| Survival around the world . .
Barbados Last year I studied a semester in Toronto Canada, and while there I joined and made the Universities basketball team. The terrific bonus of this was that just after New Year, the team heads for the sun for a week to escape the minus 20°C weather that hits Canada (and the biggest snow storm in their history). The team went to Barbados, the final island at the end of the Caribbean chain, of 22km in length and 14km in width. It is a top place, and the people are very very laid back and extemely friendly. However, with only 260,000 perminant residents, there isn't a great deal of infrastructure and little support for diabetics. This was no problem, until I stupidly left my back up supplies of insulin in Toronto, and was a little stuck. So I trooped off to the local hospital, eventually finding a doctor who knew what diabetes, and more importantly, insulin was. Being on Humulog didn't help much either, but he had heard of ActRapid, and wrote me a script for some, as well as some other unknown entity that required a syringe (I have never used one before). Filled with hope I raced off to the nearest chemist equivalent, and the ever friendly staff looked a little blank at me, then pulled out a bottle of some insulin I had never heard of, and offered it to me in exchange for what my script ordered. I declined, but it was to be my only hope of getting insulin on the island. I entered every chemist I could find, but to no avail. By this stage my Coach was totally convinced I was going to keel over and cark it at any second, so I became under 24hr surveilance for the remainder of the trip. So could I just recommend people plan ahead when entering strangeish countries? Thanks. Monique Hanley moniquehanley@hotmail.com
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