Hard Cases to Protect My Tandem and Dexcom Gear

When you have a medical condition like type 1 diabetes, you quickly learn that advanced technology is a double-edged sword. On one hand, I have these brilliant, life-saving devices—an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor—that are supposed to give me my life back. They allow me to automate some of the things that my body can no longer do. But on the other hand, they bind me to a relentless schedule of physical logistics. I want to feel free, but instead, I often find myself tracking plastic, silicone, and steel components just to leave the house. Having managed this condition since 2006, I have seen the tech evolve significantly, yet the burden of chronic illness turns out to include becoming a supply-chain expert for your own survival.

As a remote worker, my environment is usually highly controlled, and my daily routine is fairly predictable. But travel disrupts that control. While browsing the web recently, I stumbled across a site with a name that immediately stopped me in my tracks: Useless Pancreas. I absolutely loved the name. It is the perfect, darkly humorous expression of how it feels to live with a broken internal organ. But beyond the clever branding, the shop solved a very practical problem: how to transport the fragile, awkwardly shaped gear that keeps me alive. I ended up getting their full suite—the large travel case for vacation trips to the West Indies, the tiny emergency case for weekend trips, and the dedicated Dexcom G7 case.

Putting ideas into practice is a severe test of my assumptions. Before I found these cases, I used to think about packing my diabetes supplies the way most people think about packing socks. You just throw a handful into a bag and assume it will be fine. But medical gear does not behave like clothing. If you pack too few socks, the worst case is that you have to buy more or wash them in a hotel sink. If you pack too few infusion sets, or if the ones you brought get damaged, the failure mode is catastrophic. You end up in an emergency room in a city where you do not know anyone. Two decades of managing this routine has taught me that the margins for error are incredibly thin.

Once the packages arrived, I realised how much this choice was about managing my own anxiety. When I pack for a short trip, I am forced to make a tactical gamble. If I take the tiny Emergency Case, which holds exactly one infusion set and one cartridge, I am choosing optimism. I am betting that my site will not fail, that my reservoir will not leak, and that my cannula will not bend under my skin. The small case feels liberating. It fits in a pocket or a small corner of my luggage like a small external hard drive. It represents the hope that I can live like a normal person for forty-eight hours without a massive tail of plastic trailing behind me.

But normal people do not have to worry about whether a slight bump against a doorway will dislodge the plastic tube delivering their life support. If I pack the Large Travel Case with four complete changes and backup vials, I am choosing realism. I am admitting before I even leave my driveway that my trip will likely be complicated by hardware failure. It feels like a quiet concession to the illness. By carrying the large case, I am acknowledging that my body cannot be trusted, and neither can the machines attached to it.

The real test of any system is how it handles unexpected stress. The large case is essentially an insurance policy against the chaos of travel. It is engineered with custom moulded slots to neatly stack multiple site changes, keeping the bulky, fragile plastic blisters from getting crushed under the weight of heavy luggage. When I am sitting in an airport terminal experiencing a three-hour flight delay, looking at a blood sugar graph that is ticking steadily upward because an infusion site has gone bad, the value of that insurance policy becomes incredibly clear. I do not want to be searching for a pharmacy in an unfamiliar town; I want to open a hard-shell container and find exactly what you need in its designated slot.

My sensors demand their own storage, too. A continuous glucose monitor like my Dexcom G7 is an amazing piece of engineering, but the plastic applicator it comes in is surprisingly bulky. It relies on a rigid, integrated plastic screw cap to maintain its sterile environment. While it does away with fragile paper or foil seals, the applicator itself is vulnerable to getting its hard plastic housing cracked or jammed under pressure if knocked loose inside a soft bag.

This is exactly why a specialised Dexcom G7 Storage Case becomes necessary. It ensures the applicators remain completely protected and organised, which is a major relief when I am planning my luggage. When I travel, my primary luggage is specifically an Away “The Carry-On”. Because it is a rigid polycarbonate clamshell, it provides a great deal of outer protection, but space inside is finite and highly structured. I also own a 20L Peak Design Everyday Backpack Zip. I do not use it every day; since I work remotely, it mostly stays put until I take it out for dedicated photography day trips. But when I do bring it along, its internal FlexFold dividers are meant for camera bodies and lenses, not loose medical supplies. Shoving unprotected applicators or pump sites into the gaps between camera gear is a recipe for cracked plastic. Because these sensors expire on a ten-day cycle while my pump sites last only three, their lifetimes are entirely out of sync. Trying to combine them into an unorganised camera bag or a tightly packed suitcase usually creates total chaos.

I can know a great deal about my illness without thinking about the physical volume of it. A high proportion of what a person with type 1 diabetes knows is completely unconscious. I know exactly how many carbs are in a slice of sourdough bread without looking it up, and I know precisely how much insulin to deliver for a morning walk versus an afternoon run. But I did not consciously realise how much mental energy I was spending on the physical safety of my gear until I had to organise it into these dedicated cases. Putting my supplies into specific, rigid compartments changed the way I viewed my travel routine. It made me realise that I was carrying a small pharmacy with me everywhere I went, and that treating it casually was a form of denial.

Ultimately, buying and using these specialised hard shells is a way for me to trade physical space for mental space. The gear takes up a significant, annoying footprint in my suitcase. It competes directly with the space I would rather use for clothes or laptop chargers. But by giving every backup component its own precisely moulded slot, I eliminate the constant, background mental friction of travel. The small case serves my daily needs; the large case protects me on extended trips; and the sensor case ensures my blood sugar data remains uninterrupted, whether it is tucked into my Away roller or riding alongside my camera lenses. My luggage ends up heavier, but my mind stays clear. And when your pancreas has been useless since 2006, a clear mind is the most valuable asset you can pack.