If you've taken a diabetes education class/series of classes

Type 2
1

What topic were you most interested in?

Monitoring/testing
Basics of disease
Nutrition
Exercise
Complications
Pump technology
Other __________

2

How to do the food part of this because dr’s sure aren’t going to explain it you - all they do is give you some pills and send you on your way. Not everyone knows that carbs turn into sugar. I didn’t understand this until I went to my one day long D-class. “Ignore sugar they are part of the total carb count.” was the best thing I heard that day up until then I was looking at both and it seemed like I could eat nothing!

In my class, we went over how it works in general, basics, complications - we discussed genetics of Type 2 a bit which was nice because I think it helped us newbies feel better than it isn’t our faults. The lady we had was a CGE and a diabetic nurse and she was diabetic herself (type 1) so it was nice to have some who ‘gets it.’ The woman who did the nutrition part wasn’t diabetic and not so sure she understood but she explained the things you need to look at (sugar, carbs, fat, protein) and made out meal sheets etc. (of course the carbs on those things are higher than what I eat now).

I don’t have pump etc. But I think the most important thing for me was to have to the food part explained because you honestly have to start all over with your diet and if no one explains how it works, it doesn’t help anyone.

3
  1. It’s not your fault;
  2. It’s not your fault;
  3. It’s not your fault.

I think every diabetic needs to be reassured that they didn’t get diabetes because they were lazy, gluttonous, or a bad person in any other sense. It’s genetic. You didn’t get it from stealing some of your sister’s Halloween candy or from having too many potato chips or from dropping out of the track team when you decided to get a job and save for your first car.

4

All of the above… the more information i have available to me, gives me more knowledge on how to manage this disease.
It is so frustrating as this disease is so different for each and every person, so there is no “rule book” to make things easier.
Even though some of the nutrition advice does not work for me, it helps to have an understanding so i can tweak my foods to suit my metabolism.
Knowing about what complications come in the diabetes package, give me the motivation, and desire to keep up with my new healthy lifestyle.