Yudi Rubin beats the diabetic odds
Jewish Home resident describes a long, happy, and balanced life
In early February, the Jewish Home at Rockleigh hosted a program for one of its residents, 89-year-old Julian Rubin.
Mr. Rubin, who was diagnosed with diabetes almost 80 years ago, was honored by Boston Joslin’s Diabetes Center.
“I don’t let the disease control my life,” Mr. Rubin, who is known as Yudi, said. “I control the disease.”
In 1945, Yudi, who was just 10 years old, suffered severe symptoms from what seemed to be a virus. In response, “I was quarantined in the isolation ward at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in New London, Connecticut,” he said. And then, a week after he was discharged, he began experiencing more frightening symptoms.
“It’s a common theory that viruses in young children will increase a patient’s vulnerability to developing Type 1 diabetes,” he said. “That certainly was the case for me.” During that first hospital stay, young Yudi missed being able to play with his friends. Once he was able to go back home, he still didn’t feel right — he was excessively thirsty, urinated frequently, and was severely lethargic. “I was unable to get energy from the food I was eating,” he said. “My body wasn’t producing insulin.”
Mr. Rubin recalls hiding his symptoms from his parents and his doctors. “I was embarrassed and didn’t want to go to the doctor.”
It didn’t work. Soon he fell into a diabetic coma and was rushed back to the hospital. “Both my family doctor and the staff at Lawrence Memorial Hospital (now Yale-New Haven Hospital) were very possibly ahead of their time,” he said. “They knew the symptoms of what my family called ‘sugar’ and knew how to treat it.”
After two days in a coma, Mr. Rubin’s diabetes was stabilized. “Here I was, a 10-year-old in the hospital with no entertainment, no TV, nothing to amuse me,” he said. “I was getting intramuscular shots of insulin in my thigh to control the symptoms. I don’t remember a lot of pain. I just wanted to feel better and get back to being a normal 10-year-old.”
Mr. Rubin’s parents, Nathan and Faye, came to the United States from Eastern Europe separately, as children, in the early 1920s. “They disembarked in Boston versus coming through Ellis Island,” Mr. Rubin said. “They didn’t want to be sent back.” His father grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and his mother in New Bedford, Massachusetts. After meeting and marrying in 1928, they settled in New London.
“My father was learning the glass trade and soon began working for my uncle, whose name coincidentally was Glazer, at the Ruby Glass Company in Norwich,” Mr. Rubin said. “My mother was a homemaker, and it was she who, in late spring of 1945, took the reins in my care. My mother, my aunt Celia, and I traveled to Boston to the Joslin Diabetes Center so I could learn to inject myself with insulin.”
Mr. Rubin stayed in the hospital for two weeks, and he, his mother, and his aunt were taught about Type 1 diabetes. “We learned about the balance between insulin and food intake and how to avoid an insulin reaction,” he said. “My mother made sure I stayed ahead of the disease by carrying three cubes of sugar wrapped in tin foil in my pocket before I went out to play.” Mr. Rubin praises his mother’s support and tenacity. “She was constantly thinking ahead,” he said. “She knew if I needed glucose and I didn’t have sugar with me that the only solution was to go to the hospital for an emergency shot.
“The education my mother and I received after a two-week inpatient stay at Joslin was overwhelming, particularly for her. My mother was timid. She rarely ventured out of the house. She was trying to understand and absorb so much scientific information.”
Mr. Rubin recalls his mother attending parenting classes to stay on top of managing his diabetes. “She was so strong, even after reading in The Joslin Diabetes Manual that people with Type 1 diabetes might not live past the age of 30 and would never have children,” he said. But Faye Rubin insisted on raising her son as a normal child, never wanting him to be singled out either in school or at play for having diabetes.
When they left Boston, Mr. Rubin’s mother came home with a menu for her son’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “We kept a kosher home, but bacon was on the menu,” he said. “I had to have bacon because it was considered medicine,” he said. “My older and younger brothers were jealous that they couldn’t have it, but I’d have traded the bacon for diabetes.”
Mr. Rubin attended the University of Connecticut at Storrs, doing his best to balance the pressures of a college social life and his needs as a diabetic. “In college I gave myself insulin with a hypodermic needle,” he said. “There were no insulin pens.”
Mr. Rubin met his wife, Dolores, when they were in high school, they dated in college — Dee, as she was called, also was at UConn — and they married in 1956.
“I left college after my sophomore year to join the family business, working as a ‘glass man’ with Ruby Glass Company in New London,” Mr. Rubin said.
Mr. Rubin described his wife as a courageous life partner. “She always had my lunch ready when I came home,” he said. “She never got excited when my blood sugar went low, and she accompanied me to my annual exams at the Joslin Center in Boston, eager to learn about the newest methods for testing my blood sugar and storing and delivering my insulin.
