The holiday plans had been hatched a couple of months before we were due to leave. As we were plotting, it occurred to Mr Understudy & I that we could keep this a surprise from the children. Logistics may be a bit of a challenge, but with the timings of the flight out, I reckoned I’d be able to pick the girls up from school & get to the airport in good time without them suspecting a thing.

And so it came to pass. I managed to pack 5 hand luggage sized cases with enough kit & caboodle to see us through a week. Booking allocated seats proved a wise move as this also entitled us to an additional rucksack or handbag each. The perfect extra room needed to pack all the pump supplies & insulin & test strips & chargers. You’ll note I haven’t mentioned test kit there. This is because Pumplette had her usual kit with her & the spare bg kit at school too. No worry, thought I, I shall just remind her before we leave that she needs it. 

Fast forward to a somewhat hasty security check & mad scrabble to pick up some food to feed very excited if somewhat bemused children. As they began to tuck into their 4* Michelin priced food, I left them happily munching whilst I went to pick up the spending money. Once reunited with the family it was time to join the queue for boarding. I casually asked Pumplette whether she’d checked her bgs before food. Nope, came the reply. No bother, I responded, you can check them whilst we wait to board the plane.

“Mum. Have you got my blood kit?”
Missing in action……

All the colour drained from my face. In the bags we had with us were 250 test strips, Chargers for test kits (plural), a spare lancing device (because how crappy would that be if you had a test kit but couldn’t get blood out of the Pumplette?!) and a token handful of lancets thrown in just for shizzles as we all knew full well not a single new one would be used during the week! Every eventuality catered for, except one. The omission of the machine that did the clever stuff. That was still contentedly nestling in Pumplette’s school bag which was languishing on the settle in the kitchen back at our house. I felt a little sick. I let my mind canter through possible scenarios. Did I have enough time to see whether or not the parochial airport chemist outlet downstairs had any form of test kit. No. I really didn’t. Those were the plane steps we were being ushered toward now & im also 100% certain the chemist didn’t have a single bg kit. Like I said, it’s a small airport & small chemist! Could we wing it on the cgm for a week? Not ideal. And also, it needed restarting in fewer than 48 hours. Bum!

It was at this point, a good friend from the #doc, who knew what we’d been planning for the girls, text to wish us a happy holiday. I replied with a thank you, & a you’ll never guess what an utter idiot I’ve been text. Then, phones needed to be switched off, and I had two hours where I wondered how easy it would be to pick up a replacement meter once in Spain. 

When we landed & I reconnected to the outside world, the aforementioned friend had sent me an email. The email told me that bg meters in Spain would be in mg/dL not mmol/L so I’d have to get good with my 18x table! However, this wouldn’t be necessary as they’d managed to organise a replacement bg meter which would arrive in 36 hours – could they have the apartment address & was this a workable solution? I was close to tears reading this email as I knew we could bumble through one day of cgm blagging before normal service was resumed on the Friday. 

Once again, the online community, so generous in time, knowledge, spirit & especially patience in my ineptitude, resolved a situation which could have been a lot more stressful than it actually was. Well. Apart from the bit where the Spanish delivery driver didn’t ring on the door bell & left without delivering the bg meter….but that’s another story! The happy outcome was, by Friday afternoon, we had a spangly new bg meter which exactly matched the one languishing in the school bag in the UK. Which meant we were at liberty to get on with the important business of exploring Barcelona. And a wonderful holiday was had by all.

Surprise holidays are, apparently, the best!