Ready For Anything

Remember the Scout motto, “Be Prepared”? It still applies as an adult. Here’s how to brush up on your diabetes preparedness plan so you’re ready for whatever comes your way

- Alison Roberts, Shannon Lavery(Dietitian)

As a nurse and certified diabetes care and education specialist Joe Trotter is always telling patients to be prepared for anything. That was on his mind in March 2020, he says, when it gradually became clear he hadn’t followed his own advice.

“There was more and more news about [COVID], and it seemed to be escalating,” recalls Trotter, who has type 1 himself. Living in a big city, he’d always taken its resources for granted, assuming that if he ever needed something in a pinch, “I’d just go out and get it.”

That calculus changed with the pandemic bearing down. If he was going to suggest to patients that stocking up on critical supplies was in their best interest, Trotter realised there was no reason that advice shouldn’t also apply to himself. “I realised I should probably do some planning ahead; that maybe I should take preparedness a little more seriously, and not only for COVID but for emergencies in general.”

Toward that end, Trotter says, he bought finger-stick glucose monitors and test strips he could use if there came a time when his primary CGM wasn’t available. He worried that his pump, which is charged by USB, would no longer work if the power went out, so he contacted his provider and secured a prescription for a long-acting insulin he could use if he needed to adopt a basal-bolus routine. He made sure he had extra pen needles on hand, and he bought extra batteries for all of his devices. And he spent some time refreshing his regular medicine cabinet, replenishing his shelves with basic necessities like ibuprofen, cold and sinus medications, and first-aid supplies like alcohol swabs and Band-Aids.