Our Diabetes Menagerie

Every 3 months, we get a package. From Medtronic. It's a 3-month supply of C's pump supplies. It's a lot of stuff.

I had such a terrible time with our "mail-order" pharmacy, that for the past year and half, I've gone back to picking up prescriptions at CVS on a monthly basis. I really need to figure the "mail order" thing out again because it could save us tons of dough. But whatever...for now.

When the most recent shipment arrived, I decided to have a still-life photo shoot. In the hustle and bustle of life, I usually throw open the cupboard and stack it all up. But, I wanted to set out a 1 month supply of everything, just to take a look...and to ponder a bit.

This is what I included:

• insulin, 2 bottles of Novolog
• insulin, 1 bottle of Lantus for times of pump failure
• alcohol wipes
• IV prep wipes
• a box of AAA batteries
• 300 lancets
• 300 test strips
• 10 infusion sets
• 10 reservoirs
• 2 glucagon kits

Items I did not include, but should have:

• glucose tablets
• "quick-sert" device
• tissues
• syringes for times of pump failure

I could have gotten really crazy here and set out juice boxes, frosting tubes, countless snacks, but I didn't. However, there are so many times in a month that C will need to take and eat either fast-acting sugar...reason for frosting tubes :)...or take extra carbs to keep her number up, that normally a little 7 year old girl would not. I could have included her meter kit and the actual pump (my pump gear, included!), although I stuck with just consumable items.

As I look at the above image, there are lots of things that run through my mind. I remember a time when all of this would have looked foreign to me. It seems a lifetime ago...my daughter's lifetime. I remember becoming a raging, sleepless mother in our neighborhood CVS (Sav-On back then) at the time of C's diagnosis. I could not get our insurance company to accept the fact that we really did need 300 test strips per month and the CVS pharmacy receptionists got the brunt of my "mama bear-ness." I remember coming extremely close to having no usable reservoirs because several were defective. I remember driving out to Minimed's home in Chatsworth, California, because C was using the very last infusion set we had. I remember when the insurance company decided that each supply would go up $50 each, without notice (but that's for another post!)

Wow. It's a lot of extra stuff. Stuff that a kid shouldn't have to know about. And I guess that's part of the reason for this post. It's summertime. And I want my kids to have fun. When C looks back on her childhood, I really don't want it to include all this stuff. But, honestly, I know that it will. I am hopeful, though, that her memories of summer days will outweigh the memories of all our diabetes menagerie.