It's been 2 and a half months of struggle and I have finally secured a sufficient amount of needles, test strips, and lancets.  Sadly, however, I haven't secured enough of the important stuff, insulin.  Insulin is the stuff that tells my body to consume the energy crystals that pile up in our bodies after we eat.  Without them, the crystals would pile up like snow on a stormy day and send my body into a state of chaos.  When that happens, many bad things can occur.  I can go into a never ending state of a coma - or even die.  Having Type I Diabetes, I need insulin to live.

Getting the medicine and clearance to take them to Japan has been a challenge; American Insurance companies will only give a person 3 months’ worth of prescriptions; Japan will only allow a person to bring in a month's worth into the country; every airport is an obstacle when carrying medicine with you;  and medicine is ridiculously expensive.  There are so many things a person would have to go through in order to make sure that their medicine makes it safely over into another country with them.  There are currently no guides that can help you get this done.  So, I made one, and I broke it down into three parts: “Obtaining Prescriptions”, “Securing Permission for Prescriptions”, and “Transporting Prescriptions”.


 
Preparation for study abroad has been very stressful.  Being Diabetic, I thought that preparing for my medicine would have been the most stressful part.  Boy, was I wrong!  There is nothing more stressful than losing money.  I’ve lost $5 before, but I have never lost over $3,500.  The situation I was in was exactly that.  When I had gone to my bank to check on what had happened to the wire, my bank told me that the other bank had received the money but did not know who it belonged to.  Before taking this to any of the UH (University of Hawaii) Mānoa International Coordinators, I made it a mission for myself to resolve this myself.  I did three things.