For the first time since I don’t remember when I left my apartment and went around the corner to my local pub restaurant, and forgot to bring my insulin. 

Wow, it didn’t even dawn on me until still seated at the bar after a glass of wine and an appetizer, the entree came and my husband said, “Aren’t you going to shoot up?” Oh, my gosh, I thought, not in a bad way, no, sort of a tickled how could I be so mindless way, “I forgot to bring it.” I answered the look of concern on his face with, “That’s OK, the wine will drop me and I’ll shoot up as soon as we get home.” Home only being two blocks away.

Then I sat back and enjoyed the absolute freedom that “normal” people experience every day, actually several times a day. No calculating carbs, no pulling out the syringe and vial, no turning away to give myself an injection, no wondering if I just took the right amount of insulin. No afterthought that I’d have to check my blood sugar two hours later to see. No making a mental note when two hours later would be. No, I just sat back and enjoyed the utter, overwhelming freedom, and the incredible wiener schnitzel in front of us in this super Austrian pub. 

I don’t know what caused me to forget my insulin, although I can guess. I was doing a million things before I left the apartment, my mind was equally in a million places, forward and backward, and I had just had an upsetting phone call with a friend. In part, that’s what prompted the last minute desire to go out for dinner; I needed to get out of this tiny apartment and change the view and my head. 

But whatever the reason, it’s amazing that forgetting my insulin doesn’t happen more often, like once a day or once a week, really, and so I have to give myself credit for the 99 times out of 100 that I remember to bring my insulin with me. 

So even my mistake gives me justifiable cause to pat myself on the back for all the times I succeed. OK, here’s the part where you laugh with me.