A Test Strip in My Shoe

 A while back, one of my D-mom friends posted that she found a test strip in her shoe.  We all know they show up everywhere.  The shower, the bottom of your purse, the front step.  You name the place, and I've probably seen it there.  I once found a test strip on our favorite hiking trail.  We had been there a few weeks before and I'm just assuming it was ours.  Well, I got to work last week, took off my street shoes, and there under my heel, was a test strip.

Jada loves to peel the test strips apart after they are used and this particular test strip in the bottom of my shoe was one she had dismembered.  My first thought was to peel it off and throw it in the trash can.  But I couldn't do it.  I've been walking around for more than a week with the sticky part of the strip in my favorite pair of Danskos.  I cannot, for the life of me, bring myself to throw it away.

It kind of puzzles me.  I'm not sure why.  I don't know if I feel guilt for leaving her for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week while I go to work.  Maybe it's my way of carrying her with me while I'm gone?  It's oddly comforting to me to see that strip in the bottom of my shoe when I have to run back to my locker to get something.  Perhaps, I'm afraid I'll forget to call and check on her when I have some down time and seeing that strip is a reality check for me.

Perhaps, this disease has just really done a number on me and now I'm really weird.  My coworkers have probably seen it and wondered what the heck it was.  They must think I'm REALLY weird for having such a thing in the bottom of my shoe.  They might not even know what it is, but if they did, they might think I was more than REALLY weird.

So, I have a test strip in my shoe.  I might be crazy, I might be weird, but that little test strip represents so much in my life.  First of all, it represents the fact that she has probably checked her blood sugar more than 18,000 times since diagnosis. 18,000 TIMES! (yes...that's why her fingers are black and blue!) How about the  weight of diabetes that never leaves, even when I am away from her and at work, attempting to keep my mind off of it and then, the guilt that I can't fix her pancreas and BE the perfect pancreas for her.  Or, how about the fact that she has an older brother who worries excessively about her and he has no real peace either.  It breaks my heart.  Jeff and I haven't been away on a trip together since diagnosis.  This disease can take a toll on a marriage.

Until we can say diabetes is no more, I will most likely keep the test strip in my shoe.  I do believe that day will come, although I don't know when.   Until then, we'll keep testing, keep living and trying to make the most out of what life has handed us.