That’s weird the winky looks like he has a black eye to me. 
2 Likes
I remember a scene from “Men of a Certain Age” where they went on a hike. Andre’ Braugher (playing the diabetic) starts feeling faint and asks one of the guys to get the insulin from his car.
Obviously so he can kill himself on the show and escape moronic writing!
The only decent treatment Type 1 has received lately was when Dana Delany’s daughter developed it in Season 2 of “Body of Proof.” She was even kidnapped and her blood glucose was out of control (and she actually NEEDED insulin).
1 Like
I was told a few weeks ago that I couldn’t test in the lightbox (UV light) waiting room. (And was required to use the bathroom). My immediate response was, “I want to talk to the person who made that rule.”
I had to leave before I talked to them. The major reason was that I didn’t trust myself not to lay into them.
My initial thought was, “so, I might be low and you want me to walk to the bathroom to find out?” That’s a brilliant idea!
At the very least I would be bringing in my own humalog. Using R again would take me back more than a decade and definitely erode the control I have come to enjoy and expect.
The explanation I’ve heard from “those in the know” is that it’s expensive to make insulin crystals. Also, they say that human analog insulin has to be slightly altered all the time to make sure it stays viable. It sounds like they just don’t want anyone else making it and undercutting them in price.
The other obstacle to generic brands is that how will we know how well an insulin works without trying it?
From Nurse… so your a1c is 6.4% , so you are now longer a type 1,Duh!!!
I totally agree that it’s impossible for one person to be proficient in all areas of medicine. But what most of us experience are nurses (and other health professionals) who think they know everything about diabetes. My mother-in-law was in the hospital once and had a bad low in the middle of the night. Her nurse refused to get her anything, said it wasn’t time to eat yet. (My mil was an insulin dependent Type 2) Fortunately, someone else was present who told the nurse to get her some orange juice immediately. A little humility about what you do and do not know is needed by some professionals.
2 Likes
My favourite - on being offered high carb food -
“Don’t worry you don’t need insulin for this, it’s organic/ vegan/ gluten free”
Because my pancreas will obviously start producing insulin the minute I start eating ethically…? I have to tell all my diabetic brothers and sisters!! 
6 Likes
What if, one, day, it did regenerate. You’d be going SO LOW and not be able to figure out why… maybe it wouldn’t be that great. I’d want a warning first, like a text message from my pancreas telling me it’s going back to work on Monday after an extended vacation.
Gods yes. Nutrition faddists are the worst! Well, anyone convinced they have The Answer to anything, of course, but trying to explain that there are things they just don’t get… Similar to the aforementioned Nurse problem: the problem isn’t the ignorance, it’s the thinking they KNOW. Hey, I get that your fruit smoothie diet is doing wonders for your digestion but it’s not gonna regenerate my islet cells, m’kay? Plus anything ending in “-ose” is sugar, even if it came from something healthy.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
i go into the hospital for extended periods of time. even though they now know me at the hospital where i go, they still have no grasp whatsoever about my D or my pump or my dex. and i know that they have little info about D and how insulin works. they constantly want to give me my insulin AFTER i eat. the hospital nutritionist comes around and puts me on the classic (archaic) diabetic diet plan. so many calories, ignoring carbs, just the old exchanges.
no matter how i try to inform them of how everything works and how i NEED to take my insulin BEFORE i eat, they are insistent that i am wrong. for God’s sake, i have been D for 30+ yrs. you’d think that they’d have a clue that i know what i am doing.
The hospital stories always scare me and amaze me. I have been in the hospital for both my children and both times I was given the OK to do everything myself. I only had to report to the nurse in charge what my blood sugars were and what if any insulin I was taking. My endo was always very good with leaving notes in my chart that I was in charge. I was in again about four years ago for DKA due to cortisone injection in hip and even than which I did have to remove the pump because they wanted to make sure it wasn’t a pump problem, I still tested my own blood sugar and told them what I needed to take insulin wise and than we talked it over with the endo in charge and came to a dose together. Thankfully was in for less than 24 hours. But I guess it depends on he hospital and what kind of orders you can get from your doctor. Just hope and pray a hospital stay never has to happen again.
They really shouldn’t administer that stuff to T1s without knowing and warning you of what’s going to happen. I was fighting insane highs for weeks the first (and last!) time I had one, and the orthopedist was shocked, shocked to find out cortisone could have that effect. At first he even denied it. Fortunately my primary care clinic specializes in D as does my PCP, and he was the one who explained it when I called him after several days of not knowing WTF was going on with my insane BG. Didn’t put me into DKA thank god but it was no fun.
Cortisone injections can be a nightmare, but I thought I could handle it. I’ve had many for trigger finger issues but I think the problem for me this last time was because it was the hip joint, it was a very large dose. And try as I may, I did everything I could think of and still couldn’t make it work. So I guess fingers I can get relief for but the hips I will continue to have pain. Oh well, it builds character, right?
Quite so—but here’s the problem.
Regardless of one’s specialty—or whether one even has a specialty—HCPs as a class have “attitude”, as do pilots and a few other professions I could name. There is a pronounced tendency to be dismissive of what a patient thinks—and this is the key point—regardless of whether the point of disagreement falls within the practitioner’s specialty or not.
Yes, yes, I know that it can be difficult not to become jaded when dealing with large numbers of people who really are . . . shall we say . . . uninformed. (Anyone who has ever worked in any form of retail knows that). But that’s an explanation, not an answer. The problem is real.
1 Like
Whoa—really? Ouch!..
I had some dental surgery a year or so ago - the surgeon saw my Dexcom and asked me in detail how it worked, then used it as a reference to make sure I was OK while under anesthesia.
6 Likes
just piping in a tangent note: there is also the possibility that you have what is called an Over-Active-Bladder.
1 Like
From a foreman, “I don’t think you should work here. My parents both died of diabetes so I don’t want you to die.” Because of the hottest of hot climates.
I’m an old RN who used to get really angry with “interns”–now called “first year residents”–who, two weeks out of med school inherently knew that any information given by a patient’s PCP was wrong. Of course the PCP must be wrong, or he wouldn’t have sent the patient to the hospital! Aaargh!
2 Likes