“Dee supported me in a quiet, unassuming way. When traveling, she was always in tune with my energy level. Instead of making more of it than it was, she’d simply suggest looking for a Howard Johnson’s.
“Dee’s parents warned her of the risk she was taking, marrying someone who had a chronic illness, who might very well die early, and might not be able to have children, but thankfully, Dee was willing.
“Dee was a homemaker who made it her business to tend to my well-being,” Mr. Rubin said. “She played a big part in my longevity.” Dee Rubin died in 2019.
Yudi and Dee Rubin have two children, Mitchell and Amy, six grandchildren, and five great-granddaughters. None have diabetes.
For the first 40 years after he was diagnosed, Mr. Rubin got through the day with just one injection of insulin. He eventually received his insulin from a pump, which injected medicine into his stomach. “This made life much easier for me,” he said. But as his close vision became compromised and it became difficult for him to program the pump, he returned to using pre-filled syringes again.
Mr. Rubin punctiliously showed up at the Joslin Clinic for his annual clinical exams; specialists checked his vision, his heart, and his kidneys, and did comprehensive blood work.
Throughout the years, Mr. Rubin has received guidance on how much insulin to take and has learned about issues that might affect him, either positively or negatively. “I didn’t always have to travel to Boston because a satellite program opened in New London for Joslin-affiliated patients,” he said.
“I lived in Connecticut for 80 years before moving to the Jewish Home at Rockleigh’s assisted living community in 2022, where I would receive more support, be near family, and continue to take my pills and insulin myself,” he said.
At the Jewish Home at Rockleigh’s nursing home, where he moved in 2024, nurses support Mr. Rubin as he manages his diabetes. “They test my blood sugar four times a day, and after 80-plus years of self-administering my insulin, I look to them to give me my injections,” he said.
“I am proud of the way I’ve managed my disease,” he continued. “My life has been contrary to the way doctors tell people with diabetes to live. I could have spent my life as a hermit.” He could have given into self-pity, he said. “Looking back, if I’d listened to what others had to say, I’d have led a different kind of life. I knew by working in the family business I’d be on my feet all day, that I’d be lifting 100 pounds of glass, and that I’d be moving glass with sharp edges — a significant danger if I cut myself. My family probably wished I’d done office work instead. But I had to be active. I had to be true to myself. I had to do it my way.”
In 2005, Mr. Rubin was in the first cohort of the Joslin Diabetes Center’s medalist program, which studied diabetes patients over the course of decades. “Every five years, they’d invite us to Boston for a lecture by a researcher, a luncheon, a cultural program, a dinner, and a medal ceremony,” Mr. Rubin said. “I met so many people who shared their experiences with the disease.
“It was always good conversation, talking and commiserating about our beginnings. One woman I met had also had a virus that preceded her diabetic symptoms — just like me.”
During the 50-year medalist program, Mr. Rubin met a 90-year-old woman who came to the United States from Italy in the early 1920s, around the time insulin was discovered. “Her parents couldn’t speak English, but her doctor came to the house to give her insulin three times a day,” he said.
This fall, Mr. Rubin got a call from a diabetes research administrator, John Gauthier, who works with Dr. George King, the chief scientific coordinator at the Joslin Diabetes Center. “I was one of two people from the Joslin community receiving an 80-year medal from the Joslin Diabetes Center,” Mr. Rubin said. “Since it was difficult for me to travel to Boston, Mr. Gauthier was nice enough to come to me.”
Mr. Rubin added that the Jewish Home was thrilled to organize this special event.
A Facebook support group created to support people with type 1 diabetes, called Type 1 Diabetics for 50+ years, began two years ago.
Mr. Rubin’s daughter, Amy Kagedan, often posts on his behalf. “People want reassurance,” she said. “They are worried about diseases that occur with elderly diabetic patients. They are also eager to learn from my father’s experience managing his diabetes in care facilities outside the home.”
Ms. Kagedan described her father’s enthusiasm about his newest medal on Facebook. “Hundreds of followers read his post,” she said. “People called my father a role model, a hero, and a master warrior.”
On February 4, Mr. Gauthier presented Mr. Rubin with the medal at the Jewish Home. The presentation included a slide show of how the medalist program has expanded throughout the years and a message Dr. King recorded for Mr. Rubin. In a letter to Mr. Rubin’s daughter, Dr. Stephen Quevedo, Yudi’s endocrinologist for 20 years, wrote, “One does not achieve such an incredible milestone without a combination of good fortune and genes, but I truly believe his demeanor played the largest role.”
Mr. Rubin’s grandchildren offered personal messages of pride and inspiration about their grandfather during the ceremony. The highlight was when his grandson, Yosef, serenaded him on the keyboard, singing “My Way.”
To learn more, go to joslin.org/research/medalist-program-study
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