Diabetes Blog Week Day 5: Tips and Tricks

Let's round out the week by sharing our best diabetes tips and diabetes tricks. From how you organize supplies to how you manage gear on the go/vacation (beach, or skiing, or whatever). From how you keep track of prescription numbers to how you remember to get your orders refilled. How about any “unconventional” diabetes practices, or ways to make diabetes work for YOU (not necessarily how the doctors say to do it!). There's always something we can learn from each other. (Remember though, please no medical advice or dangerous suggestions.) 

For some reason I thought I'd written a post about this before, but apparently not! 

By nature, I can be a bit disorganised, lazy and forgetful. so most of my tips revolve around helping me be organised without really having to think about it and making life a bit easier! In no particular order they are:

• I love these little bags of jelly beans for on-the-go hypo treatments. They're 10g carb each, they don't take up much space and they're individually packed so you can shove them in a bag/pocket whatever and they stay non-sticky and non-squished!

• I also love tiny boxes such as these really useful boxes for robust, sturdy hypo storage.

• I'm also a fan of having hypo stashes all over the house - next to my bed, in the kitchen, next to the couch - with a variety of treatments (little cans of coke, glucotabs, jelly beans or babies) so that I don't have to go far and have a variety options depending on the hypo.

• I also carry syringes with me rather than pens in case of pump issues - they take up considerably less space, I don't have to worry about insulin in the pen cartridge going off and it's more convenient.

• I also have a diabetes emergency stash at work, with everything I might need/break/run out of - I have spare sets, cartridges, hypo treatment, batteries, meter, strips, plasters and opsite - since it's the place I spend most time apart from home. I'm working on having a similar thing in the car.

• I like to have little "on-the-go" bags in my diabetes drawers (where all my stuff is kept) that I can just pick up and stick in whatever bag I'm using. They're just little food storage bags that have a couple of spare sets, some hypo treatments and a syringe. I also have larger ones that have a bit more that I can put in my bag for weekends away so I don't have to think too much about it.

• For help with carb counting we have some of these blackboard stickers on our fridge. One has a small table on it permanently with columns for "food," "weight" and "carbs" and then space at the bottom for total and per portion. This means I can just weigh things and stick the info up and then work out the carb while things are cooking. I also keep a calculator next to the scales, and a list of commonly made meals with carb counts.

• And finally, I have today randomly found out the Bayer contour test trip holders fit 5 fruit pastilles and fit easily into my pocket!

(Also, I swear, I'm not working for Amazon!)