Like a newborn baby’s diaper bag, newly diagnosed diabetic families need help getting out the door with daily diabetic supplies. For the first time, diabetic medical supplies like insulin, pin needles, alcohol wipes, low supplies, and a glucometer are on a new list. That list goes on and on. Your list may differ, but these six advance preps save time everyday!
Right after diagnosis, we attempted to go out to eat for a family birthday only to discover we had all our supplies, except the pen needles required to give an insulin injection. As a result, we went home. Looking at my disappointed kids, I knew we needed a system to help us make sure we had our daily diabetic supplies every time we leave the house.
Table of Contents
1. Designate a place and a bag
Good habits you already have, like always putting your keys in the same spot, can work wonders for organizing daily diabetic supplies! Our spot is in a basket beneath the antique piano bench beside the front door. Every time we leave our house or return, the diabetic backpack goes in the basket.
Creating an easily accessible, specific bag or bin to store the bag or backpack with supplies for use outside the home makes leaving without a wild scramble for “all the stuff” possible. Keep it stocked by taking a few moments when you return home to re-supply.
2. Eating and Treating
Portion out foods for snacks when high or treatment when low and mark carb count if needed. These quick preps make grabbing foods for highs and lows less complicated than searching through the kitchen each time.
Our Grab and Go Treatment Bags are on the most accessible shelf in our pantry. When we return home from an outing, we replace any used daily diabetic supply foods with the snacks on that shelf. Keeping them in a specific spot allows for super easy refills when you return home.
3. Hydration with carbs or without
Just inside our main door we keep two kinds of drinks: a case of carb-free sports drinks or bottles of water for hydration or to treat highs and a case of regular juice or soda to treat lows. While our family fills a refillable cup with water before leaving the house 90% of the time, having options by the door prevents a forgotten cup from delaying our plans.
Milly is happiest when she has water in one hand and a soda with a screw-top in the other. That way she knows she is prepared whether her numbers run high or low. Unused drinks go back on the shelf as we return home. It’s an easy grab on the way out the door and an easy re-set on the way back in the door as well.
4. Insulin
Very few diabetics go home with a complex pump or a continuous glucose monitor. However, the vast majority go home with refrigerated insulin that becomes a necessary component of the daily diabetic supplies.
As Southerners, we rarely have to worry about insulin freezing unless it hits a cold spot in a fridge! However, temps above 90 degrees are definitely not good. To prevent a bad situation, we designated a coffee cup left over from my college days to provide insulin protection and insulation.
Put travel cups or an insulated bag near the fridge to quickly protect insulin or insulin pens in your bag as well as refrigerated snacks. A cold block or re-usable ice cubes can cut down on mess and maintain proper temperatures. Be sure to not freeze the insulin by adding too many reusable ice cubes!
5. Always have a “meal”
Running behind is a fact of life for most of us. As a result, many of us tend to eat as we travel between appointments or destinations. That doesn’t change just because diabetes is along for the ride! Having quick mini-meals easily available simplifies things.
We purposefully stock easy to grab food options with predictable patterns for dosing. Life can still be spontaneous and fun. However, when a day comes when we need a dependable option, we have familiar foods prepped for easy access.
Our pantry stays stocked with protein meal bars, bags of nuts, and jerky. Apples and different cheese sticks live beside the insulin in our fridge. The ability to grab a quick mini-meal rather than depending on a drive-through can save sanity and blood sugar levels.
Is the drive-through an option? Absolutely! However, knowing a carb count, how food the affects levels and having it already in your hand makes the drive-through a possibility for a treat or meal rather than the only option.
So…
Implement one of these steps a week, all of them at once, or pick and choose what helps your family! These things have helped lessen the mental load on all of us as we leave our house. Diabetes will always travel with Milly, and we have a plan to make managing all those daily diabetic supplies easier for her life and for ours!
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