Wife doesn't trust her meter or the NHS

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powsowdy

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Relationship to Diabetes
Carer/Partner
The wife has type 2 and has a bolus advisor meter Accu- chek Aviva expert. Her levels are all over the place and is often having hypo's and hyper's.
She doesn't know if she has a diabetic consultant and contacting the doctor is impossible due to the Rottweiler on reception to help with seeing up her meter.
She has now been diagnosed with Diabetic Maculopathy and is more getting frightened as there is no help out there that she can find.
Can anyone please suggest the next move
 
I suggest you ring the helpline number at the top of the page tomorrow.
 
powsowdy said:
The wife has type 2 and has a bolus advisor meter Accu- chek Aviva expert. Her levels are all over the place and is often having hypo's and hyper's.
She doesn't know if she has a diabetic consultant and contacting the doctor is impossible due to the Rottweiler on reception to help with seeing up her meter.
She has now been diagnosed with Diabetic Maculopathy and is more getting frightened as there is no help out there that she can find.
Can anyone please suggest the next move
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Welcome to the forum, there are a few people who are carers to their partner and it is not easy to see somebody struggling with managing their blood glucose level. A good suggestion to contact the helpline tomorrow but you may get some help from folk here in the meantime.
A bit more information would help if you know the details of what her latest HbA1C, what medication she is on and how is she monitoring her blood glucose. You mention bolus advisor so I assume she must be on insulin in which case she should really have access to the diabetic clinic at the hospital or a specialist diabetic nurse at the GP surgery.
 
Welcome to the forum @powsowdy

Sorry to hear that the Accu-Chek Expert doesn't seem to be helping your wife with appropriate dose suggestions :(

I had an Expert for a while and found it really helpful, but it was only ever really useful when the settings were kept up to date as my insulin needs ebbed and flowed though the year - and it sounds as though perhaps you haven't had the support to teach you to make those adjustments for yourselves?

Additionally the Expert was discontinued a few years back - so you may find that as meters have a limited lifespan the advice you get may be to replace the Expert with a simpler meter, and revert to manual dose calculations using insulin:carbohydrate ratio(s) and a pocket calculator. Alternatively there are smartphone apps if you have a suitable phone?

Hope you find the friendly Helpline advisors helpful if you decide to give them a call. The Helpline is open 9-6 Mon-Fri 🙂
 
Thank you all for your replies, she is hoping to give the help line a call in the morning.
She is on steroids for polymialgia
Metformin
Long and short acting insulin
And others for other illnesses.
There doesn't seem to be any experts being offered, or willing to help, by the NHS
 
It shouldn't take bravery to get to see the doctor but it sounds like it will for your wife and given she has multiple health issues being treated with multiple drugs I think its essential that she does. The NHS is sadly patchy. Some people have practices with brilliant doctors, nurses & ancillary staff but for others at least some of them are dreadful. I'm lucky, mine are great plus it's a minutes walk so I go round at 8am if I need to see a doctor. It also helps train student doctors and I'm one of the patients called in each year, though for asthma not diabetes
 
Ok, here's an update. Kat finally got through to the local diabetic department and spoke to the secretary. She said that Kat should have been receiving appointments with the specialist but we haven't received any and they thought the doctors surgery had her under control. So she then got a call back from the surgery diabetes nurse who said they thought the hospital had her under control.
Thus her bolus meter hasn't been updated for agesso she has been taking the wrong amounts of insulin causing lack of control and damages eyes.
She was refused a libre for some strange reason, more than once, and now they are asking "why doesn't she have a libre"(she's now getting one in 2 weeks)
Typical NHS
 
I'm glad she's now getting somewhere and hope everything will go more smoothly now!
 
Sounds good, the insulin dose settings should be something she regularly updates herself though, she shouldn’t be waiting for someone else to change them. If she doesn’t know how to do that suggest asking what education is available or doing the free online Bertie course.
 
Sorry to hear she seems to have fallen between the cracks a little @powsowdy

The availability of Libre changes over the past few years, so it may have been unavailable when she asked, but unless you keep up with changes in guidance, how are you to know that something has become available more widely.

Hopefully now she is in closer contact with HCPs she should get the support she needs.
 
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