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Could this be our own Strych9’s everyday carry at Everyday Carry?

He writes, “Being diagnosed with Late Onset Type 1 Diabetes means you end up carrying a bunch of extra stuff around with you. Enough to justify carrying a bag around any time you leave the house because it’s cheaper and easier than changing every pair of pants you own over to cargoes.”

Strych9 believes in full-size carry, packing a Heckler & Koch USP .45 in a Galco rig.  In his Maxpedition organizer he’s got his diabetic stuff.  I personally love that SureFire Titan Plus 300 lumen keychain light powered by a single AAA-battery.  Yes, 300 lumens from a AAA-battery.

And also covertly resting near the SureFire is a Microtech Ultratech automatic knife. Nice.

And the Patagonia bag? Camouflage to the sheep.

For a complete description (and links to where you can get some of this for yourself), follow the link to Everyday Carry.

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58 COMMENTS

  1. Believe it is S9. He talks of being misdiagnosed as a type 2 and then finally getting it right.

    Even a minor injury can be life threatening to a diabetic. People with conditions need to be able to defend themselves without going hands on.

    • Really there isn’t much threat to me from injury or illness at this point.

      Might end up taking a few extra units of insulin each day until I’m over it/healed but that’s about it. The only real risk would be a major injury where I was incapacitated and couldn’t tell the docs the situation. Which is why I have “Insulin Dependent Type 1 Diabetic” tattooed on my left wrist.

      A lot of what you hear in terms of “risks” for diabetics is geared towards the fact that the vast majority of people who are diabetic are Type 2 and either don’t know it or don’t manage it at all. They’re running an a1c of 8+. Those people are at an increased risk of a lot of things because they have trillions of little razor blades running through their veins.

      There’s a ton of bullshit that’s commonly believed about diabetes by the general public. Some of which I thought was true because until fairly recently I had no reason to actually look into it.

      • My youngest son(19 now) was type 1 at age 11. You are so right. Even nurses and most doctors have no idea of the differences between type 1 and type 2. I’ve had to teach his doctors, his nurses, his teachers, god knows who else. All but his diabetic specialist seems to know nothing, but swear they know it all, because they don’t even know there is a type 1. Then they want to tell us it makes no difference. Both my son and me have been briefed by specialists more times than we can count, but his teacher knows everything be cause she just passed the most basic of EMT tests.
        Luckily, I had the specialists personal number by then and I didn’t argue with them. I just nodded my head and then had her fax the school. That shut ’em up.
        Just yet another rant about the retardation of the world…

        • “Even nurses and most doctors have no idea of the differences between type 1 and type 2.”

          My anecdotal experience is that this is 100% correct. It’s also fucking dangerous. My, now former, regular doctor kept telling me to reduce my carb intake and up my insulin dosages. The result of that would have been yet another disaster and fortunately I had stopped listening to them at that point. They also gave me completely incorrect information on how to use long acting insulin. Again, dangerous.

          Dietitians seem to be just as bad if not worse and will tell you all sorts of shit that makes no sense if you actually think about it.

          If they’re not an endocrinologist, IMHO, they are probably wrong about 95% of what they say and will treat everyone as a Type 2 regardless of if that makes sense. Anyone who is diagnosed with Type 2, again IMHO, should go to LabCorp or Quest Diagnostics or similar and pay for a GAD-65 Auto Antibody test (~$40) to independently confirm the diagnosis or to find out if it’s incorrect. Getting that test a few years ago would have saved me almost dying and somewhere on the order of $50,000.

  2. Wrong brand of Granola cups, not my brand of smokes( cheaper to role your own) Don’t like the Gunn, like the holster, this EDC is all fuked up. …love yah man😎

    • Hey, since I got ya here. Are you still lugging around your GP100?
      I recently picked up a 2 3/4” security six And I’m curious how it’s going for you?

      • Yep. Maybe not the best choice for long walks on the beach, but get a 2″ leather belt and you’ll be fine.

  3. Camels? I thought you were restricted to smoking blunts and nothing else in Colorado?

    Otherwise, nice pistol.

    • There are certainly worse vices. None of us is getting out alive – might as well indulge in something you enjoy.

      • I agree with jwm. Go ahead and enjoy yourself, but why bother with taking care of your health with expensive medical care when you destroy your health with smoking?

      • It’s true that nobody gets out alive. But what about your quality of life while you’re waiting for the reaper? If all you can do for the last years of your life is hug an oxygen tank and watch Oprah you ain’t got much quality.

        We all die. I want to go like my old man did. Active and still charming the ladies into his 80s. Lived in his own place and was still driving. One day he’s fine, the next he’s gone. He didn’t suffer thru years of procedures and therapies.

