Hello fellow DM folk, looking forward to your support and companionship

[Drummer]

Once you have got your breakfasts sorted out, then you don't need to set them - if you know that a particular set of additions to the eggs, or sausages, or meat from yesterday's dinner are not going to cause problems then you can go on eating them without testing.
Gradually you will have amassed enough data to have a good range of choices of what to eat, and if you get your levels down to 8mmol/l after eating then you might well see that your levels continue to fall without you making changes to your menu. That is what happened to me as my weight fell and energy increased.

 

[Drummer]

You might be able to get lancets at your local pharmacy - they are not expensive - if you take along your do-dad (technical term for the spring loaded lancet holder) with a fresh lancet in it you should be able to match up the lancets

 

[dawn5]

Ah, well!! Alan Shanley may be a native Australian so gets his testing equipment courtesy of the Oz health service - BUT on discovering that so many T2s in the UK had to fund their own test strips, he wrote another chapter of the same Blog to help everyone entitled Testing on a budget -

Type 2 Diabetes - A Personal Journey: Search results for testing on a budget (loraldiabetes.blogspot.com)

So read what I have linked to, and click on the Link Alan provides in that page to 'Testing on a Budget ' Then if still interested, use the search bar on that site, (On the RHS if using a laptop not a phone, dunno where it appears if using a phone) to his chapter entitled 'Painless Pricks' - and then you will know 100% about it - far more than the vast majority of GP surgery nurses do!! - possibly the GPs too.

Come to think, more than most hospital nurses and nursing assistants too - anyone who doesn't do it frequently to themselves doesn't have the slightest idea how blooming painful it can be when some of them are let loose on the unsuspecting patients!

Thanks for the link to this part of Alan's philosophy. I am not newly diagnosed (2013) and reasonably well tuned in to my body and some of the more extreme reactions to certain foods so think his test, test, test theory is a bit OTT for me. I have eaten a mainly healthy veggie diet for 40 years and am not too bad on nutritional stuff but find the focus of carbs, fats and sugars different for me as I have concentrated more on other nutritional values and standards. I am struggling with the idea that fats are good as I have a heart condition and am treated for cholesterol and struggle to accept that fats can be limitless, I accept that good olive oil, avocados and sesame are great but is it not the case that any food, however "good" it might be should be consumed in moderation (one of my biggest problems!)?
Learning that lentils are so high in carbs is a dismay, even potatoes have less!
The reason I am here needing help is because my diet-controlled DM is no more and I have been prescribed metformin and have no idea how my body is going to react to that, how I change my dietary behaviour with this new focus is a challenge, hence my acceptance for the need to test at all. In some ways it is like being told that I messed up and have to start again with a different rule book but I cannot just throw away the insights I have acquired over the decades either. I need to take other health issues into account and know that I need to tailor the whole thing to me personally so my tired brain is trying to compute all this stuff and I am glad you are here to share with, it's hard. Thanks so much for your insights and support 🙂

 

[trophywench]

Well Dawn - like it or like it not (and just guess which I do) it's a fact that the human body changes and one of the main reasons it does that is known by the Latin words Anno Domini. So yours has changed and thus, so have your innards and hence what worked then doesn't work precisely the same now.

Years ago now my (late, sadly cos she was lovely) mother in law said to us both one evening 'Old age doesn't come on its own you know!' and me and her eldest son both burst out laughing, at which she positively glared at us. I broke the silence thereafter by saying, 'Well - I for one admire you greatly, for normally being so positive, with all you have to cope with, Mum, FWIW anyway' because she was in her mid 70s and basically dealing with terminal bowel cancer still living independently and cooking meals for both her and her younger sister nearby with exactly the same medical prob. We were 50 and 53 at that time.

It ain't just outwardly Dawn. The first grey head hair is bad enough - but in comparison to the pubes greying, minor! They pale into insignificance in the finish too. Keep a sense of humour mate! Stands me in great stead, now even more than ever, funnily enough!

 

[dawn5]

Well Dawn - like it or like it not (and just guess which I do) it's a fact that the human body changes and one of the main reasons it does that is known by the Latin words Anno Domini. So yours has changed and thus, so have your innards and hence what worked then doesn't work precisely the same now.

Years ago now my (late, sadly cos she was lovely) mother in law said to us both one evening 'Old age doesn't come on its own you know!' and me and her eldest son both burst out laughing, at which she positively glared at us. I broke the silence thereafter by saying, 'Well - I for one admire you greatly, for normally being so positive, with all you have to cope with, Mum, FWIW anyway' because she was in her mid 70s and basically dealing with terminal bowel cancer still living independently and cooking meals for both her and her younger sister nearby with exactly the same medical prob. We were 50 and 53 at that time.

It ain't just outwardly Dawn. The first grey head hair is bad enough - but in comparison to the pubes greying, minor! They pale into insignificance in the finish too. Keep a sense of humour mate! Stands me in great stead, now even more than ever, funnily enough!

...you forgot the hair loss 😉

 

[dawn5]

Well Dawn - like it or like it not (and just guess which I do) it's a fact that the human body changes and one of the main reasons it does that is known by the Latin words Anno Domini. So yours has changed and thus, so have your innards and hence what worked then doesn't work precisely the same now.

Years ago now my (late, sadly cos she was lovely) mother in law said to us both one evening 'Old age doesn't come on its own you know!' and me and her eldest son both burst out laughing, at which she positively glared at us. I broke the silence thereafter by saying, 'Well - I for one admire you greatly, for normally being so positive, with all you have to cope with, Mum, FWIW anyway' because she was in her mid 70s and basically dealing with terminal bowel cancer still living independently and cooking meals for both her and her younger sister nearby with exactly the same medical prob. We were 50 and 53 at that time.

It ain't just outwardly Dawn. The first grey head hair is bad enough - but in comparison to the pubes greying, minor! They pale into insignificance in the finish too. Keep a sense of humour mate! Stands me in great stead, now even more than ever, funnily enough!

I'm in my mid 60s now and just grooving to that age-thang!

 

[trophywench]

Dawn - see my hair in the photo to the left of every one of my posts? Well admittedly I was about 52 at the time - but I have just as much actual hair but more of it is grey is all. Our granddaughter knows it'll take her ages when she cuts it, which I wouldn't let her do anyway until she'd passed her exams, but I was more than happy to go to college and be her model, when she was training, cos the instructors are always great and don't let the students do any harm.

Years and years previously, I'd stopped needing to have my legs waxed every 6 weeks without fail - which I merely assumed must because I'd been so diligent about waxing them. Of course I'd shaved them once a week for about 20 years prior to that and Oh how I hated the stubble when I was donning stockings/tights = eeeyukk.

So when my hairdressers expanded and opened a beauty salon alongside ooh yes I was in there! Hence 6 weekly, fell in line with getting my mane trimmed. Now, literally the odd one grows so as soon as I notice it, the tweezers are utilised effectively.

I haven't physically lost any eyebrow hair but of course being grey and weedier instead of like stubbly dark wire, it doesn't offend me every time I pass a mirror! Every so often, when there's a good morning light through the bathroom window, I clean my glasses and have a field day LOL