Who remembers ????

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Pre injection swabs were they ready made??? We had to soak cotton wool in surgical spirit!!
 
Ooh, I DO remember those wipes - my goodness they made the injection sting!! I was diagnosed in '78 at 11 months, so thankfully a lot of the really nasty early stuff is lost to me in the mists of time - luckily though mum was a nurse, so I think we got on to disposable syringes relatively quickly... Uring testing rings a bell though!

I do remember the first blood test machine being the size of a small shoe box though, and when we finally got a 'finger pricking device', the autolet, it was SCARY! 😱

Remember hating it when mum did an injection in my leg & then made me have a bath before tea, as it always made it sting more...

Hmm, think I'd like to forget now! :D
 
My recollection of when I first started injecting in the mid-80s that the swipes were viewed as a luxury and the industrial spirit and cotton wool combination was the standard fare. I also remember my uncle picking up a my prescription for industrial spirit once and saying this was all right when you could get a jar of alcohol for free on the nhs but warning that it looked like it had a bit of a kick! 😎
 
I had a good stock of cotton wool by the mid-80s ! 😉

No wonder the NHS is going bankrupt 😱

Going on holiday was fun. Suitcase for clothes. And another for all the paraphernalia. I wish I'd kept some of it. I've got a novopen 1ml with some actrapid still in, but that's about as far back as I've retained.

Rob
 
Robster65 said:
Going on holiday was fun. Suitcase for clothes. And another for all the paraphernalia. I wish I'd kept some of it. I've got a novopen 1ml with some actrapid still in, but that's about as far back as I've retained.

Rob
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I know this sounds a bit mad, but I've kept some of the old disposable plastic syringes, still sealed with their caps in the plastic bags... in a sense I suppose I want to be able to look at them and remember how pants 2 jabs a day was & how far treatments have come now that I'm on the pump - I don't want ever to get complacent! Good to know they are there as a reminder for the dark days when I'm snagging my tubing or having problems with air bubbles lol! 🙂
 
I recall those swabs/wipes coming out as well and still having a big brown glass bottle of meths left so couldn't ask for wipes until it had all but gone. It was like Christmas when we finally got them.

Ah, the big brown bottle... Still got that as well. Label's a bit manky though. We'd have to refill it each time we went to the clinic. Barmy when you think of it. I remember my mam feeding a spoonful to our kid thinking it was his medicine one night nearly killing him. No harm done other than a burned mouth 😱 and my mam crying for the entire weekend.

All in all, I think our kid's suffered more from me being diabetic than I have!

As for the autolet, was that the (usually) blue and yellow contraption that either kissed your finger ar skewered it? Platforms that broke off inside meaning you normally ended up manually jabbing away at yoursef for half a day building up the bottle to just give it one almighty stab? And the platforms were always covered with splatters of blood? That is of course if the lancet ever found the bloomin' hole in the platform to start with!

Oh... Great days. Great days inded! 🙄
 
I'll tell you what has just popped into my head... And I hope you newer gen diabetics don't think I'm spinning one here.

As I mentioned the manual method of grabbing a lancet and hacking away, it's made me remember those things (not a clue what they were called) that the ward sisters LOVED using instead... A wee pice of metal that would stand a ruddy good chance against a samurai sword. Little flat things they were, just a bit of a ridge and a spiked protrusion on one end.

When you're 6 years of age with chubby little fingers 24 hour assesments felt like more than a month if the Autolet machine was out of action then I'll tell you that for nothing!

Whoa back... 24 hour assesments... One day off school every year and I always seemed to kop for the day when instant flaming mash was on the menu at tea time. 😡
 
Sorry folks... They're coming thick and fast now. How about the old carb book? I think it was called Balance. There was a news letter/mini news paper by the same name as well. It was a top flipper and colour coded red yellow and green. Needless to say mine was opened on the red section more than any.
 
ThunderBolt said:
Sorry folks... They're coming thick and fast now. How about the old carb book? I think it was called Balance. There was a news letter/mini news paper by the same name as well. It was a top flipper and colour coded red yellow and green. Needless to say mine was opened on the red section more than any.
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Oooh, I remember that!!! (shudders!). Did you see the video of a 70s diabetic kid's camp Bev posted a link to? Interesting viewing, brought a few memories back! I do wish someone had told me what carbs to have per 'x' lengths of the pool etc though! Dafne was the first logical info of that sort I remember getting, and I had been diabetic 23 years by then!

Ah, the old autolet platforms! :D I do think the device would have been less terrifying if you couldn't see the darn lancet arcing towards your poor digit! 😱
 
Twitchy said:
Oooh, I remember that!!! (shudders!). Did you see the video of a 70s diabetic kid's camp Bev posted a link to? Interesting viewing, brought a few memories back! I do wish someone had told me what carbs to have per 'x' lengths of the pool etc though! Dafne was the first logical info of that sort I remember getting, and I had been diabetic 23 years by then!

Ah, the old autolet platforms! :D I do think the device would have been less terrifying if you couldn't see the darn lancet arcing towards your poor digit! 😱
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Lest ye forget! 😱

worst_lancet_device.jpg
 
Glad you put this pic on was asking my husband if he could remember it but couldnt , just shown him your pic ..... ooooooohhhhh yeah i remember that ! lol 🙂
 
AJLang said:
Pre injection swabs were they ready made??? We had to soak cotton wool in surgical spirit!!
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I would use the cotton wool and meths when at home, but I use to travel around a lot back then so would ask my DSN for some pre-injection swabs when attending clinic, don't know if she was allowed to but she would give me a box of 100 swabs to take away with me. Toby.
 
Hehe... I seem to remember the only 'depth adjustment' on that awful thing was that you could put the platform bit in so that either a flush side or an indented side was against your finger?! Or am I just dreaming? (shudders again! :D)

I guess it just explains why 'old' diabetics will usually maintain the injections are no bother compared to the old blood test methods lol! :D
 
Remember them very well. The indent was the same method on the early pen type lancets too. I think there were 2 different adaptors to adjust depth. The shallow bowl or the crater. One barely broke the skin and the other nearly amputated your finger !
It's funny how today's advanced devices will be looked back on with as much dismay in 20 years time, when everyone has an artificial pancreas the size of BG meter.

EIther that or the NHS will be no more and we'll be searching the rubbish tips for old syringes. 😱

Rob
 
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