        • “If all you can do for the last years of your life is hug an oxygen tank…”

          If Democrats manage to ram through “Medicare for All” and go with the QALY plan they’ve openly discussed I won’t live six months past the day I retire because that’s the day they’ll move me from insulin to pain meds and ban me from using any money I have to buy the insulin on my own.

          So, at this point since they’ll probably get that done in 10 years, I’m fairly well fucked anyway. That doesn’t mean I plan on continuing the practice, but ultimately unless this country wises up it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t quit.

        • “…because that’s the day they’ll move me from insulin to pain meds and ban me from using any money I have to buy the insulin on my own.”

          People seem totally incapable of understanding that’s *exactly* the endgame of socialized medicine. It’s some scary shit…

      • Back a lifetime ago when I was working in the RJR Tobaccoville factory, I came out of work one day and got stuck behind a pickup truck at the gate. There was a medical oxygen tank in the bed with its hose running in through the vent window to the passenger’s oxy mask.
        Bumper sticker read, “Tobacco paid for this truck”.

    • Yeah, I picked up the habit again last summer when someone offered me a cigarette.

      It has to do with the way nicotine tricks your body when you’re in DKA I guess. It makes them seem like a great idea that makes you feel loads better. Until, of course, they don’t any more and you get a stern talking to from the doc in the ICU, which is mildly hilarious really. Yesterday he was telling you that he’s not quite sure how you’re alive, never mind conscious and talking, today he’s “having a talk” with you about quitting smoking.

      I’ll quit again eventually but for now with the amount of time I’ve been spending in and around “medical campuses” the absolutely horrified looks I get when smoking a cigarette are totally worth it. A strange form of schadenfreude I guess.

      • My dad smoked non-filtered Camels, died of something else. He said there was “bad chemicals” in the filter. Maybe so. He went thru the depression and WWII and ran a successful business.

        • My dad smoked PallMall unfiltered from 13-35 yo. Died of cancer a month shy of 47, I was 14. I may not be Mr. HealthNFitness, but I’m not going to let my daughters see me make obviously stupid decisions while I hypocritically tell them not to smoke.

  4. That’s a decent load out. We all have our vices I am a couple cheeseburgers too many, still workout most days though.

  5. I wonder if 9 is related in anyway to the strych9 fighting Co. They sell jiu jitsu stuff and he has mentioned before a fondness for martial arts and being physically prepared.

  6. The only way I’ll have a an H&K rig like that is if Strych9 bequeathes it to me…after passing from whatever malady catches up with him.

    I’ve got too many calibers to keep up with as it is.

  7. If this is Strych9’s EDC- What kind of late onset Diabetes, LADA or MODY? I was diagnosed with MODY at age 38.

  8. Hey, TTAG’ers, got a question for you –

    This popped up tonight on my local fish-wrapper / birdcage liner:

    “Families of Texas church shooting victims sue gun retailer”

    “The lawsuit filed in state district court in San Antonio alleges Academy Sports & Outdoors illegally sold the assault-style rifle, high-capacity magazine and ammunition to Devin Kelley. It argues Kelley shouldn’t have been able buy the firearm from the New Braunfels, Texas, store because he showed an ID from Colorado, which prohibits the sale of high-capacity weapons.”

    https://www.theledger.com/zz/news/20190301/families-of-texas-church-shooting-victims-sue-gun-retailer/1

    Are AR-pattern rifles ‘verboten’ in Colorado?

    Do they have a case against Academy?

    • 1) If you knew where that picture was taken and under what circumstances you’d laugh really hard.

      2) No, an AR is not verboden in Colorado nor are high capacity mags. Technically the law states that you cannot buy a new mag within the state’s borders but, again technically, there’s no law against buying them out of state and bringing them in provided that you do not then sell/give them to someone else. The law was meant to ban sale/transfer of mags over 15 rounds and make getting them within the state impossible if you didn’t already have them but grandfathered in the ones you already did have. The law was poorly written and is therefore unenforceable. “Repair kits” were always legal under the law so all you had to do was buy a bag with a mag, floor plate, follower and spring, go home and assemble it yourself to add to your stock of “high capacity mags”.

      Recently however, I’ve noted that a lot of the LGS’s outside of Denver (Is there an LGS in Denver? Dunno, the only reasons I ever go there are for an antiquarian book store, fly shop or to go to REI.) simply sell “high capacity” mags. My wife’s FNS-9c came with a 17 round mag and a gun store up in FoCo sells AR mags, AK mags and Glock fun sticks NIB as of Monday afternoon.

