Clinic Appointment, now annoyed!

[Garthion]

Had my clinic appointment this afternoon, first one at my local hospital as opposed to Good Hope in Sutton Coldfield (who weren't going to offer me a Carb counting course placement)

There were two consultants on this afternoon, one who works at both my local hospital (Sir Robert Peel, Tamworth) and Good Hope and whom I've seen many times before. And one whom I've never seen before. Have a guess at which consultant saw me. You'd be right if you guessed the one who'd never seen me previously. I would have much preferred to be seen by the other consultant and shall be asking to see her in future as the one I saw was not very helpful. He told me to do things I already do, made a not very polite comment on the fact that I had not yet been on a carb counting course (going on one in September, only been 7 years since I started MDI) and also seems to be of the impression that Insulin Pumps do not work. This is becaue I asked what the possibilities towards looking for funding would be and he basically said no chance (but in many more words than that)
I know the other consultant would have considered what I would have had to say, and would know that I have tried as hard as is possible to get my HbA1c down, even though it has gone back up above 10% (now at 10.2% so I'm in the NICE guidelines for a pump)

I will d the carb couning course and ask again at the end, and in future will ask to see the other consultant.

To put in writing how I'm feeling right now, due partly to do with this, but also due to the fact that I have an MRI tomorrow afternoon to find out why I have a permanent headache.

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Northerner]

A consultant who disregards his patient is worse than useless in my opinion - hope you get a decent one next time and get set on the road for a pump 🙂

 

[Garthion]

Got the BERTIE course in September (it's the version of DAFNE the Tamworth runs) that at least is a step in the right direction. Now I'm going to try getting my GP and DSN to my side, bit more leaverage then 😉

 

[trophywench]

Hee hee, 7 years Pish - took me 35, did my course in January 2008 !

Tisn't DAFNE or based on DAFNE .... your educators will have been taught by the excellent peeps who run BERTIE at Dornemouth Diabetes and Endocrinology Centre, and in fact why not confound en and do BERTIE online? I did that before I got a place on my local course, which they call "CARBS 4 1" - my understanding was that they weren't allowed to call it BERTIE and have to produce all their own course materials and manual, which is checked over and approved by BDEC, as is their teaching of the course before BDEC give it and the educators the final go-ahead - but anyway no matter! - as long as you are going on a properly presented programme, which it should be if it's one of theirs.

The online course isn't as detailed and of course you don't get the opportunity for any interaction, questions and answers as you go along, which the hands-on version does give, with a fair bit of one to one available throughout.

http://213.106.147.101/bdec2/index.shtml

Click on "e-Learning" on the right of the page.

Enjoy!

 

[Abi]

annoying clinic

How frustrating for you
I can't remember from your message how soon the carb counting course is going to be but there is an online version if you google bdec
Carb counting courses are useful and possibly psychologically beneficial when you meet others who understand what it's all about- but can also be very frustrating when you are with others who either can't seem to grasp the basics or are the ones that always get perfect levels with the minimum of efforrt. Basically they give you a framework to work from but you may find that you need to fine tune things from there. One thing that DAFNE did fail on was fasting basal testing- assuming that if the overnight and waking levels were ok then the basal was spot on
I think you deserve some more answers re the pump- such as whether they will reconsider after the course if you are still struggling, and if not, how else do they intend to help you
I have a very good book called using insulin by John Walsh- covers about every possible injection regimen- it is American but has blood glucose units in mmol/L alongside their measurements and most of the modern insulins are the same name in the us as here ( novorapid is known as novolog). It's very detailed- if you like I could post it to you to loan if you let me know your address- alternatively you can probably pick it up quite cheapy from Amazon