I was looking at the brochure rack at the endocrinologist's office the other day, and thought about how unhelpful they are with the real experience of living with the disease. There isn't a brochure for how to handle your insurance company when they decide to decline you a new pump because they think you want it just for fun, not because the old one is so old that it broke. None about how to control your blood sugar when your period every month makes everything crazy.
I think they should have ones like: "The rest of the world are idiots when it comes to diabetes... 5 Steps for how to deal with it."
Any suggestions for brochures they should hand out at?
Oh bluefrango, you hit a NEED! Daily Doses - how they figure'em and what to do when they don't work
Resetting Basals and Boluses
Correcting Hypos: Researching your right # and preventing hypers
Researching your per gram rise in blood glucose
Researching your per unit drop in blood glucose (learning your insulin sensitivity)
TAG
Traveling across 1-6 east and west zones: here's some cities
How to reuse syringes in emergencies
Jobs when your A1c is 7 or above
Be evacuation ready and how to get more supplies to be ready
Conversion tables: multiplication tables, mg/dl to mmol/l, Lbs to Kg, A1c and eAG in mg/dl and mmol/l
Sick box, Hospital Ready Bag, Paperwork Ready
Just a few from the top o' my head.
Those are good suggestions from both of you! I agree the brochures seem really pointless although they are oriented towards "kidney disease" and "osteoporosis" (they also have a couple of plastic bones for visual aids on the osteoporosis discussion...) for the doc to throw at you should you have the misfortune of having those complications.
I agree with Leo about many of those suggestions too however I don't see that they'd bother, since their goal isn't to get to "normal" bg but 40-60 points > normal and then sit tight? That drives me nuts. Which may be a short trip but it still drives me nuts.
I've been surprised no one has lined up to list topics. I guess if an Endo wrote them, he/she'd be afraid of malpractice liability, e.g., someone misreading, misunderstanding and getting into a problem. My 13 year old grandson said, "Insert a disclaimer."
Beyond that, the misunderstanding of an insulin dosage is prevented by the constraints that are put on writers of prescriptions. So the alternative for an Endo writing the topics would be getting hauled before his State Board.
Neither of these is a good outcome, so I don't think we'll be seeing these topics at the Endo offices anytime soon!
