A Test Strip Story for World Diabetes Day

 

"Hey look- it's a test strip. It's not the kind I use."

 

 

This is a zoomed-in shot, and cropped. The test strip was virtually hidden in the sidewalk crack at the busy amusement park. Yet it caught my daughter's eye.

 

Finding a test strip "in the wild" meant that another person with diabetes had been there.

Whose was it? Was its user still around? Did the blood sugar it recorded require a $4 soda from the snack stand or a break from the rides? Was the person local or travelling? Type 1 or Type 2? Newly diagnosed or an old pro? Comfortable with diabetes care on the run or not?

We had a distinct curiosity about, and sense of kinship with, whoever dropped that strip.

Other people with diabetes, even complete strangers, hold a special place in our hearts.

The same sense of connection fuels my interest in World Diabetes Day. There are millions of people around the globe living millions of very different kinds of diabetes lives. But they're all living them because Dr. Frederick Banting, born 126 years ago today, discovered and bottled insulin.

What, I wonder, are their struggles? Successes? Stories?

Do they think about being part of a global diabetes community, and if so does it give them the same sense of hope it gives us?

It's November...Diabetes Awareness Month! My plan for this month involves stories. Simple, everyday, real-life stories about living with diabetes. I plan to tell them here as narratives, like this one, just snippets of a day with diabetes, and I plan to tell them, or stories like them, more often in the 'real world' this month when friends ask, 'How's it going,' or relatives ask what I've been up to.