1. Having to run to the bathhouse in the frigid depths of the night to check ketones for 3am BGs.Don't even lie, okay? Everyone's been there. The grass is soaking wet. Your shoes are half on, your bladder is all the way full, and you're trying your darndest not to drop the stick on the ground or into the toilet. It's pitch black. You're exhausted and you're being chewed on by every bug to ever live. Don't let the ketones see you sweat - they can smell fear and you'll have XL by daybreak if you don't chug an entire cooler of water.
2. Forgetting the backpack. The backpack was abandoned daily. Not because it was ugly or anything, it was just extremely heavy and we were extremely lazy. Nose Goes to determine who walks a mile uphill to retrieve it.
3. Running out of the good juice boxes/glucose tablets and being stuck with the reject ones for the rest of the week.To the dillweed that invented orange glucose tablets, I have no respect for you. They taste like sidewalk chalk and the salty tears of hypoglycemic everywhere. Shame on you.
4. The chaos that was Testing and Dosing.Because everyone loves a good 45-90 minute wait.
5. Bug bites. Everywhere. You either bathe yourself in bug spray or you will die a slow, painful death by mosquito bites. You know what they say, Diabetics are sweeter so the bugs like your blood more.
6. F.O.B. Up until about 14, F.O.B. was throwing notes from bunk-to-bunk without waking your CC (or DC). But as soon as you got to Elm (or in Soles' case, G), you couldn't imagine doing anything but sleeping.
7. Carb books. So. Many. Mistakes. There was always some sort of edit that needed to be made to either the carb count or the menu - and the big announcement of the change was always lost in translation. Someone was always either dosed too much and ended up gulping down Juicy Juice or they didn't get enough and were peeing on sticks for the next three hours. And there was always that one person who never failed to completely mutilate their book (or lose it, or both).
8. The painful lancets.You know exactly which ones I'm talking about. Those yellow ones with the red tops. They're small harpoons that go entirely through your finger when you press down with even the slightest pressure. And as you're bleeding out on the ground, you manage to get the tiniest bit onto the meter strip only for it to say "ER4".
9. Cotton balls in mysterious places.When I unpacked my luggage at home on Friday, I would find probably 10 cotton balls minimum within all my stuff. Midnight checks always left you with a cotton ball at the bottom of your sleeping bag or in your pillowcase, and with two checks a night for five days, your cotton ball count gets up there.
10. The dance.Oh, the dance. For many of us it was the most dramatic event of the summer. Who will ask who? Who will dance in the same proximity as who? What will I wear? Oh, what a shindig. Such fun to be had. Until, of course, Good Riddance by Green Day plays and everyone within a 5-mile radius cries until their blood sugars drop below 60.
11. Never being on time to anything.Not sure if this was a group-exclusive thing or what, but literally nothing started or ended on time. No event, no meal, no T&D time slot was ever strict enough to resemble a schedule.
12. Morning ketones. It's a tale as old as time. Waking up every morning and having to check ketones regardless of your blood sugar. It's freezing cold and not even 7 a.m., and all your energy goes into not dropping the stick in the dark.
13. Crystal Lite? More like Crystal Meth.Essential to life. Probably watered down but still a million times more delicious than the iron-heavy well water. You'll most likely develop an incurable addiction that lives long after you leave on Friday.
14. The "Favorite Finger". Everyone's got one (actually, ten). The real MVP when you're trying to check your blood sugar - it's your go-to. Easily recognized by the massive callous.
15. Friends. No one gets it unless they've been there. Camp friends are unlike any people you've ever met in your daily life, and they stick with you through thick and thin. They understand what you're going through and there's a sense of belonging that comes along with the camp as a whole. There's something about knowing that everyone there is Diabetic that brings people closer together - no one is defined by their Diabetes because everyone there is in the same boat. It's definitely easier to manage your Diabetic responsibilities when everyone around you is doing it, too.
