Like taking candy from a baby. Or, carbohydrates from The Kid.

Last week, I was working diligently to wrap up my work on the October issue of HME News when I suddenly thought: low blood sugar.

Indeed it was. Did I have any snacks or glucose tabs on me? No. Was there any leftover apple or orange juice left in the office fridge from whatever breakfast occasion we most recently had? No.

So, I did what anyone in desperate times would do. I stole candy from a baby. Well, actually it was a granola bar and it was from Editor Liz's ride-home-from-work stash for her toddler, otherwise known as The Kid. And I say stole, because Liz was working at the SoPo satellite office and besides, was she going to say “no!”?

I am reminded of this because I am in the process of writing up the November assignment for our Business Development feature on diabetes. By writing up the assignment, I mean I develop questions to send to the reporter covering the story (You all know John Andrews, right?).

Diabetes has become much trickier to report on, thanks to CMS's success in decimating the market via competitive bidding. We like to ask manufacturers in any given space, what are the trends they are seeing? What's new and exciting? What's causing issues? And I realize there's a whole world out there outside of Medicare (me included).

Maybe I should ask myself instead. What would I want as a patient to see at, in this case, the pharmacy? Well, I have a meter but I occasionally check out the shiny new stuff when I see it on the shelf. And glucose tabs, definitely glucose tabs.

But I surmise there's a whole host of other information and products out there that could be beneficial. I guess we'll see what John comes up with.