I have never thrown away a vial of insulin. Not one. I have so many. I am not sure what I am hanging onto them for. I had a few ideas of what I would do with them and Im not sure I want to now.
At one point I was going to fill them with something special, and maybe sell them for a a fundraiser, but I never knew what.
I have hundreds of vials. Fat little Novolog vials, and Long Lantus vials, maroon decoreated Humalog vials... Hundreds.
They take up space...
I open the drawer that I keep them in and I am not sure what I am going to do with them, so I shut the drawer.
I sometimes gaze at them and think about how these little glass bottles have affected our lives.
They have all had a copay.. ten dollars, twenty dollars, a dollar, depending on the insurance we carried at the time... I dont keep them because of the money... they have no monetary value.
Most of them have a date written on them... either in permanent marker, or in pen, on a small piece of torn paper, and fastened under a tegaderm. The date it was opened.
My sons life, accessed through a rubber stopper... day after day after day.. month after month, a needle, plunged through rubber...
and it leaves no trace at all....
Not one tiny dot, the route to his survival... and the eye cannot see it.
Still, air tight after accessed.... Like it never happened... like the diabetes is from a different reality, and like it it was never there.... a whisper in a crowd.

My husband knows not to throw them away. He tried once...
but I cant, somehow...
I just need them...
They are a comforting, somehow...
and they are in a drawer.

and one day, I will know exactly what I am supposed to do with them...