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I spent the night at my mom's house on Saturday night so we could spend the day with the family. Before I left my apartment to head to her house, my pump alarmed "Low Reservoir." I threw some half empty bottles of insulin and the inserter into my overnight bag and set out the door to make the 1.5 hour drive.

My blood sugar had been rocky all day long. I'd forgotten to check my blood sugar before breakfast in a rush out the door that morning. About two hours after I'd bolused for breakfast, I clocked in at 201. I was fuzzy and tired.

A few hours later, I'd settled at 152. I'd correctly bolused for all my food and all my numbers, so I wasn't sure why I wasn't coming down beyond the 150 mark. When I got to my mom's house late on Saturday evening, my blood sugar was 166. We headed out for a light dinner (soup and half of a sandwich).

By the time we'd chatted for a few hours, my pump was on empty. I disconnected for a quick shower, setting out all my pump supplies before jumping into the hot water. I didn't expect what happened next.

After my shower, I began the routine of inserting the infusion site and filling the reservoir. The infusion site went in fine. But the reservoir was proving to be extremely difficult.

Since none of my insulin bottles were full enough to give me a full reservoir, I "economized" my insulin. I swapped the insulin from one bottle to another until I gathered almost half a bottle together in one. As I prepared to fill the reservoir, the insulin began pouring out the blue needle cap on the reservoir.

I quickly stopped filling it and flipped the bottle right side up, but the damage was done. I'd lost too many units to salvage a full reservoir. At the most, I had 45 units of insulin. That would last me 24 hours, on a good day.

I knew going into Sunday with 1/3 of my normal insulin wouldn't be a good idea, considering we were travelling a total of three hours to my grandmother's lakeside property. Plus, I had the drive back to my own apartment. There were too many variables to leave my insulin in such a condition.

Unfortunately, I didn't have any extra bottles. I checked the fridge, the dresser, and every bag in my room. But the only diabetes remnants that remained were two months of infusion sets, reservoirs, and test strips. All but the most important part.

Once I'd settled on the fact that I wasn't going to have much insulin (I decided to pretend that it was just a normal third day on my pump), my nerves began to calm down. But I noticed that I still had an "Uh-Oh" feeling in my stomach. And I was falling all over the bathroom as I prepped for bed.

I checked my blood sugar, not knowing if I should scramble for juice or insulin. It was an in-between feeling, the angst of this disease. As the number beeped on my meter and pump, the feeling in my gut turned to nausea. 326, translating to a 5.1 unit bolus.

I couldn't believe the number considering I'd barely had any carbs for dinner, I'd bolused correctly, and I hadn't been disconnected from my pump for more than 20 minutes (a tiny amount compared to most days). Yet there it was. A round, even number. A hateful number. A number that had to take too much of my too precious insulin.

Sadly, the worst part of the night wasn't that I had ketones racing through my body. It wasn't that my stomach was upside down or even that my mind was stacked with cob-webs. It was the simple fact that I was so dependent on this one thing: insulin.