Day 17: Don't Forget the Toothpaste!

Today’s Topic: Write about what it’s like to travel with your condition.

I won’t get to the actual traveling part of this topic. Traveling with diabetes requires extra thought and preparation, but that’s no reason not to travel. On my front-door door frame, before every trip I make, is a post-it:

INSULIN

If I forget that, my trip just got a lot more adventurous or a lot shorter. But before I get around to writing that post-it, I think about some of the same things a normal person might think about, just in a different way. The temperature, electricity, fridge-access and food-access situation affects what I bring. No power means more meter supplies. Hot weather or no fridge means pens instead of vials, plus whatever I need to avoid boiling or freezing insulin. Hard to get food means extra glucose tabs and juice.

For a basic long weekend trip, I bring:

• Meter, two to three new strip bottles, a few lancets, one finger pricker thingy, two new cotton balls.
• Insulin pump, two to three new cartridges, two to three new insets, a few alcohol swabs.
• Dexcom, Dexcom charger, Tegaderm, paper tape, cool clear tape, small scissors, more alcohol swabs. If the sensor will likely fail while I’m gone, and I want another for the trip back, I bring a backup sensor kit.
• A bag of syringes, a handful of pen needles, a doctor’s letter, glucose tabs, granola bars and finally – the insulin. If a Novolog vial has about one pump refill left, I’ll bring that. Otherwise I bring two new Novolog pens. One for backup (in addition to the spare already in my purse) and another for filling my pump cartridge.

If the trip is a couple weeks or longer, or if I’m going somewhere unfamiliar, I’ll bring extra batteries (three), extra meter, Lantus, and triple the weekend list. And toothpaste. I almost always forget toothpaste.

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