Move to another clinic?

[LoobyG]

Morning! Currently at Warwick and despite my son struggling with his levels and his HbA1c being over the NICE 58 levels for a HCL he is not seen as a priority and has been told their roll out programme is around 5 years. He has just started uni, struggling with management of his levels and getting pretty fed up with everything.
Does any one have experience of Rugby St Cross or Coventry's teams? We may consider moving to get access to HCL sooner.

 

[SB2015]

Hi @LoobyG there is a slow rollout of HCL in our area for the adults.

I don’t have any experience of the areas that you are in, so can only speak from my experience. There is no way that they would cope with all the people on pumps that qualified for HCL at the same time. In this area they are doing the switch as people come up for a pump renewal, in a four year cycle. They then gather groups together to do the training.

I am assuming that your son is in the care of the adult team as he is at university, although some stay with their Paeds team a bit longer. Moving teams may not make any difference. Is your son already on a pump. The switch to HcL is a lot easier if you are already used to using a pump. Using HCL still takes some work but once it is matched to your needs it does iron out some of the softer bumps with a lot less effort. I find it still needs my input for bigger variations such as for illness and extreme (for me!) exercise.

Let us know how he gets in.

 

[trophywench]

I am with St Cross and have no knowledge whatsoever of the Paeds service generally let alone diabetes, at UHCW. For adults its the same as SB2015 has said. As my next will be my 5th pump I'm in no position to advise really. Pumps were first rolled out via St Cross rather than Walsgrave, anyway.

I will however say that changing from MDI to a pump is absolutely NOT absolutely straightforward and a massive learning curve in its own right. Not unlike being completely newly diagnosed with much the same feeling of being completely alone with your diabetes because you no longer instinctively know exactly what to do and most importantly, how to actually achieve that end.

I remember a lady telling me about the first time she changed a cannula on her own. Took her 3 parts of an hour to work up the courage to do it. She was a researcher at Warwick Uni Medical School whereas I was an insurance broker and never went to University, hence I was gobsmacked it only took me 25 minutes!

Any amount of managing diabetes with technology relies on logic and analysis at all times in any case, with or without the modern tech so he needs to be more than capable on those fronts before he attempts changing. Is it a complication too far immediately before he goes to Uni?