As I read the news about Hurricane Dean making its way through the Caribbean, I wonder if any of you have been faced with dealing with hurricanes, tornados, cyclones, monsoons or any other extreme storm while having diabetes.
What advice would you have to share from your experience?
I can only speak from the tornado side and really haven’t had one of those in my house but like a mile down the road uh yeah. What I done during this time was put all my insulin and my daughter’s in my purse hang it around my neck and pray REALLY hard. The power went out and it got really hot here so my husband finally went out and got some coolers and put ice in them. My daughter and I put our insulin in a Glad Wrap bag with the zip lock top then put it on the tray and put some insulation around it. I went to the hospital 2 days later from a really bad low and cannot tell you anymore by the time I got back 1 week later they had the power back on and life kinda went on as usual. Hope this helps in anyway.
My daughter who is turning 11 as of Sept 13 was born during Hurricane Fran. I was gestative diabetic then. ( that was back in stupid days for me.) I listened to my then hubby as he told me “just sleep thru it.” We woke up and all I can say is “God Protected us.” Devastation was all around us. Homes were torn to shreds. etc…
My advice. Dont listen to idiots. Get away if you at all can. Pack your “supplies” of tests strips,meds. etc… and take a hike away from it!
After what happened to us, I keep a small stash of cash in a safe place to grab if I need to flee with my children due to storms etc.
Above all, Please keep safe!
MeadowLark
This is a great question Manny!
Right before hurricane Katrina, we were hit hard by Hurricane Ivan. I had no electricity for two and a half weeks, and temperatures were well into the 100s. Because so many people were affected, there wasn’t even ice available. Unless you had a generator, you were pretty much out of luck until the power company fixed it (Thank you Indiana Power, for trecking all the way to AL!) I was “normal” (or at least as NORMAL as I will ever be!) at that time. Upon hearing about the storms on TV recently, I wondered what I would do now, and how I need to prepare. My main concern is how to keep the insulin from going bad. The heat down here is brutal.
I’m worried about not being able to get insulin.
Say for example it happens & you’ve got 2 days of insulin left cause your going to refill your prescription today. Now you can’t & won’t be able to for sometime. I’ve often wondered how long I could go without insulin. Maybe 2 days?
I tried buying an extra vial from the pharmacy once & they gave me a hard time & finally agreed saying it would be like $80. I opted not to that day but may go back soon.
that would hold me over for a little longer than 2 days …
Does anyone else always have extra just in case?
I live on the coast of NC. We tend to get plenty of hurricanes. I don’t worry about it too much just because my parents live right down the road and they have a generator. The worst it’s ever gotten was being without power for 12 days. (That was pre-D and pre-generator)
What worries me most is a more nation-wide terroist type thing. I worry about running out of insulin or not having enough food. I know if things get bad that my child will suffer more than most. And, it terrifies me.
The morning of 9-11 my mom woke me up by calling to tell me to go refill my prescriptions immediately. I made jokes about my mom being paranoid, but I also got the refills.
I’m planning on heading out of town well before anybody else so that I’m not stuck on the road for 24 hours with this new thing I’ve got called diabetes. I can’t imagine going through Rita evacuations w/ this disease. I guess I’ll grab all the pens and cartridges in my fridge and pop them in the frio bag and pop the frio bag in the cooler w/ ice. And bring lots of candy. Or else I’m staying put and crossing my fingers that a tree doesn’t fall on my house.
I always have an extra vile of insulin. I just happened to get my prescriptions filled after being in the hospital so we had an extra vile in the fridge the first time, so now I get both scrips filled every month and I always have an extra. It freaks me out to think that something strange would happen and I wouldn’t be able to give Isabelle her insulin. I have two young children so the probability of accidental breakage is fairly high. 
Good advice MedowLark! Don’t listen to those male idiots!!! HA!! Though I’ve got to admit that can go for us females too!!! Well I’m 1 so…
Interesting question - it’s something I wonder about sometimes.
We don’t get hurricanes here, but there could be a big earthquake or some other disaster.
I’m always prepared to some degree, because I get more insulin a long time before I run out. I’ll never have less than 2 spares of each insulin sitting in my fridge!
I don’t have a frio pack, but our weather doesn’t often get so bad that I have to worry about temperature. There’s always a shady spot somewhere that I can keep it, even if I have to stash it at the back of the garage! In summer I keep a few ice packs in the freezer just in case, handy for keeping water bottles cold for long drives and that sort of thing, so I could also use one for keeping insulin cold if I needed to.
I always have a stash of jellybeans and other munchies that I can rely on. Stuff that I don’t particularly like so they last - if I buy stuff I like, they um… disappear… thin air, you understand… lol.
I hope the day never comes, but I like to think I could handle it if the world went belly up on us.
This discussion becomes unfortunately relevant now, as Hurricane Irene is approaching US soil…
http://us.cnn.com/2011/US/08/26/tropical.weather/index.html
One evening when I was at work, a tornado warning was issued for the area of my home (small town 20 minutes away from my work). Kids were home and prepared; they had hunkered down in the basement with all the appropriate gear. My boss sent me home, and upon getting there, I grabbed all my extra insulin out of the fridge to put in the “Grover-pak”. (I always carry 3 extra infusion sets, glucagon, sugar tabs, and insulin pen in this) Realized when I got to the basement with the kids that I had no needles for the pen in there. This situation was soon remedied, now can last at least 1 week with the supplies in the kit if unable to get to a pharmacy or hospital for help.
This past week, I got stuck downtown after the earthquake (no teasing from West Coast folks, but that 5.8-6.0 quake REALLY scared us!) Anyway, I was SO glad that I had enough stuff in my day bag that I take to work each day to make it through the night and next day. This included extra infusion sets, a slew of test strips, snacks, extra insulin (including a pen), syringes, pen needles, and all the stuff needed to do a site change. Oh, and also plenty of juice and snacks.
Anyway, I never made it back home because Metro was such a mess and the buses were being swarmed by angry commuters. I crashed at a friend’s house and went to work the next day. I was really proud that I was so well prepared for the unexpected! Because my commute is fairly long and involves public transit, I always make sure to have plenty of extras so I’m never caught short. It’s so important for anyone who is insulin-dependent.
As we prepare for Hurricane Irene here, I’m packing a couple of bags and making sure that everything is organized, just in case. Also have a cooler and ice packs at the ready to store my insulin in case we lose power.
My school of hard knocks has to do with stockpiling 8 months worth of insulin, then have the power go out and lose refrigeration for 10 days in 100-degree temperatures in August.
(And that wasn’t even a Hurricane, just a long line of thunderstorms. Although in 2003 we lost power for 8 days due to Isabel.)
Maybe the real advice is to move out of PEPCO’s service area!