Tuesday 20 May 2014

Week 9 - Appointments, Appointments, Appointments! Hypos. Hypos. Hypos!

So, week 9.

I had my first appointment at the hospital last week.

I went again on Monday.

I saw the midwife the next day.

I've gone to the GP and made an appointment for later this week to use a 24 hour blood pressure monitor.

I've made an appointment to get my eyes checked.

The diabetes nurse has rang twice, and I am to see her in between hospital appointments.

I'm back at the hospital next week.

And this is how it will be, with appointments increasing in intensity and urgency as time goes on.


It would be nice, if every time I went to the hospital, I got to see the actual consultant that I'm booked in to see, instead of one of his 'registrars'.

Definition of 'Registrar' - Barely 20 year old woman, always skinny with a snooty expression. Has read a couple of books and now considers herself  as'specializing' in diabetes. She worships 'targets' and presumes if 'targets' are not met that it must be due to copious cake eating. 

The first appointment had me meeting with the 'Registrar', who literally gasped at my after meal readings (they were over 8, but by 2 hours post meal I was hypoing), and proceeded to increase my insulin to carb ratios. I questioned her and suggested that I would hypo a lot more on those ratios, but nope, the TARGETS MUST BE MET.

So I did as she said, increased my ratios and then spent the next few days having hypo after hypo after hypo until I was a big, sweaty, exhausted mess.

This week, I actually got to see the consultant, who (guess what) put my ratios down to what they were before! So a bit middle finger to the 'Registrar', I WAS right after all.

My Hba1c (which is a measure of your average blood sugar over the past 3 months) is now at 6.3. Not bad. Not bad at all. My aim is for that to be in the 'normal zone' (i.e 5.8) by 12 weeks, so that I know that my blood sugars during the developmental period were the same as a non-diabetics, and therefore if anything goes wrong, it won't be because of the diabetes. It will (almost) absolve me of guilt.

Also, another positive thing, was that my suggestion of changing to a pump did not make the consultant fall off his chair. He seemed to take it as a perfectly reasonable suggestion, and said if I still suffered with hypos then he would get the diabetic nurse team to move forward with it. (YEY!). The only thing is, I'm rather picky. I know that tubing hanging out of me will piss me off no end. I want a tubeless pump. The OMNIPOD, which is a little plastic pod that sticks to your skin. It looks amazing, and of course it would give me so much flexibility with my control, fine tuning by background insulin hour by hour, being able to suspend it whilst exercising or when hypo. I don't know if they'll give me the choice of picking a pump, but we'll see.

Fingers crossed. 


No comments:

Post a Comment