The Little Things

…that annoy/disturb/perturb me as a diabetic:

*When I tear open an alcohol swab and rub it on my skin, only to discover there must have been a tiny hole somewhere, because the swab is completely dry.

*Opening a container of test strips and trying to pull out just one, but getting about 10 of them scattered across my kit, my lap, the front seat of my car…

*Blood droplets on the inside of almost every shirt I own, transferred from my preferred test site on my forearm.

*Bleeders. Sometimes I practically have to put my arm in a tourniquet to squeeze enough blood out to fill the meter. Other times, usually when I’m dressed up, wearing a white shirt, or in public, the blood just keeps coming and coming and coming. And I have no Kleenex. And I have to lick my arm. Multiple times.

*Getting that bubble of insulin when it pools up just under my skin before it absorbs. It feels weird and freaked the hell out of me the first time it happened. It still feels weird.

*Being really, really good and passing up something I’d truly like to eat because I think it will be too many carbs and I’ll be too high, only to discover an hour later that I’m obnoxiously low—and the opportunity to eat that fabulous thing is gone, gone, gone and I’m stuck with a Nutrigrain bar.

*Realizing two days too late that I should have ordered more supplies last week and having to ration.

*The smell of insulin.

*Trying to be subtle and test below the tablecloth, and dropping my lancet on the floor. Then having to crawl around to find it. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, never remember to just test on top of the table.

*The actual word “diabetes.” There are so many cool-sounding words in the English language. This isn’t one of them. How about diabetrix, like the Matrix?

As always, more to come (but maybe not so whiny next time)…