A Butter Compartment Suprise

You could have heard me gasp.

Recently, I nearly fell over when opening up the fridge in our kitchen to retreive a new bottle of Humalog from the Butter Compartment, a common place for keeping insulin and glucagon for us People With Diabetes. Heck, some of us have even given our D-Blogs creative names to reflect this trend (like Lee Ann, who runs The Butter Compartment!).

As the door opened, I flipped open the clear, hazy plastic door where the bagged boxes of insulin sit peacefully on top of the five-pack box of Lantus Pens. On top of the Humalog boxes was the red glucagon container in its own prescription-coded pharmacy baggie.

But to the right side of this storage area, there was a sight that just blew my mind. Something completely unexpected...

There, despite my belief at the time that it was in fact a dream, was a stick of butter. A stick of butter! Fullly wrapped in paper inside a ziplock baggie. A mostly-used little quarter stick sat nearby. In the Butter Compartment. How outrageous!

This was just not a normal happening in my D-Life, or for any PWD. Treachery had to be afoot, I determined.

"What the.... Why is there BUTTER in the butter compartment?" I yelled across the room, beckoning for an answer from my wife who quickly responded from the living room.

"That's where it lives. It's always been there."

She quickly added: "Leave it alone."

Mystified, I stared at this half-used stick of butter that my mind never recalled being there before. The full stick of butter stared right at me, as if to mock and challenge my questioning wide eyes with an all-tough attitude. Even the little bite-sized quarter stick glared at me, as if knowing it was being protected by the Mother Butter Stick and I couldn't touch them. There was a certain confidence they radiated, and it made me mad the longer I looked at the compartment in front of me.

"Oh my God," I muttered at a near whisper, still standing with the fridge still wide open as I peered inside as if I was observing a never-before-seen historic event. "I don't believe this."

The salad dressing and BBQ sauces on the shelf below ignored my judgemental eyes, not wanting to get involved in the crisis happening up above. They may have feared for their own existence.

In the end, I couldn't resist: had to move the butter. Down to a spot right above the meat drawer. Where it belonged. Not in the Butter Compartment, where my life-saving D-supplies had always conquered. There had been times in the past where I simply had too much insulin stocked to have it only occupy the butter compartment. In those instances, it expanded outside the trusty compartment area, but never abandoned it for another site. Oh no. Never. There's comfort there, when there's so little comfort elsewhere as far as diabetes.

Upon learning that I had in fact moved the butter (despite her instruction to the contrary), my wife's response: "Fine."

I smiled. Knowing that she'll learn to live with it. In the meantime, at least I'm at peace again knowing that my insulin is the sole occupant of our butter compartment - as it should be. I've put right what once went wrong. All is fine in my D-World, as normal as it can be.