What to do When you Forget Your Insulin

After a great camping trip, the two things I can’t wait to do when I get home is shower and sleep in my own bed. I’m driving home exhausted, thinking about how wonderful this trip was. Not looking forward to the over three-hour drive back, but I got to do it. What would you do if something happened that added an additional four-hours onto your drive?

Camping on the Channel Islands

This story starts with me and five friends camping on Santa Rosa Island. At the time, the ferry would only come to the island twice a week. Once it dropped us off, we couldn’t get off the island until it came four days later when the ferry came back. We were all excited about that.

We unknowingly chose a great weekend. It can be very windy out on the island but it was nice and calm for us, until our last day. We went on many hikes taking us all around the island. We took a swim in the Pacific Ocean, and got to know each other better.

No Unforeseen Diabetes Complications (yay!)

All in all, it was a great trip! The only diabetes related complication was going low on a couple of hikes. But this is a common occurrence and I was prepared. And all of my lows were quickly corrected with glucose tablets and granola bars.

I made sure to pack more than enough glucose tablets and snacks for any low blood sugar. I had more than enough remaining at the end of the trip. Which is something that I always plan for.

Getting Back and Unloading our Gear

“But let me tell you about this one time!” my friend says before retelling the story of how we all forgot my insulin on our long drive home.

The ferry dropped us off on the mainland. We all packed into the car with all of our gear and went back to our friend’s house. This is where we loaded and unloaded our gear, and left our cars.  

At our friend’s house we all went through everyone’s bags, boxes, and gear to make sure everyone was leaving with their things. In hindsight we all should have taken more time to go through everything, but we were tired and only thinking about sleeping.

Where’s My Insulin?

It was around 9:00 pm when we left our friend’s house and headed back down to Southern California. The drive takes about four hours plus any extra time that traffic adds. We get two to three hours into the drive when I realize that I didn’t have my insulin (either of the two kinds of insulin I use).

We stop the car and call our friend. He checks the cooler and my insulin was left in the cooler. All of us had looked in the cooler and none of us saw it.

How To Get My Insulin

The first thing we tried was to ask our friend who had the insulin to meet us halfway with my insulin. He said no, but would be awake if we drove back for it.

Next option was to find and call a 24-hour pharmacy to pick up more insulin. There were many problems with this option. It was about midnight and finding an open pharmacy could be challenging. I didn’t have my prescriptions refill number or a doctor’s order for either insulin. Since I always pack more insulin than I need (see my Packing List), all of my fast-acting insulin was back in the cooler and there was none at my house. And most importantly, it was too early for me to refill my insulin and have insurance cover it. This means I would have to pay about $300 to get it refilled if/when we found a 24-hour pharmacy. For all of these reasons, we decided against this option.  

What we ended up going with was driving all the way back up, picking up my insulin, and then making the four-hour drive back down. Needless to say, we were all very upset about this, but it needed to be done.

Reminiscing on This Trip

Talking about this trip many years later, my friends who were in the car with me are still angry. One of them said, “he (the person with the cooler and my insulin) presumably cares about their friend getting their medicine and was just like, ‘Cool, we’ll see you in two hours.’” My friends didn’t understand why he wasn’t willing to meet us part way with my insulin.

I was also upset, but unfortunately attitudes like this have happened to me too many times, so I didn’t dwell on it. In these times, it’s nearly impossible to change people’s minds. At least not without a lot of work and navigating a lot of emotions.

I was actually surprised at my friend’s anger when we talked about this years later. My friends got more upset and worked up than I did. I’m assuming it’s because they haven’t had to deal with as many diabetic mistakes or negative reactions over the years.

What We Learned

Making sure you have your insulin should be a no brainer. But we’re all humans, sometimes we make mistakes. It doesn’t matter how prepared and ready you are, there will come a time when you mess up. (That’s true for everything in life.)

Learning the best way to handle and solve these problems is another important lesson when traveling as/with a diabetic. It’s important to know your surroundings as best as you can, have a charged phone, your ID, and a form of payment.

It’s helped me to be able to push aside my emotions during these kinds of incidents and try to come at it with a logical mind. (Way easier said than done, believe me I know.) Then when it’s over you can have all of the emotions you want!

Try not to get upset when you make a mistake (again I know this is way easier said than done). As long as you learn from your mistake and move forward, that’s all that matters.

Read my disclaimer.