- This topic has 42 replies, 15 voices, and was last updated 15 years, 2 months ago by
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Strips. Strips everywhere. Every. Where. In your hair, under your pillow. In your socks. In other people’s socks.
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Stopping in your tracks whenever you see someone casually drinking a bottle of Lucozade in the street. Then remembering that their pancreas is producing insulin, just as casually. But, wow, I mean, a whole bottle.
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Socks? Wow. Never found any in socks. Bags, yes. Suitcases I haven’t used for years, yes. Half way up the drive, yes. Down the garden, yes. In every doorbin/drinks holder in every car I’ve ever been in. Down the back of the sofa. In the bedding, under the pillows, in books and drawers. But socks? How’d you get them there?
(My little sister drinks lucozade. I don’t know how she can. How can you drink the stuff unless you actually have to?) -
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(Pre-diagnosis) …when your loo becomes inhabited by a yeast colony that resembles submerged albino candyfloss.
(Post-diagnosis) …when your bookmark is a used test strip (where previously it could’ve been a sock. @clara‘s socks’ phagostriptosis might point to a bit of rivalry?
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…….when you can only drink three pints of san miquel before your reaching for the diet coke. Oh the good old days…pre pancreas collapse, then it was only me who collapsed (well only sometimes) ha ha
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…when you cut your finger working on something and reach for your BG meter before reaching for a bandage.
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@Tim the lemon lucozade is the best! and @Cecile I’d love to sue my test strips as book marks but my eyesight is going having reached 40+. My down fall is that as soon as you place any food in front of me I zone out. Which was really tricky when I tested a mobile phone product to help calculate ratios, carbs and insulin! Yes hubbie not to pleased and food a bit cold. Thank goodness all over and pump comes into full use again! @Clara how did you manage to get the dreaded strips into “other people’s socks”?
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Lucozade, I adored the stuff. I actually downed half a bottle on my way to see the GP when I suspected my pancreatic failure…my twistedly hyperglycaemic thinking there was that I didn’t want them to ‘miss’ it. No fear of that with a BG of 29.
I don’t allow myself it as a hypo fix though. I know that if I bought a bottle I’d probably end up drinking the whole thing and taking enough Humalog to kill a small horse, followed by the inevitable couple of litres of water and probably a nap.The strips in socks situation used to occur when I was using a One Touch Ultra, with it’s fiddly little strips. Sharp too. How they ended up in my socks, I will never know. Doesn’t really happen to me now with my maaaassive Accu-Chek Aviva strips.
You know you’re diabetic when…
…you find yourself strangely drawn to all numbers between four and seven -
When saying you’re high doesn’t seem strange at all.
…same with saying “Get me some Lucozade before I die on you!” (what can I say, I get veryyy frustrated when low)
When you take twice as long in the supermarket due to reading every label, even on items you have no intention of ever buyingAnd of course, when you’re posting in this forum. (Oh, and concur that strips appear in the weirdest places – I’ve found them in the toilet, in my hair, in my meals, and even in my ear. I swear they have a mind of their own.)
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@jodiabetic – in your ear?
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You know you’re diabetic when… you actually care that they stopped making lemon flavour lucozade tabets. They ALL taste disgusting, but I could just abotu stomach the yellow ones. The Dextro brand ones are just too hard…
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@Hils have you tried Glucotabs? ASDA sell them in BIG tubs (you can buy little plastic refillable tubes as well.) They aren’t too bad, or hard.
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@Stephen try rolling into your GP at any time you want with massive hypo. Not only will you look like your on drugs but the receptionist will not question you as you hurl the delightful garish coloured plastic boxes in her direction. I haven’t tried it myself but what are you supposed to do with the plastic things! Let us know how you get on?
Actually you could start exhibiting at your local art gallery ? You could pile all the paper/cellophane bits into a pile, stack the garish needle boxes and ;
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@tim – yes, I found one in my ear once
It was actually quite painful as they are sharp little buggers. -
I found a test strip in my common stair once (stairs shared between 12 flats). It was on the bottom flight, so could have been anyone’s. Was it mine? Do I have a diabetic neighbour? I could leave a Shoot Up card (if I had any left) and see if it disappears… Ears!!!????
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You know you’re diabetic when:
Your urinary system has more traffic than a MacDonalds Drive Through! (I flatly refuse to use the non-word “thru”!)
The skin on the soles of your feet feels a quarter inch thick.
You lie in bed and it feels as if your toe nails are being peeled back.
The ends of your fingers look like they have some form of miniature acne.
Like @Tim, you find paper needle seals everywhere.
