kathryn ratcliffe-lee

maybe for your first year, or even into your third, you listen to what everyone says about what you should do. needles, test strips, they go in the red sharps containers with the biohazard warning and safety lid. you wash your hands before every test or swab your fingers with a wipe soaked with rubbing alcohol. you use a fresh lancet and squeeze out enough blood on the first go to give your meter what it wants and have a drop left over. you swab your finger again while you wait for the number you know will appear to appear. you get the number, you eject the strip, you drop it into the sharps container. done, tidy, move on.

and then maybe in your fifth, sixth, or jesus, your eleventh year, you find yourself doing none of those things. it’s a different meter, pulled out of your bag much less frequently. the red plastic sharps container with the official warning has been replaced with a milk jug or laundry detergent bottle with “sharps” scrawled on the side in permanent marker. you don’t bother washing your hands or ripping open an alcohol swab, and the lancet that you inject has been in the lancing device for the past month. it’s dull and dirty, but you keep cocking the device and choosing different fingers until a hard squeeze produces enough blood for the thirsty test strip. the number that you’re not really waiting for is not the one you ever want, and when it appears you eject the strip into the regular old garbage in order to erase that number from the screen as soon as possible. or maybe you’re on the subway platform and just eject the strip into the dark recesses of your tote bag as the train pulls in. or maybe it’s the middle of the night and all you want to do is sleep so you just eject the strip away from you and roll over. the blood that took five jabs to find smears onto your bed sheet, and the bolus that your unwanted number calls for goes undelivered.

maybe that’s how all of these end up here, on the floor.