Sunday, December 14, 2008

Diabetes Supplies Packing List

I've attached a document on our google site (link in the upper right corner of the blog site) that is a list of the diabetes supplies I packed for the Europe and South Africa portion of the trip. While this was only about 3.5 months actual travel time I packed at least 4 months worth of supplies and some, like insulin pump sites, that have a tendency to need to be moved more often because of problem sites, I brought almost 5 months.

Most of these items will be common sense to a diabetic, so I'll just highlight the unusual that I have found valuable:

Medication Cooling Devices:
Medi-fridge (holds 3 bottles of insulin)
Extra large Frio
Insulin pump Frio

My next post will describe how I used these to keep my medication cool.

Equipment:
1 extra insulin pump

Hopefully you won't need to use this, but as you know if you've been following along, I had a insulin pump malfunction just 10 days into the trip. I got my loaner insulin pump by 'applying' to Medtronic (they actually have a loaner pump program). The pump, usually only on loan for 3 months, was kindly extended to the entire 9 months. I only had to pay a non-refundable $50 and will have to return the pump shortly after I return, or a $4000 charge for the pump will be put on my account. The only part of this that I am a little unsure about is that I seem to be completely liable if the loaner pump malfunctions or breaks, which if true could result in me having to pay for something that was not my fault. . .

Medication:
Some sort of general antibiotic in case of infection
Malaria pills

Don't mess with malaria, take your pills and precautions (bug spray, long sleeved shirt and long pants at night)). In South Africa there are only a few areas in the country that have malaria which were ironically everywhere we camped: Cape Vidal, Sodwana Bay, and Kruger. We took every precaution and amazingly only ended up with one bite between the two of us (of course it was me- mozzies LUV me :)). We took Malarone (atovaquone and proguanil HCI) which was simple enough - start pills two days before entering a malaria area, one pill everyday you're in the area, and then continue one pill a day a week after you've left.

Andrea

4 comments:

Gable Boxes said...

Thank you for sharing this information, Glad to see this post.

markson said...

Nice blog and absolutely outstanding. You can do something much better but i still say this perfect.Keep trying for the best. diabetes 60 system review

Unknown said...

A very awesome blog post. We are really grateful for your blog post. You will find a lot of approaches after visiting your post. I was exactly searching for. Thanks for such post and please keep it up. Great work. Diabetes Destroyer PDF

cooking copy said...

Thanks for picking out the time to discuss this, I feel great about it and love studying more on this topic. It is extremely helpful for me. Thanks for such a valuable help again
diabetes