I learned the facts of life on diabetes kind of the hard way and there is a very fine line between correct and trouble in what and how you say something about diabetes and even with the best intentions it can still go wrong. I spent my weekend life as a musician in covers bands from the early sixties until the early eighties. The first band we were all mates and had grown up together. One member joined the emergency services and as his levels went up, he asked how you treated a hypo. Uh huh! I had never told them, anyway, if there was glucose tablets around then I didn’t know about them, barley sugars and jelly beans were the shop produced treatments, but a teaspoon of sugar in warm boiled water was the stand in, especially for the person who could not threat themselves. This I can say, when I did have a hypo those days (ultra rare), this potion made me puke if anything. I told him this was the all purpose solution and years later, he was a senior officer and mentioned that he had attended an accident and one person had diabetes and was hypo, but there was nothing to treat it. No worries, he had the info: and the stand in treatment recipe, pass this on to one of the team who could get this from one of the houses around and job done. His masters received a report that stated medical staff were puzzled by one of the victims having a scolded mouth. Whaa! You can guess can’t you? The warm boiled water had become boiling by the time it arrived at the hypo. This person will be still alive and living somewhere, perhaps nearby.

Can I ask you Amanda, if you can recall your folks keeping your syringe and needles in the jar with or without the solution? I can’t say I ever had an infection keeping them dry. I am skiting here people, but I have only ever had one such infection disaster and it was only four years back. I was flying home from visiting family overseas and it was meal time. I always wait until the meal comes when dinning out before the shot. I took out my pen and had it in my left hand and removed Nic’s NEEDLEWOOD cap. I had to move a little to pull my shirt up and I felt the needle tip brush something. I was in a right side center aisle seat and the person on my left, had their arm on their armrest and their shirt sleeve was rolled up to the elbow A wave of panic and and despair washed over me as I was suddenly seeing the pen embedded in their arm and the charge of hijacking the aircraft being read out at my trial. Here you are now. FOOLISHLY! I had my shot and completed my journey home. Some time later, not sure a day maybe. I had an infection at that site. I must had needle wooded the shirt. You could run a competition on the mistakes made here, but the main learning point I took was that I had become too familiar with doing it anywhere and since then, I have returned to times previously of keeping it closer and out of sight, below the table top and not removing the cap until the site is ready. Another reason to pump perhaps?