You keep checking on the Intermaweb for newer versions of your current BG meter,
Think Accu-Chek 360 is more fun than World of Warcraft.I’ve stopped using sharps bins. I used to have to phone up my District Council to arrange collection and they sent a man in a van to pick up the full one; which, incidentally, had to be in a bright yellow bin bag. The waste! I now use a needle clipper (available on prescription) which seems to last forever. The needle caps go in the bin, along with lancets and test strips. Funnily enough, my lancets and test strips don’t seem to migrate, maybe that’s because I have an ashtray to put them in!
Any full/knackered needle clippers are surreptitiously dumped in the sharps bin when I visit my DSN. -
My GP has always refused to take sharps bins and seemed really confused when I asked how to get rid of them (and distressed- surely I can’t be the first to have asked them…?). They told me to ring the council, who said that it wasn’t their job- they only take the stuff from the hospitals and GPs! Problem was eventually solved by a nice man in the Asda pharmacy who lets me use his big sharps bin. So now he can have all the money from getting my massive prescriptions!
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Uhm, I have to confess I chuck my sharps in the normal bin; I do put them back into their plastic needle containers first though. My pharmacist nags me every time I go in not to do this (but what does he know, eh?)
As a result I probably responsible for over 100 binmen getting pricked and catching diabetes as a result.
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@Tim – get yourself a needle clipper matey, on prescription, easy to use, and your pharmacist would love you again!
PS: There’s an email on it’s way to Edinburgh City Council… your bins will never be emptied again!
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@teloz – I’ve got several needle clippers – I just can’t be arsed using them. I never said I was good diabetic!
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So you clip the obviously pointy bit, but what do you do with the other end of the needle? I’ve jabbed myself a few times shoving the thing back into its container.
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@scottyfromscotland – I think jabbing from the other end is an inescapable misery – just another burden of diabetes
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@ckoei – I once went to the Official Loch Ness Experience at Loch Ness. It wasn’t very good.
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@tim: Ach, I know, it’s hard work impersonating a monster – those costumes are very unwieldy
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@scottyfromscotland – I’ve never put my needle caps back in the container, when I was using a sharps bin they went straight in, now I clip the needles they go straight in the rubbish bin. Mind you, all my diabetes detritus is double bagged before it goes in the wheelie bin, I don’t know if that counts.
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You know you’re diabetic (and bored) when… You have not only names for your sharps boxes, but faces, suit jackets and arms drawn on in big black marker!
…Or is that just me?! either way I’m gonna have fun when the big one eventually fills up and I take it to my GP! (It has lasted 18 months so far, and is only about 1/4 full! It’s awesome! And called Greg. With his minder Clive for holidays.)
Oh, and someone mentioned associating taste with hypos earlier: I find that if I’m feeling low, and don’t have my meter with me, so eat a glucose tablet to be on the safe side, it makes me feel more hypo, just because it’s now the conditioned feeling after that taste!
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Firstly, hey all, I’m Clara and i’m new (though not to diabetes)
@Rohan – yeah, my last needle bin got decorated too – i thought a radiation sign was somewhat apt. I have no idea what the council men thought when they saw it, but it amused me. Haven’t illustrated the new one yet but I did the fridge the other day (see avatar).
You know you’re diabetic when…. you go to Tunisia on holiday and end up spending 10 days in a Tunisian hospital cos the weather is too hot(as in 40 degrees celsius hot), you’ve got dehydrated and got high bs on the first day, stay in hospital for 10 days then end up having to be flown home as it isn’t actually safe for you to be in the country without being on an IV drip.
P.S. I do not recommend Tunisia – they work blood sugars out in a different system and their hospitals aren’t very modern. Thank hell for holiday insurance though. -
Hi @Clara, nice to meet you! I remembered a lovely one…
You know you’re diabetic when you develop Athlete’s Crotch!
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Things are getting quite clear – thanks to 2 Claires and now 2 Claras
@teloz: So you have both Spanish soprano (candida) and Slavic tennis player (jock_itch)? The NHS can sell you to The Simpsons’ “Itchy&Scratchy Show”, then you won’t have to be “summarily executed” to save money
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@ckoei – Good thinking there, it would be nice to be a productive member of society again. Sadly though, I never suffered both types of fungal skin rot at the same time, and they’ve been more or less eliminated by better BG control, so I’ve missed out again. Is it the firing squad or the guillotine?
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@teloz: Relieved that you didn’t have to put up with double trouble (thankful smiley with corners of mouth drooping slightly at memory of 1 of them)…and as for execution, no need to waste money on bullets or guillotine blades: you’re already being continuously fusilladed by both glucose & polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – not exactly as humane as a chop-chop guillotine, but in the case of the PAHs, you stand the chance of becoming like the primal ooze of yore and potentially capable of giving origin to a whole new set of replicating molecules…there’s life in you yet
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