Dayle and I spent the past few days driving to Tennessee, Alabama and back. I feel like I’ve developed a good routine for packing, diabetically speaking. Travelling with my diabetes management tools requires high level inventory managment skills. Insulin pen needles, test strips, insulin pens, a new Dexcom sensor – given the constant variability of diabetes, estimating the amount of insulin needed for a handful of days is never easy.

I find that travelling with diabetes is a hit or miss experience. Control either comes too easy, or it’s entirely non-existant. Typically the case, there is no rhyme or reason to the ease or difficulty of diabetes management on the road. This is particularly annoying when you’re trying to focus on a 12-hour drive home, trying to relax with family, enjoying a good cupcake, or trying to comprehend the complexities of manufaturing legendary Tennessee Sipping Whiskey.

The difficulty is trying to disconnect from the world and all its worries (like email) while still recognizing that diabetes cannot be ignored. The problem is that no matter how high your zen is at any given moment, zen doesn’t mean anything if your blood glucose meter reads 41 mg/dl. Which it did.

This may not be anything new for my readers living with or caring for someone living with diabetes, but I think it’s important to remind others that when we say things like, diabetes is a 24-hour disease or diabetes does not stop – WE MEAN IT.