This is one of the most wonderful things about traditional Italian food: every town has its own version of almost everything. And, of course, everyone passionately defends the idea that theirs is the only truly authentic one, while all the others are inferior imitations. It's part of the fun.

Where I live, people actually go on "hunts" for great food. We make yearly trips just to buy a particular product because "only that place makes it perfectly." Then we bring it home, talk about it with family and friends, compare producers, debate which one is best... There's an entire culture built around the pursuit of exceptional food.

Where I live (a small seaside town), everyone makes their own jars of salt-cured anchovies. They are traditionally sealed with a loose lid consisting of a slate disc with a stone or other weight on top. They need to mature while still being able to breathe, and they must always remain covered by the proper amount of salt.

(The way you describe yours—as extremely smelly and falling apart—doesn't really suggest they're high quality. Normally, a properly cured anchovy should remain almost completely intact, so you can remove the tail and backbone and end up with two whole fillets. The peppercorns are a bit unusual as well.)

In twenty years of living with diabetes, I've made an unbelievable number of mistakes — enough to fill a warehouse.

Every one of them became a lesson, provided it didn't kill me first.

One of the biggest lessons, in fact, was learning to be extremely organized and always prepared.

Yes, in that particular case I had already used up my supplies (and during a three-day trip I hadn't thought about bringing a refill), and, rather stupidly, I wasn't carrying glucagon with me.

I've never claimed to be smart — just a survivor of my own stupidity.

As a European, I genuinely struggle to understand how you cope with your healthcare situation.

In France, in a small mountain village, I walked into a pharmacy and, through a combination of gestures and sketches, managed to buy a box of rapid-acting insulin at full price (around €30–40).

The insulin was clearly available. The issue was purely bureaucratic — technically I needed a prescription from a French doctor. But the urgency of the situation, and the fact that I was obviously diabetic, were equally obvious.

We certainly have our own problems over here, don't get me wrong.

But I don't envy yours.

I always keep a blood glucose meter in my backpack. You know, that medieval-age stuff with the finger-pricker and test strips. (You can buy one for about €10 in pretty much any pharmacy in Europe, but it’s better to already have one with you.)

And pen needles, too.

Your survival is ultimately your own responsibility. Prepare yourself for a few hard truths.

No one — including nurses and doctors who are not specifically trained in diabetes management — truly knows your situation.

I had a TIA. I was barely functioning, hospitalized, semi-conscious. Not a single person in the ER, nor during the entire week I was admitted, stopped to think that maybe I wasn’t mentally fit to manage my own CGM.

Always be prepared.

I once found myself in what my company had sold to me as a “hotel” in Germany. It was really more of a shack. I was having a severe hypo, glucose at 70 and dropping fast. There was no lobby, everything was closed, emergency services didn’t speak English, and I couldn’t even find a taxi willing to come out there.

I ended up licking sugar crumbs and biscuit dust that had accumulated over the years in the pocket of my suitcase.

Your CGM can fail. In fact, it will almost certainly fail while you’re on vacation on some Greek island with no signal.

You must know how to manage your blood sugar with insulin pens. Even with different insulin types. You need conversion charts. You need the phone number of your diabetes center so you can get proper instructions. You must be able to change an infusion set in the dark, slightly drunk, like Rambo — except this isn’t a movie.

You need to remember your insulin-to-carb ratio and be able to estimate the carbohydrates in a dish you’ve never seen before.

I’m lucky enough to be able to “feel” my blood sugar. More importantly, I can sense when I’m heading toward a hypo, and I do everything I can to preserve that personal superpower.

As we say in Italy, being diabetic is serious business.

My colleagues and friends see only the outside. They see a well-managed condition, an HbA1c of 6. They laugh when I tell some of the more extreme stories.

But they have no idea — absolutely no idea — how difficult our lives are.

Ours, and our families’.

But let me say one thing: I’ve been diabetic for more than 20 years. Ten years of management with finger pricks, three measurements a day, and insulin pens (thinking about it now, it feels completely insane that anyone could imagine managing this madness in such a primitive way). Then came years of CGM systems (I’m on my third one now, with different types of sensors, but that’s not the point).

I tinkered, automated, hacked things. But in the end I came to one conclusion: you need a competent specialist (someone who also understands that we tend to be a bit tech-obsessed) who, besides listening to you, actually imposes a strategy. We are the ones who need to adapt to the mainstream approach so we can speak the same language and have methods that are compatible with “everyone else.” No doctor will ever fully understand your custom system, and meanwhile the key to proper management is not in what you built.

Precise carb counting (without cheating yourself), correct boluses given at the right times, marking exercise, boredom and repetition, and being lucid about the effects of changes (agreed upon beforehand!) to CGM settings — changes that should only be made when you’re certain you’ve been a “good and precise patient.”

I’m saying this from the perspective of my own devastated situation. I now have an HbA1c of 5.8, but only after 20 years of smashing my head against the wall (and suffering incredible damage, many mistakes, and the classic “I’ve figured it all out myself” approach).

Stay strong.

In addition, AVIS is a very community-oriented volunteer association that builds a sense of belonging and awareness.

Organized this way, the system works.

It seems to me like a smart way to always have certain “useful things” at hand. If I could achieve the final combo and get back an email ticket system identical to the one The Bat! provided 1000 years ago, I’d be really happy.

By personal choice I use a commercial CGM (if I could “touch it,” I’d be firmly on the side of certainty about killing myself through sheer stupidity), but reading something like “associated with” really makes me angry. Before making such subtle insinuations about the open-source world (the source of the revolution of the last 10 years in this field), regulatory bodies should open their eyes to what is actually happening with the quality of current sensors and the real problems they are causing.

I really don’t understand this phobia of needles at all. After two days with one system or the other, you get used to it—there’s no pain, it’s just a mental issue of “having to make the gesture.”

My friends used to laugh at how normal it was for me to inject insulin outside a restaurant, while walking, chatting, and smoking at the same time.