Diabetes Forecast - August 2012

Art of Living Health

A Place for Everything

By Sara Sklaroff | Editor at Large

Iam not an organized person. I would like to be, but after 40 years, it’s clear that orderliness is not in my nature. Abundantly clear. And yet I love the accoutrements
of organization: colorful bins, striped ;le
folders, charming little boxes, and clever,
slotted wall systems. (Yes, I am the target
customer for the Container Store.) It’s
the maintenance of the aforementioned
accoutrements—the actual ;ling and
sorting and putting away—that I tend
to neglect. A writer who worked for me
once observed that I was a “visual
organizer,” which may have been his
kind way of pointing out that my desk
was a horrible mess. Still, he was right
that if I ;le things out of sight, I tend to
forget that they exist.

A “pillbox” hat image adorns a decoupaged box for, yes, pillboxes; a dip-dyed tube holds glucose tabs; tins are stamped for “day” and “night” doses of meds; and decorated clips are ready to secure lab orders.

One thing I can’t afford to be
disorganized about, however, is my
diabetes. It’s hard enough to take care of
this beast of an illness without having to
root around for the tools to manage its
care and feeding. Have you ever had to
scramble to ;nd a box of pen needles
that you just know you picked up from
the pharmacy? Or misplaced the lab
order for your next A1C test? I have,
and it’s extremely frustrating.

And so I make an extra effort. For the ;rst several years after I was diagnosed, I was able to keep all my pills and extra test strips in a Wonder Woman lunch box. I was a diabetes superhero! But as my health regimen grew more complicated over time, the lunch box would no longer close. So I found other cool receptacles for my diabetes supplies.

I’ve used vintage jars and ;our tins (for pen needles and pill bottles), a faux-jadeite canister (for syringes), and antique arts-and-crafts bookends (for paperwork). I stack my boxes of unused CGM sensors in a credenza in my home of;ce area, ;nding satisfaction in how perfectly they ;t, nestled alongside our ;rst-aid kit. And I now have a very attractive binder where I store test results and other paperwork, and I clip any pending lab orders to the front so I can ;nd them in a hurry.

I am well aware that focusing on the aesthetics of diabetic supply organization is a way to distract myself from the mundane work of managing an ornery, demanding disease. But you know what? It works. And, if I ;ip open my fancy binder, I can even ;nd the lab numbers to prove it.