      So far as I can tell the only place that doesn’t sell such mags is Cabela’s and fuck them anyway. Why exactly this is happening I don’t know. I am not aware of a change in Colorado law allowing the sale of new 15+ round mags within the state but I know you can buy them just about anywhere. The law may have changed and I missed it or the places selling them are just in places where the Sheriff doesn’t bother enforcing the mag ban, which is the vast majority of the state since the vast majority of Sheriffs openly said they would never devote a single penny to enforcement of the law.

      Either way, this lawsuit is a joke. They’re just hoping Academy will settle rather than pay to fight it out.

      • Depends on if he said he was a Texas or Colorado resident on his 4733. He was living in Texas, so he could legitimately claim to be a resident and had a valid Texas address. If he claimed to be a Colorado resident, it would probably have been a bad buy since dealers need to comply with both dealer’s and resident’s states’ laws and probably couldn’t/didn’t run a CBI background check. Even if they did, it wouldn’t have mattered since his disqualifying crimes weren’t submitted by USAF.

        • “If he claimed to be a Colorado resident, it would probably have been a bad buy since dealers need to comply with both dealer’s and resident’s states’ laws and probably couldn’t/didn’t run a CBI background check.”

          An interesting point but I don’t think the CBI requirement applies to out-of-state long gun purchases. To my knowledge the CBI requirement only applies to purchases in the state of Colorado itself both to residents and out-of-state residents who buy a long gun in Colorado. I’ve bought rifles in NM and Wisconsin with a Colorado ID and it’s never been an issue. I’ve also bought a rifle in Colorado with an Ohio ID and with a New Mexico ID.

          Of course I’m not a previously prohibited person nor have I shot anyone with any of the rifles so it’s purely academic from my point of view. I also haven’t done any of that in a few years so maybe it’s changed?

  9. Hey Strych….thanks for posting your dump.

    So your shoes match the bag? Ha.

    Seriously though, always interesting to see another poster`s stuff.

  10. Random aside, tubes of glucose tabs fit nicely in pistol magazine pouches. Our T1D teenaged daughter used to use a 5.11 Push Pack as her diabetes supply bag/purse and had a double magazine pouch of glucose on the molle webbing

    • Add keys, a slim SOG folding knife and micro flashlight and youve got my carry. Knife and light iwb on belt. Less is more.

      I actually use the light and knife on a daily basis.

    • Gun, phone, knife, and light are always in my pocket. Keys when I need them, wallet when I’m actually buying something.

      I keep a lot of stuff in my man purse. Including my wallet and keys.

  11. Don’t forget the cigarettes when you have diabetes, very important, Camel are a good choice. Why not trying to get cancer on top of it? Quit smoking folks, there Is enough s*** in the air we breathe and the food we eat already.

  12. I’ll just address the smoking issue since a bunch of people brought it up and it probably seems somewhat hypocritical on my part because it is. It’s not healthy. Even the 3-5 per day I’ve been at isn’t healthy.

    Basically it comes down to this: I quit years back and started again about nine months ago when offered a cigarette at a social gathering. Apparently this is actually quite common for people in my situation even if they’ve never smoked before. Without getting into the technical details of it, nicotine tricks your brain into thinking you’re not hungry. When you have uncontrolled diabetes (due to your mismanagement, a misdiagnosis or whatever) you’re chemically starving to death and therefore hungry all the time unless you’re asleep. Food does nothing to change this. You can eat a massive pile of food and still be hungry minutes later. This also isn’t a “oh, I’m hungry” thing. I can’t explain the feeling at all. It’s a whole body hunger like few people in this country have probably experienced. It sucks. Really, really badly. When shit really hits the fan you’ll be losing more than a pound a day like some sort of concentration camp prisoner (Which, btw, is extremely aggravating when your doctor is telling you “This is a good thing! It will make your Type 2 easier to control!”).

    Anyway, nicotine takes this feeling away for about an hour. The effect lessens once you start insulin and are no longer hungry all the time. From what I’ve been told the “need” to smoke goes away sometime between 6-8 months after you get out of DKA/dying. At that point it’s just a habit. I’m looking forward to that in 2-4 months. It will be nice no longer smelling like an ashtray and smoking stale cigarettes every few days.

    The moral of the story, I would say, is that if you know someone who suddenly starts or restarts smoking for no apparent reason then it’s a good idea keep an eye on them for weight loss. If you see both, gently suggest they see a competent doctor, preferably in a hospital setting where the person won’t be a GP.

    • Thanks, I had no idea how the nicotine/brain thing happens. What I knew, I learned in anti-smoking class in school…long time ago. I learn something new every time I visit this site.

