Debris of diabetes

This morning, I watched our cat, Cherry, spend twenty minutes playing with a rogue BGL strip. She pounced, pumped, threw it in the air, patted it with her paws and meowed for a good 3 minutes, getting louder and louder until I released it from under the bed, where she’d pushed it.

Walking back from getting a coffee, there on the ground was an Optium test strip wrapper, its blue foil glistening in the sunlight.

I pull open a drawer at work and hidden amongst the messy jumble of pens and paperclips are two Unite for Diabetes rubber bracelets. I look further back and find the mushroom-liked infusion inserter for my pump lines.

I took from my cupboard a handbag that hadn’t been used for years. There, in the bottom, for who knows how long, was an old meter. The battery was flat, the strips out of date.

I open a box from when we moved house and amongst the paperwork and toys and a couple of odd socks, I find three unopened boxes of strips for my current meter, and these ones still in date. And two pump infusion sets.

On my dressing table, jumbled in with my jewellery are several blue circle lapel pins.

I reach into the pocket of a jacket I’d not worn since being at a conference in Barcelona last year and find an information brochure for a pump not released in Australia.

I get in my car and there are spent strips, a spare meter and, in the glove box, a tin of jelly beans.

I open my diary on my desk to write a note and there is a tiny smudge of blood on the page.

The debris of diabetes appears in every aspect of my life.

But it’s not all bad.

My screen saver scrolls through photo after photo after photo and there, amongst pictures of my family, are friends with diabetes. Just in case I ever need some silver lining – there it is!

Friday dancing time! Here’s Stevie Wonder.

Also, this is Cherry the cat. (Photo credit – the nine year old kidlet.)