You know when you get something new…you go home and hang it up/lay it out/try it on/unpack it/reorganize it, and it just makes you all happy and fulfilled?  Like, when you  go to Target and come home with $300 worth of things you don’t need (but might need one day way, way in the future) and you put them all in your cabinets and bathroom and kitchen like back stock in a stockroom, and there’s this strange overwhelming sense of pride and satisfaction that only you can appreciate?  Because, it’s not like you bought new shoes – it’s toilet paper and Ziploc sandwich bags.

The start of a cycle is like that for me, but taken to a new level…because my stockroom has things that no one else I know will ever have.  I have drugs in vials that need to be mixed.  I have syringes and needles.  I have a biohazard receptacle!  And when I get home from work and the Fed Ex box with the cooler of medication is sitting on my stoop, my blood pressure rises and my heart races…project!  I always arrange my supplies in my kitchen before a cycle, including wrapping the ugly burgundy biohazard container up in  paper (I mean, who has a burgundy color scheme?).

I think it’s safe for me to admit that I am afflicted with situational OCD, and it manifests at times like this.  I embrace it.  And, OCD or not, I think you’ll find that setting up your supplies as if they were ingredients for a chocolate chip cookie recipe makes the fact that you are about to inject a needle into your stomach just a little easier to digest.

-Kate, BHED Donor