Just two more trips—both for fun and one with my husband, for once—and things may be back to whatever passes for normal at my house. Trips for fun, business, and to take care of family matters have kept us in "hello, goodbye" mode for much of the year, and definitely for the summer.
As I write this, I’m just back from a meeting in St. Louis and my husband’s just returned from a meeting in Washington, D.C. Then I’m taking off (again) on Wednesday, which happens to be our wedding anniversary. That trip isn’t with my husband, however; it’s a “Grandma trip” to Chicago with my grandson.
After that, it’s just me and my sweet baboo as we fly off to New York City. There, our plans include attending the opening performance of Web Editor Tara Dairman’s play, PB&J, being presented as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. (You can get more information about the play and the festival here.)
But enough about New York. Let’s go back to St. Louis, where I attended the annual meeting of the American Association of Diabetes Educators. I came back with pages of notes and stacks of handouts, business cards, and more that I still need to sort through. Frankly, I’m tired—and all I did was go to meetings and peruse the exhibits. There were evening events I didn’t attend: a dinner reception at the St. Louis Zoo, sponsored by this company; the annual Irish Coffee Social, sponsored by that company; and a Cyndi Lauper concert, sponsored by yet another company.
The exhibit hall had to be at least the size of a football field and was flanked by a mostly deserted section containing posted research results and a food area with a sea of mostly empty tables. In between were nearly 300 vendors.
If you’re away from home and run into a problem with any of your diabetes “stuff,” that exhibit hall is the place to be. Say the tape holding your continuous glucose monitor’s sensor begins to come loose. A trip to the CGM company’s booth could lead to being directed to the Mastisol booth, where they not only stick your tape down for you, but give you a sample of the product to boot. Not only that, but the representative stopped by my table in the café the next morning to see how the fix was holding up.
I got to try an OmniPod (www.myomnipod.com) insulin pump—er, insulin pod—which is about the size of an egg sliced in half the long way. The pod sticks directly onto your skin, there is no tubing, and it’s operated by a handheld device the company calls a personal diabetes manager. Aside from looking like I was pregnant with an elf, it was kind of neat, but the current pod doesn’t hold enough insulin for me.
One of my favorite products didn’t have anything to do with diabetes, but does fit in with caring for it. It’s a line of food containers called Fit & Fresh (www.fit-fresh.com). While they’re made to take food along, I like them so much I may just go buy some even though I work at home! Actually, that may not be a bad idea for portion control: I can just pack up my soup, salad, sandwich, snacks, or whatever in the morning and eat that instead of raiding the refrigerator all day. Since the containers come with cold packs, I won’t even have to open the refrigerator to get my food out.
I’ll be writing more about the meeting next week. For now, I need to unpack from that trip—and pack up for the next one (or two).
