Are any of you familiar with “Where’s George” ? Maybe you’ve gotten a one dollar bill with that website stamped on it? It is basically a fun website where people can go to see where their paper currency has been. The bills are tracked by their serial number, and if many people register the same bill you can literally see a map detailing where that bill has been.
A coworker of mine was recently talking with me about how she found a test strip in the inside of her sock one day. She said it was not even a “recent model” strip – but one from a meter she used long ago! “Must have gotten in the laundry somehow” she explained.
We chatted about the crazy places these test strips end up, and the little nod of recognition when you see a test strip out in the wild. An acknowledgement of another living with diabetes somewhere out there, not too far away.
We joked about a “Where’s George” type of thing with test strips and not paper currency. Somehow microscopically printing a website address and identifier on each test strip, then people who find them can go to the website and record a sighting. Picture a Google map with little red dots where people have found one of your test strips.
Don’t think too hard about the logistics of something like this, that these discarded test strips are bloody, and technically litter, and that we don’t leave them all over on purpose.
Just let your imagination run with the idea of what your map would look like after a couple of months, or a year, or a couple of years.