We’ve all done it, something so stupid it doesn’t seem possible. Something so dumb you just have to smack your head and ask, ‘What was I thinking?!’. Bloopers in life can be a little more serious for us PWD’s – the following are not such moments (well, maybe they were but I still lived through them 😉 )
Incident One:
Before I was put onto a pump, I did the whole multiple daily injection thing. And honestly, at my young age (then 14 or so), two shots at breakfast and two shots at dinner was a breeze. Sometimes it was easy to forget about being diabetic. Well sometimes, it seems, it was a little too easy.
My whole life, my family has camped. It was a ritual filled with hours of packing the van for 4 children, 4 friends, one adult, one dog and all that was required for two weeks away from civilization. This would normally include diabetic supplies – tester, testing strips, lancet, syringes, insulin, and even a one pound bag of skittles (for lows). No prob’, Bob, I was an old pro. But after the two-hour ride, setting up all 5 of the tents, building our firewood supply and getting food on the grill for dinner, I realized I forgot my insulin….whoops!
All the pharmacies were closed so that left only one option, the local backwoods Hospital Emergency Room. When we arrived, myself, my mom and my friend were convinced we had misread the location and ended up at a veterinary clinic – it was in fact the hospital (no larger in size than a Walgreens). I don’t recall a single other patient and there couldn’t have been more than 3 doctors and 3 nurses. I was checked in and spent what seemed like an hour explaining my ‘condition’ and what insulin I needed. They looked baffled, exited the room only to return and explain that they, nor any other doctors on staff, were aware of the existence of such an insulin.
I don’t actually remember how I ended up with insulin at that hospital but I did and I survived. And now we laugh about it often 😉
Incident Two:
It seems inevitable that with age come independence. For me, that meant transitioning from daily injections to a pump. I thought, ‘Sure, I’m responsible (I was not). I can handle a piece of technology worth thousands of dollars’. I did well with it for the first, ummm, probably couple of weeks. I was in high school – I was grown up, right?! Wrong. It was snowy one morning and I forgot a book in my car so I ran out to get it. Hours later, I left for lunch and happened to exit out the same door as earlier in the morning and saw something in the snow. I thought to myself, ‘Hey, someone has a pump like mine!’ My excitement was short-lived when I, A) realized that the pump was not attached to said person, and B) that it was in fact MY pump laying in the snow, outside the back door of the high school. Awesome. *shakes head*
There are many other moments, like every time someone asks me where I keep my pump, I tap between my boobs like knocking on a door (and then remind myself that people might think that’s strange or inappropriate to share such information). Or when I leave my glucometer at home and even sometimes forget my pump when I leave for work in the morning. But we can’t take these moments too serious, or we might go mad. All we can do is fix the problem and laugh about it for years to come!
This post is part of the Second Annual Diabetes Blog Week
Forever Sweet Marella 