Advertisement Roberts was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 15 and was hospitalized for four weeks. As a teenager, he had to have regular urine tests and received insulin shots twice a day.
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Dr. Tom Roberts, a pediatrician who specializes in diabetes, is retiring after many years with Gundersen Lutheran.
PETER THOMSON photo
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“The urine tests were extremely inaccurate,” Roberts recalled. “We had poor ways of monitoring blood sugar back then, but I was a good kid and took insulin regularly.
“It all seems so crude now, and I was not well controlled, but I was very good at taking insulin,” he said.
Roberts, 66, has been working with children and diabetes as a pediatrician for more than 37 years at Gundersen Lutheran. Roberts, who has one of the longest tenures as a physician currently working at the medical center, is retiring at the end of this week.
A Bismarck, N.D., native, Roberts received a degree in biological sciences from Rutgers University in 1964. He went to medical school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and did a rotating general internship at Gundersen Lutheran.
“Diabetes was my major emphasis, but I wanted to see other children and take care of other problems, too,” Roberts said.
After his internship in La Crosse, he wanted to return to Gundersen Lutheran.
“I wanted to work with very talented physicians who were my teachers and wonderful human beings,” Roberts said. “I wanted to practice where there was an ongoing education program and an environment that promoted learning.”
Roberts joined the pediatrics department at Gundersen Lutheran in 1971. He moved to the Onalaska clinic in 1996. He has had about 150 patients a year for the past 20 years.
Roberts said his diabetic patients represented about 20 percent of his practice and about half of his time.
Roberts said he was doing fairly well himself with insulin injections and didn’t want to try an insulin pump, which continuously delivers insulin to help patients gain good control over blood sugar.
But he finally gave in more than 10 years ago and got a pump.
“I did recognize that my patients could do better with pumps,” Roberts said. “Some of my patients and the diabetes educators that I worked with started to give me a hard time that I wasn’t using a pump.
“Now that I have had a pump for many years, I consider it the best thing that has happened to me relative to my diabetes,” he said. “I would never go back to injection therapy.”
Roberts said it helps diabetic patients to know he has the same disease and he understands some of their challenges.
“I tell kids there’s nothing they can’t do,” he said. “They have to be smart and they have the tools to make them smart, but there are no restrictions.
“I tell them to follow their dreams.”
Roberts said his mother, Ethel, a hospital nurse for 50 years, was his inspiration to him as a doctor and a person. “I am who I am today, as a doctor and a person, because of my mother,” Roberts said. “I owe her everything.”
Roberts and his wife of 43 years, Barbara, have three sons — Christopher, a physician in internal medicine at Midelfort Clinic in Eau Claire; Patrick, a podiatrist at Midelfort; and Daniel, a database administrator at Gundersen Lutheran.
Roberts answered questions about diabetes:
Q: What’s the difference between type 1 and 2 diabetes? Are the symptoms the same? Is there anything you can do to prevent type 1?
A: Type 1 diabetes is a disease caused by the cells in the pancreas which produce insulin being destroyed with the result being that enough insulin is not being made to meet the body’s needs. Type 2 diabetes is primarily a problem of increased insulin resistance so that the effect is that the body is unable to adequately use the available insulin.
In type 2 diabetes there will also eventually be inadequate insulin due to exhaustion of insulin supplies. The symptoms are often the same, although the symptoms of type1 tend to be more dramatic. Type 1 is more likely to be associated with weight loss. To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to prevent type 1 diabetes.
Q: Why is there such an epidemic of diabetes? What role does obesity play?
A: The epidemic of diabetes is primarily due to an increase in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. There is no question that this is associated with a general increase in the incidence of obesity. Type 2 diabetes can potentially be decreased by decreasing the incidence of obesity.
Weight control in children is very important to prevent type 2 diabetes particularly if there is a family history of the condition. Weight control needs to begin relatively early in childhood. The only way to control weight is by restricting calorie intake plus encouraging an active lifestyle.
Q: Can you be skinny and have diabetes?
A: It is unusual to have type 2 diabetes if you are not overweight although this can happen. Type 1 diabetics are more likely not to be heavy.
Q: Is compliance an issue with diabetic kids? What can help compliance?
A: Compliance is always the critical element in controlling diabetes. This is a lifetime illness so that managing it “gets very old.” Although the tools that we have today make compliance easier, we also are striving for better levels of control than we used to try to achieve. The best way to attain compliance is to give the patient education and encourage them to take personal control as early as possible .
Q: How has treatment of diabetes changed and improved during your years of practice?
A: We have dramatically better ways to measure blood sugar at home. The advent of insulin pumps has allowed patients to more easily manage their disease, while at the same time giving them a much better lifestyle.
Q: How has monitoring of diabetes and numbers changed and improved over the years?
A: We now recognize that better blood sugar control is clearly associated with a better long term outlook. The glucose monitors that we use today are faster and require less blood than what we used years ago. Insulin pumps and glucose sensors allow us to more easily and safely control blood sugar.
Dr. Toom Roberts answers questions about the insulin pump and other devices as well as research and medications — plus you can submit questions by clicking on the Health Q&A link at www.lacrossetribune.com.
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