When taking stock of my diabetes supplies, I realized there was something pretty important missing from my heaps of test strips, stacks of pods, and (seemingly) thousands upon thousands of lancets…

…syringes. I didn’t have any syringes in sight, save for the ones that come with pods and that are designed exclusively to be used for pod changes. (I only call that out because those syringes are made to hold 3 days’ worth of insulin and should not ever be used for self-injection.)

In fact, I’m not sure that I’ve ever even had syringes in my possession since moving out of my parents’ house.

Luckily, I’ve never really had a reason to need them – I’ve never had a desire to stop using my insulin pump since I went on it almost 10 years ago – but that doesn’t mean that it’s wise for me to not have a back-up supply on hand. So I decided to do something about it. I told my doctor that I’d like to have some in my reserves, just in case, and she wholeheartedly agreed. I picked them up at no cost and they’ve remained among my supply stash ever since.

Knowing that they’re there and available to me, should I need them, makes me feel that much more equipped to handle any possible diabetes scenario. It’s kind of funny to find comfort in having syringes, of all things, under my roof – but to me and to anyone else with diabetes, it just makes sense to have the most basic of back-ups around.