Diabetes: lots of crap

Thanks to this month’s DSMA carnival topic, I imagine that there will be lots of blog posts this month about the bags that people have found to carry all their D-crap in.  They will be filled with words like cute and sparkly, adorable and clutch.  But I’m a guy, and I don’t do cute and sparkly.  To me, adorable is a word reserved exclusively for babies, and I’m still not sure how to use the word clutch as anything other than a verb.

So in my entry for this month’s DSMA Carnival, you won’t see those descriptions.  If I could summarize this post is a word, it would be messy.  Messy is manly, and that’s what I am.  If (like my mother) you are repulsed by messiness, then you’d best click over to some other web site. NOW.

My meter, of course, is in its manufacturer-provided case.  It’s quite the chameleon sometimes.

I’m sure you’ve seen my “emergency kit” before, in a fancy-schmancy Ziploc bag.

Yes, there’s an extra pump in there (old, reliable Alpha).  It gives me piece-of-mind.  Though, with the battery compartment empty for over a year, I’m not quite sure it will work if I need it to.  There’s also an extra infusion set, reservoir, syringe, roll of medical tape, AAA battery, extra blood sugar test strips, possibly-expired ketone strips, and hopefully some alcohol swabs that haven’t dried up yet.  I basically take it with me if I’m traveling more than 30 minutes from home.

After awhile, I realized that a backup pump is no good to me if I don’t know my basal rates and other settings to put in there.  I quickly tired of carrying around printouts of my settings from Carelink (Medtronic’s way of having the pump talk to the Internet and transfer data), so I decided to save the settings on my phone using an app called ColorNote.

All of my pump supplies live in the bathroom linen closet, behind a sharps container that has a rich, residual Arabica-blend aroma inside (thank you Maxwell House).  Also (top shelf), the original boxes my pump came in (don’t ask why) and a cache of extra (read: free) meters.  There are also some actual bath linens, Band-Aids, and other “normal-person” needs.

After a few bad CGM sensors, I figured the humidity from the shower may be a factor.  So the sensors, along with extra test strips (inside the Walgreens bag) got moved from the linen closet and now sit in a cabinet in the bedroom.  There’s also a spare bottle of Uni-Solve adhesive-remover sitting here, and my most recent shipment of infusion sets and reservoirs (and part of an unused baby monitor).  When I get around to it, I hope to move all my stuff in here.  Keeping everything in one place is obviously one of my weaknesses.

Yes, I said spare bottle of Uni-Solve.  The one I actually use is back in the bathroom, in a drawer, in a blue carboard box.  My IV3000 adhesive sits there, along with something at appears to be generic Neosporin (not D-related).  The drawer also has a pair of scissors which I use to cut the IV3000 sheets in half (to cover my Sure-T infusion set, something I do religiously after a very strongly suggested tip from Sara).  Also a mirror, some stuff the dentist gives me at every visit, and contact lens solution.  I’ve probably worn my contacts five times in the past five years.

This is what my nightstand usually looks like, except when my wife makes me clean it.  On top, from left-to-right: my classic meter case, the blue CGM transmitter charger, TV remote, nail clippers, lots of glucose tabs, and some other crap.  Inside the top drawer is a lifetime-supply (50) of lancets, a spare meter, alcohol swabs, test strips, a year’s supply of AAA pump batteries (thank you, Home Depot), and some things to hold the pump at my belt.  If I pull that stuff out, I’ll find more stuff.  I’m not sure what.

And finally, downstairs in my home-office is a Carelink USB dongle (to the right of the orange thing, which is used to hang my son’s Nerf basketball hoop over the door), and my lab slip over to the right (which I forgot to take with me last Friday.)

Not shown: the Glucose Tabs stashed in the kitchen pantry and the glove compartments of my and my wife’s cars.

So that’s it!  Nice and neat just isn’t my style.  But it should be.  After photographing this evidence, I think I’ve got a mission ahead of me.  And hopefully, my wife will appreciate the progress and not divorce me for showing off our messy house on the Internet.

Regardless, that’s diabetes.  And that’s a lot of crap.

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This post is my September entry in the DSMA Blog Carnival.  If you’d like to participate too, you can get all of the information at http://diabetessocmed.com/2012/september-dsma-blog-carnival-2/