How much diabetes supplies do you keep on hand at home? I’m always afraid of an emergency where I wont be able to get Insulin or test strips etc…so I’m trying to stock up as much as I can without being crazy. Of course stocking up on Dexcom sensors is near impossible.
Thanks.
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Define… Crazy. 
. I fill my full prescriptions every 90 days, we use what we need and we hoard the rest for later. If that makes me crazy then I’ll wear that mantle proudly. 
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I admit I’m a hoarder. I have at least a year’s worth of insulin and then probably 6 months of sensors, an infinite supply of lancet needles 
, about 6 months of sites and reservoirs, a year’s worth of batteries, a year’s worth (at least) of test strips, a year’s worth (or more) of ketone strips, and probably years and years’ worth of pen needles. I get refills on our glucagon kits every 3 months and I have no idea how to estimate how much that counts for, as we’ve never yet had to use it in an emergency situation. We probably have 10 in our house now. We also probably have a year’s worth of Unisolve wipes and a year’s worth of skin tac, two spare lancets, a few hundred insulin syringes (these are backup, so who knows what they are equivalent to). The only things we have less than 6 months’ worth of are overpatches for my son’s Dexcom sensors and his transmitters, because those are only sent on Dexcom’s schedule.
That said, I still somehow manage to experience some kind of close shave with a supply shortage here and there. For instance, when I visited my parents, I realized I cut it close with sites and ran out…and then looked at my long-acting insulin, lest I have to resort of shots, and realized it expired in 2016! I also have gone out of town without a spare transmitter, only to have a session end, and when we first switched to the G6, our sensors failed so fast we actually ran out. Those experiences sort of shock you into becoming a stockpiler, no?
One thing we surprisingly run close on is alcohol swabs. They’re so ubiquitous, but the amount sent to us is pretty stingy and we never have more than a few weeks’ extra. In the pre-pandemic times, this was an absolute non-issue as you could always pick them up at any pharmacy or drug store.
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I have about 30 boxes of alcohol wipes. :D. If you ever need a box or two let me know! Also we switched to baqsimi as a replacement to glucogon. You should check out out! It was actually preferred with our insurance and it’s like $20 for 2 off them OTC.
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We have a few Basqimi around, but as we only have ever had to use mini-glucagon so far, it’s actually better for us to get those little red boxes, so that we can microdose Samson. It comes in handy when he has a stomach bug, for instance. But for his “suitcase” that he used to take to school, we had Basqimi so that even an untrained person felt confident administering it.
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similar for me - seem to have ~500 test strips and 6 vials of insulin. 6 glucagon packs. 10 boxes alcohol pads. 1 other thing - have 3 bottles of unisolve adhesive remover - it really helps getting the pods to just fall off. I used to keep the pods because they were half full but dont really do it anymore because Audrey uses more than the minimum (88?). At the start of COVID-19 I was concerned that maunfacturing would be hit hard but haven’t noticed any supply issues
Ed
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How often have you had to micro dose Samson? How low?
Very interested in finding more about that. We have had some scary lows, but never used the glucagon yet.
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I think most of us microdose when the kiddo is sick and can’t keep food down, not really a scary low when they can eat.
We’ve had to microdose him maybe five times since diabetes. We don’t do it when he’s super low necessarily, but actually when he’s running low because of a stomach bug and carbs don’t seem to bring him up. He might be in the 60s, but we’ve given him like 20 g of carbs and he doesn’t tick up at all. So we give him a mini dose of glucagon and he pops up into the 80s.
There was one time when he got a huge bolus, then went to sleep. And then his sensor gave “Sensor error” and when it came back online it adjusted itself down like 200 points, and I tested him and he was 26 mg/DL 
And so I did it then and he popped right up and stayed up after two microdoses. That time, however, I could have also treated with juice but I didn’t want to wake him up. Normally we give him syringes of 4g of honey, but I figured he’d need like 20 grams of juice and would have to be awoken for that.
We’ve done it many more times; we always do it at camp because they sort of encourage people to do it. And sometimes if I’m really sleepy and he’s been running stubbornly low and I’m on, say, the third low treatment, I might just give him a mini-gluc dose so he pops up above 70 mg/DL and I can go to sleep. It works like a charm, and honestly if it weren’t for the fact that he hates needle sticks we’d do it much more often, because often low treatments are a hassle, and we have dozens of these glucagon kits.
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Wow, that is so great. I wish my childs doctor told me more about this. There have been so many scary stomach viruses and many sleepless nights since diagnosis.Thank you.
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Just keep in mind that when you administer the glucagon you are depleting the reserves in the liver. So the microdosing is great, but it isn’t an infinite resource.
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