Garbage Digging

Hello D-OC!  It’s been a while since I posted.  But, I’m back.  August has been a bit of a whirlwind in my corner of the world…between finishing up a major project for work, hosting dear friends from various parts of the country, fixing the car (twice) and journeying to the Pacific Rim for some beautiful camping, my blog has been sorely overlooked.  And I have so much to share!  Like stories about trying to keep my sugars in check while cycle touring Mayne Island and about changing my infusion site in a tent, by flashlight while the Pacific Ocean roared in the background.  Like recipes for some of the amazing, fresh, local, from-scratch and gluten-free meals Daniel and I have been making together.  Or like photographs from my recent excursion into the world of pickle-making.

All of this will come.  But today, I thought I would wow you with just how dumb I can sometimes be.  How dumb? you ask.   Well, dumb enough to throw a full vial of insulin into the dirty, stinky garbage…

Monday afternoon, I filled up a new reservoir with insulin, loaded it into my pump, tightened the cartridge cap and happily clipped my green machine to the waist of my skirt.  Easy peasy.  No big deal.  But, during the ensuing clean up of D-related waste, I ran into trouble.  While filling my reservoir, I had had two vials of NovoRapid out on my kitchen table.  One was very close to empty and the other was brand new – brand new except for the fact that I had removed the orange, protective cap, making the new vial of insulin look an awful lot like the older, depleted vial…

Needless to say, when gathering up all the garbage, I grabbed what I thought was the empty vial of insulin and chucked it into the trash with the rest of my diabetes refuse.

Two days later, filling up yet another pump reservoir…

“Hecky-darn!” I shouted from the kitchen as my new reservoir filled with air from the empty vial of insulin.

“What?” shouted Daniel from the bedroom.

“Hecky-darn!” I shouted again, becoming more exasperated as I realized what I’d done.

“What?” shouted Daniel from the bedroom.

“I think I threw an entire bottle of insulin in the garbage,” I meekly confessed.  “Have we taken out the garbage since Monday?”

“Uhhh, I don’t think so.”

And thankfully, Daniel was right.  And that’s how we ended up, on a Wednesday afternoon, tipping a stinky bag of garbage upside down in our parking lot and digging through its contents – banana peels, used test strips, granola bar wrappers, used pump tubing and gross food bits – on a quest to find that most important of all diabetes management tools – insulin.

Within minutes, we saw the sun glisten off a little, silver-capped glass bottle.  I pulled my life-giving insulin, covered in non-descript slime and coffee grounds, out of the dirty, stinky mess.  I carried it carefully inside and gave it a good rinsing with cold water and a serious wipe-down with alcohol swabs.  I then had a long debate as to whether or not my garbage-marinated insulin would be safe for use.  Ultimately, I figured it would be fine and, thus far, have not had any problems.  (I love stories with happy endings).

Lesson learned?  Don’t flippantly chuck important medication vials into the garbage without first checking that said vials do not contain said important medication.

Right.