# You know you're the friend/relative of a diabetic when...



## servewithmintsauce (Dec 17, 2015)

1. you don't think diet drinks taste weird..normal ones do!

2. you know the 'prick, lick, and stick' technique.

3. medics always think you're diabetic because you can tell them your normal BG, the normal range for your age, height, and weight for BG, and you don't need them to tell you to press on your finger when they prick it!

4. you thought everybody's mum/dad/sibling/friend took tablets and did injections…

5. you referred to kiddy paint as 'that stuff that smells like insulin'.

6. you forget to ask people how many sugars they take in their drinks because your brain assumes that no-one takes sugar.

7. someone asks you for a pen and you have to check whether they mean one for insulin or one for writing with…

8. you have been known to have genuine arguments with your DLO (diabetic loved one) about whether their Levemir pen is a 'blue' pen or a 'green' pen.

9. you come home before Christmas week to find two shelves of your fridge full with not sweets or cakes or drinks but a month's supply of insulin pens.

10. for the longest time, you thought 'King's Cross St. Pancras' was 'King's Cross St. Pancreas'.

11. you get the 'cancer lecture' off people in supermarkets when you buy diet drinks…

12. you keep needing the loo but it's a covert operation; if your DLO realises how often you're going, they'll be sticking that lancet in your finger before you can say 'test'!

13. you can accurately predict your BG at a given point during the day, even though you aren't diabetic!

14. your DLO says they're feeling sick or they have a headache and instead of offering painkillers, you ask if they've tested recently…

15. (on a similar tack to #14) your DLO is stroppy but before you argue with them, you ask when they last ate.

16. the horror stories of police keeping hypoglycaemic people in cells to 'sleep off the drink' keep you awake at night and send you running to hug your DLO in the morning.

17. your DLO has to make an emergency trip somewhere and has asked you to gather some stuff for them…a later phone call confirms that you remembered their kit and spare insulin pens and GlucoTabs, but you forgot to pack their wash stuff, underwear, and phone charger!

18. you have spent nearly 2 hours in a random town in the middle of nowhere before because, in a panic to get on the road, your DLO somehow forgot all their diabetes meds.* (*this actually happened not that long ago; my aunt had a recurrence of cancer and a very poor prognosis and the whole family was very upset of course..we went down to stay for a couple of days almost as soon as we found out, and in the heat of it all and the rush and worry, my mum forgot to pack her insulin, so we were stuck on the other side of the country in a town we had never been to before with a teary mum in Boots trying to explain the situation and get her insulin *sigh*)

19. you have fond childhood memories of quality time with your DLO, popping the pills from the boxes and arranging them in the appropriate parts of the weekly pill box…

20. you have, in the throes of midnight sweet cravings, munched your way through half a pack of Lucozade tablets because they were the closest things to confectionary you had to hand!

21. you get way more excited than you should do when you notice a new 'sugar-free' version of something.

22. you won't buy any full-sugar beverage in the store if there isn't a sugar-free version of it for your DLO (don't want them missing out!).

23. you eat too many sweets and feel a bit dazed and 'funny' but rather than thinking "I've eaten too much", you wonder if you're hyperglycaemic instead…

---

That's all I've got for now..anyone got any to add? 

-- Matt


----------



## Annette (Dec 17, 2015)

My OH would certainly agree on 1. And as for 18, I have been known to insist that we turn round, whilst on the motorway more than half way to our destination, as I had suddenly realised I'd forgotten spare pens.
So perhaps as an addition: You always check before the leaving the house whether your DLO has extra food/insulin/spares/whatever, to prevent the need for emergency returns home...


----------



## trophywench (Dec 17, 2015)

Oh Annette - only pens?  Pfft.  We set off for Dover one night, on the way to France for a couple of months holiday, and before we'd got to Jct 1 from Jct 3 where we join the M6, I had to say to Pete Come off at Rugby dear, turn round and go back home please!  (Why?)  Cos my insulin pump is still on the bathroom shelf which is where I put it whilst I had my shower!

There is incidentally a cure for filling shelves with pens - swap to refillable ones (much more robust) cos the cartridges for them only take a third or less of the room!

And Pete agrees with most of that, except we don't do his BG so much these days!


----------



## servewithmintsauce (Dec 17, 2015)

trophywench said:


> There is incidentally a cure for filling shelves with pens - swap to refillable ones (much more robust) cos the cartridges for them only take a third or less of the room!



I didn't even know you could do that! My mum uses the Humalog KwikPen and Levemir FlexPen so there's a lot of insulin in our fridge right now XD

It's a good thing none of my meds are fridge-bound or we wouldn't have room for actual food…I can only suggest it to her!

Although I disagree with the notion of 'only' pens. At least with a pump you can (albeit haphazardly) tide yourself over with injections; if you forget your pens, you're sunk.


----------



## servewithmintsauce (Dec 17, 2015)

Annette Anderson said:


> So perhaps as an addition: You always check before the leaving the house whether your DLO has extra food/insulin/spares/whatever, to prevent the need for emergency returns home...



Yep! These days we always check..and double check..and triple check


----------



## trophywench (Dec 17, 2015)

Of course using 'refill' cartridges, you can lob a spare in your bag NP, you can also fill a syringe (and even a refillable pump reservoir!) from a 3ml pen cartridge.

Personally whether it's been vials or cartridges, I've always used a bit of the butter shelf in the fridge door.  Not much room at all!

But the ruddy pen needle boxes and boxes of test strips still take up half a cubic acre of cupboard, as do the pump spares.  Aaaarrrggghh !


----------



## Bloden (Dec 18, 2015)

Brilliant post, servewith.


----------

