Several years ago, it took me many hours of Googling to track down what I considered at the time to be the least aesthetically-offensive med alert bracelet then on offer.
What with me being diabtic*, it's important that any paramedics who should happen to be scraping me up off the street are aware that I may be in a hypo rather than dead drunk. And, whilst I fully accept the sound rationale behind med alert jewellery, I really don't see any justification for the vast majority of it being so ugly. I mean, it's not as though - as with crutches and wheelchairs - you can get it free. I've long assumed that part of the reason for NHS mobility aids being so unremittingly grim is the sound financial principle that, faced with a grey monstrosity, anyone with any financial cushion at all will rush to use it to buy something sleek and gorgeous, thus returning the grey horror to the NHS to be unleashed on the next victim...
But you can't get med alert jewellery on the NHS, so there's no good reason to deliberately design it to be as ghastly as possible. (Trust me: I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago with someone wearing a bracelet produced by the most well-known UK manufacturer of these aids. A thing of beauty it was most assuredly not.) I know stainless steel enjoyed brief (and inexplicable) favour as a jewellery component in the 1970s, but surely no-one wears it from choice now?
Why this constant assumption that nobody with a life-threatening medical condition and/or serious impairment will give two hoots about their appearance? Med alert jewellery is something which, by its very nature, one has to wear all the time.
If it's round your neck, you can't wear any other necklaces or pendants. (Well, I suppose you could. But I suspect the hideous med alert pendant would very quickly suck all the aesthetic merit out of anything else worn in its immediate vicinity.)
If it's round your wrist, you have to see it. Which, in the case of my own really-not-that-bad silver bracelet results in me thinking many times a day that my right wrist would look a deal better with something much more to my taste fastened round it. (No: not Pop's jaws: the very idea!)
Anyway, I am pleased to report that a solution appears to have presented itself since my last foray into the stainless steel world of med alert jewellery: behold, I give you the med alert watch**! Whilst not the most gorgeously-designed watch you ever did see, it's pretty inoffensive. And, importantly, it would free up my right wrist for lovely things. Also, it would carry a deal more information than just "diabetes" and "penicillin allergy", which are what's engraved on my current bracelet. Result all round, really....
What with me being diabtic*, it's important that any paramedics who should happen to be scraping me up off the street are aware that I may be in a hypo rather than dead drunk. And, whilst I fully accept the sound rationale behind med alert jewellery, I really don't see any justification for the vast majority of it being so ugly. I mean, it's not as though - as with crutches and wheelchairs - you can get it free. I've long assumed that part of the reason for NHS mobility aids being so unremittingly grim is the sound financial principle that, faced with a grey monstrosity, anyone with any financial cushion at all will rush to use it to buy something sleek and gorgeous, thus returning the grey horror to the NHS to be unleashed on the next victim...
But you can't get med alert jewellery on the NHS, so there's no good reason to deliberately design it to be as ghastly as possible. (Trust me: I was in a meeting a couple of weeks ago with someone wearing a bracelet produced by the most well-known UK manufacturer of these aids. A thing of beauty it was most assuredly not.) I know stainless steel enjoyed brief (and inexplicable) favour as a jewellery component in the 1970s, but surely no-one wears it from choice now?
Why this constant assumption that nobody with a life-threatening medical condition and/or serious impairment will give two hoots about their appearance? Med alert jewellery is something which, by its very nature, one has to wear all the time.
If it's round your neck, you can't wear any other necklaces or pendants. (Well, I suppose you could. But I suspect the hideous med alert pendant would very quickly suck all the aesthetic merit out of anything else worn in its immediate vicinity.)
If it's round your wrist, you have to see it. Which, in the case of my own really-not-that-bad silver bracelet results in me thinking many times a day that my right wrist would look a deal better with something much more to my taste fastened round it. (No: not Pop's jaws: the very idea!)
Anyway, I am pleased to report that a solution appears to have presented itself since my last foray into the stainless steel world of med alert jewellery: behold, I give you the med alert watch**! Whilst not the most gorgeously-designed watch you ever did see, it's pretty inoffensive. And, importantly, it would free up my right wrist for lovely things. Also, it would carry a deal more information than just "diabetes" and "penicillin allergy", which are what's engraved on my current bracelet. Result all round, really....
The Editor
*Aunty Jan and self once had the great misfortune to meet a vulgar individual in a pub who insisted on showing off his ever-so-clever med alert solution to us. (Regularly useful in Spain, apparently, where he often fell down drunk and had to be scraped off the floor by paramedics.) He undid his shirt to reveal the legend "I'M A DIABTIC" tattooed across his chest. True story.
** Yes, thank you, I know it's a man's watch. But so is the watch I'm currently wearing. Dainty watches for laydeez look ridiculous on wrists the size of mine. And you have to squint to see the time on them.