    • Do you carry a glucugon kit with you for extreme lows? Our kid and most of the T1 kids we know carry one along with glucose. Kids and teens also frequently have CGM as well as meter.

      • No. Lows are no longer really a problem for me now that I’ve talked to a doc that actually knows WTF he’s doing and have been properly instructed on how to use long-acting insulin.

        I still wait about 3 hours after using short-acting insulin before I go to sleep but I’m not being dragged down so once I even out I stay there. Were I to go low 15g of sugar will fix it.

        The kits you mention are a very good idea for kids. Hormone changes cause wild swings in glucose levels and can temporarily (or permanently in the case of puberty) do anything from cut the effectiveness of a unit of insulin in half to tripling it’s effectiveness. Add in workouts or sports and you could see a 300+ point swing in what a “normal” dose does.

  13. Very respectable, necessary load out you have there strych9. I must confess though, I always figured you for a “just in case” frag grenade guy. 🙂

    Thanks to you and the others that chimed in about diabetes too. Stuff there I didn’t know about. Good to know.

  14. Sorry to hear about your T-1. Was an EMT for a while. Saw some crazy stuff ref. T-1. Still more than I am willing to carry EDC. At least it isn’t an unused holster and brand new, never been shot firearm. Get well soon.

    • “Still more than I am willing to carry EDC.”

      “Willing” isn’t really an issue for me at this point. That’s what sucks. I don’t get a choice. Well, I mean, I do get a choice. I can choose not to carry all that stuff and run the risk of crashing a car and harming other people or on the flip side of that I can take the pretty much 100% chance of seriously fucking myself up in the next number of years because of uncontrolled diabetes. That stuff is the difference between an a1c of 6.4 (my current) or 8-10 because you don’t feel any different between 100mg/dl and 250-300mg/dl which means you can be running quite high all day and not know it if you’re not testing and, potentially, correcting highs. Once you do serious damage like this it cannot be undone with modern medicine. (Though TNT may change that in a few years).

      If you go back and look at my original edc from like 2 years ago it’s 13 or 14 items less which is what I’d prefer, but again, between carrying some extra stuff and going blind or getting my feet cut off or put on dialysis at 40 or maybe all three and more… I’ll carry the extra kit.

      • My step mother lost both her legs. Took a kidney from her daughter which was rejected and spent the last few years of her life on dialysis.

        Carry the kit and use what you have too.

  15. Hey, Strych9 must be my doppelganger! I also am T1 and carry a USP45. Mine doesn’t have that sexy grey frame, but it does have the Match trigger and a Tactical rollmark (kind of a Frankenstein gun, frame from an Elite, slide from a Tactical, barrel from a fullsize). I went the cargo pants route. But I also carry less stuff because I went with the CGM and pump. I guess I should post my own EDC photo.

    • Sounds like my other USP. Full sized slide with a tac barrel and suppressor spring kit so it can take my Osprey. I got the second one because a tac barrel with an IWB holster cuts open your pants after a bit.

      I also went the CGM route but I’m not willing to go with a pump because I don’t need it and I’m not paying $8000 or more for something that I will almost certainly break in a few months. Currently the Libre CGM system doesn’t have a phone app for Android and I’m not getting a $1000 Iphone just to have the Libre app that will decode the encrypted data stream that the 14 day sensor sends when Abbot says they’ll have an Android version out within the year.

      • I got the Tactical slide as an “upper assembly” (Tactical slide with adjustable Meprolights, threaded barrel, and recoil assembly) to drop onto my Elite, which is “numbers matching”. So I couldn’t resist, I bought an Osprey too. Just waiting on NFA paperwork, can’t wait to try it out!

        I went with the Dexcom CGM (Seven Plus, then G4, then G5) and carried that stupid handheld unit for YEARS, including almost two years when they had an iPhone app for the G5 but I have an Android. They finally released the G5 android app, which was doing fine, until they switched to the G6, which is great because now you don’t need to calibrate it (even less stuff to carry) but also not great because sensors keep failing prematurely.

        I also went with the Insulet Omnipod pump system because it’s the only one that doesn’t have a separate pump and infusion set, and I’m too active to use a regular pump without knocking it loose or something. The Omnipod uses disposable (80-hour) self-contained units with the reservoir, pump, and infusion set all together, so you don’t have to worry about it breaking in a few months…as long as it doesn’t break for 80 hours, you’re good. And most of the insurance plans I’ve had actually covered it 100%, although the UnitedHealthcare plan I’m currently on is utter crap and only covers it at 80%. Still, it’s hundreds, not thousands.

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