Go Bag



Sandy is the first storm for which we've packed a full diabetes 'go bag.' 

There is always a plastic shoe box on my daughter's closet shelf with batteries, three of four vials of strips, some syringes, and a couple of site change sets.  It also has a spare meter and some glucose tabs.  It's our travel box for weekends at Grandma and Grandpa's or our starter kit for vacation packing.  I think of it as what we would grab should we need to evacuate.

Yet as I began to contemplate the possibility of an actual emergency, I realized some things needed to be added to tide us over:

A flashlight

Juice boxes

A big jar of glucose tabs

At least 2 weeks of site change supplies, strips, lancets

Alcohol wipes to sterilize things if we had to

Snacks

I also realized that once the hint of an emergency is on its way, we should get this kit out of the closet and put it somewhere handy.  Last week, we put the plastic box into the ironic 'JDRF Walk To Cure Diabetes' bag, adding the aforementioned items.  We also added our every-day insulin and  long-acting back up insulin, as well as the spare supplies we keep in my purse, my daughter's backpack, and elsewhere around the house. 

Once gas is easier to come by and Target doesn't seem like a far-off land, I'll head over to get a larger container so that this discombobulated bag of diabetes paraphernalia can be organized and water-proof.

Meanwhile, I'm grateful that I was able to unpack a few things from it this morning and return it to its shelf.