Lost and Found!

​The return trip was fairly uneventful, just some shady stuff about ‘gassing up’ in North Carolina, but then they made an announcement that while we were waiting one of the pilots timed out and we needed to find a replacement, which didn’t really make sense, but since I don’t have insider knowledge to how these things work, I can only observe and speculate. We ended up departing about an hour and a half late so in the grand scheme of things that could go wrong I was happy that was it.
The real crisis occurred at home. We treated ourselves to some Thai food as a final guilty pleasure before getting strict on the diet again. It was delicious, as usual. When I went to input some insulin to correct for the rice I had just eaten was when the nightmare started…I realized I left the device that controls my insulin pump on the freaking plane! It was already after 9 so there wasn’t much I could do. I called the airport to talk to someone in lost and found, but obviously they don’t have someone there 24/7. I wasn’t yet in panic mode. My blood sugar was low when we ate and I ate pretty light, so I was okay through the night, which to be honest was a bit of a miracle. A waking blood sugar of 250 isn’t ideal, but if I had eaten more it could have been more like 350 or higher.
Woke up, skipped breakfast and headed to the airport to see if, God willing, it was there. Mike drove me, otherwise I would have had to park and all that nonsense. Spent a lot of time waiting in line to talk to a person who told me elsewhere to go in the airport. Kind of wish the idiot I spoke to first hadn’t told me to get on that line, but whatever. Head down to the American Airlines lost and found and told the woman there details of what I was looking for and when and where I had left it. She does not have a hopeful answer but goes to take a look through the things she had just gone and collected from the various gates of items left behind on the planes.
I’m standing there hoping and praying but also on the verge of panicking. She comes out to tell me it’s not there. I’m not going to lie, I cried. This is now a big deal. I was extremely lucky that I had only changed my pump late Thursday and it was now Saturday morning, which meant I was still getting my constant drip of insulin until about 4 AM Monday.
I took a deep breath and regrouped. I called the company from whom I get my pump supplies and they were of very little help. I would have needed to speak to the pharmacy department, but they’re closed on weekends. Dude on the phone wasn’t grasping the seriousness of the situation so I flat out asked ‘what do you tell people to do who are having an emergency?’ He suggested calling my local pharmacy.
My pharmacy couldn’t help, neither could this Walgreens or that Walgreens. I was running out of options. I tell ya, though, asking people what they suggest is a good idea. The person at the second Walgreens suggested calling a hospital, who suggested a local medical supply company, who then had the brilliant idea of calling the manufacturer of my insulin pump! It seemed so obvious! I think I was more focused on trying to get my hands on a replacement that day, so I hadn’t thought of it immediately. On the plus side I was able to get one shipped out for the low low price of $199, down side was that I wouldn’t get it until Monday, which turned out to actually be Tuesday
Next, called my doctor’s emergency line to get a prescription for syringes so I could take shots for what I couldn’t program in my pump, meaning every time I ate or needed a correction. I hate injections more than I can express; it was a loooong few days until I could get my hands on my replacement!
It was a frustrating and expensive mistake I hope to never make again!