in damages. Can't say as I blame her...