Diabetes Logistics to Move to Canada

Welcome from Vancouver Canada!  I start my new job tomorrow morning with a "pancake social" with real Canadian maple syrup, followed by Yoga.  Yeah I know sounds pretty odd, but there are fourteen other people starting tomorrow at Lululemon that will be in my "training", and that actually does include fitness classes during the week.  Pumped about that!

So how did I get here you may ask.  It took and still continues to take some serious logistics.  As my best friend, always refers to me as the master logistisizer, so I can handle it :)  From trying to figure out some new medical devices, Animas Ping and new Decom G4 (post to come), to stockpiling insulin, the determination of everything I need to survive for a month or two depending on when we find permanent housing.  Everything else will go into storage up here in BC.  The hard part is what can actually go into storage without breaking or spoiling.  Obviously ALL the insulin needs to come with on my carry-on.  What about the dogs you ask?  Yeah they were carry-on as well.  

So I brought a cooler with all the insulin I own and my three glucagon kits.  The tricky thing here was that I have heard that x-rays wont effect the insulin, but I had them take it out of the bag, just in case, this is an expensive bag of goods!  Does anyone know 100% if it really makes a difference?

So outside of trying to figure out diabetes relocation, we had four checked bags that weighed 50+lbs each! Then the two rugrats to the right are also carry-ons.  I felt sorry for the guy behind us going through the x-ray machine.  Good thing my wife is a preferred frequent flying and we got to go through the what she calls, "the big-deal" line.  Haha.  So they were at least nice to our requests.  This is what we will be living out of until our house gets packed and shipped up to us at the end of the month.  Then it goes into storage until we have a permanent address.  I kept getting nervous that I would forget something vital to one of my devices or regimen.  So far so good!

Made the flight fine, dogs were great, but the cluster-F going through customs, immigration and agriculture was not fun.  Turns out that all the Asian flights got in at the same time we did and all the student were coming back from winter break for school!  The immigration line lasted 2.5 hours to get to the front, then had to prove I was a skilled worker so my wife could also get a work permit.  After some phone calls, searching through emails to find my college diploma and lawyer intervention, the officer finally agreed to give us both permits. Ughhh. Then we had to get the dogs approved, which was another 30mins.  All in all landed at 11am and didn't leave the airport until 3:30pm.  So with 250lbs of luggage we found a cab that took us straight to get our social identification number because the office closed at 4:30pm and I needed that number to start work. Mind you we have not eaten a meal since before we left San Francisco.  I was wearing my new Dexcom G4 and saw my lows coming, so had to steal some of my wife's coconut Luna bars.  I was also getting a little cranky. 

When it comes down to it, we figured it out and made it!  Checked into our amazing 19th floor furnished downtown suite.  The dogs are not getting use to the cold yet, but they will get use to it sooner or later.