Reddit reviews Intensive Diabetes Management
We found 1 Reddit comments about Intensive Diabetes Management. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
We found 1 Reddit comments about Intensive Diabetes Management. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Diabetes definitely blows. Keep an eye on your foot. You're probably an early enough diabetic that it won't be a serious problem, but those sorts of things can take forever to heal on us if you don't take care of them from the start.
As for knowing so much, I feel like maybe I should actually do a post on this at some point. When I was first dx'd, I actually was discharged from the hospital without anyone teaching me to use insulin. I think there was a miscommunication between the day nurses and the night ones, and someone thought that I had already been diabetic for a while. They kept me a total of 5 or 6 hours while they got my bg back in range and then sent me home to call my endo.
I actually already had an appointment set up for one the next day (I was worried that all my weight loss might be some sort of thyroid issue). I went in cried like a complete wuss while he showed me how to give myself my first shot (I was scared as shit about needles). He sent me on my way with a meter, some samples of insulin, and little instruction on how to use either. 10 u of levemir at night, 2 u humalog before lunch and 4 u humalog before dinner.
My first 3 months, I followed those instructions and my bgs were all over the place. I'd call his office and be instructed to take 2 u of levemir in the morning as well. Pretty useless shit. My A1c barely dropped at all those first 3 months.
That's when I decided to stop following the instructions of anyone who didn't have to live with this on a daily basis. I got my first diabetes related book, Think Like a Pancreas, which I used to figure out my I:C ratio and correction factors. I started testing around 10 times a day to figure out what my previously dictated 4-times-a-day routine was missing. I also started tweaking my own basal amounts, splitting my levemir in two and shifting units around to develop the rates I wanted for different times of day (which was only possible because Levemir, unlike Lantus, is not 24 hours of steady absorption.)
I brought my A1c down from around 13 to under 8 in the next 3 months, and I got hooked on figuring out why I still had variations that my earlier math couldn't explain. I stopped buying books for patients, and started consuming books and journals meant for nurses and physicians. My bookshelf now includes:
I use the stuff that works, ignore the stuff that becomes outdated, and have about a thousand of those little, color-coded document flags marking different pages for the times when I need to look something up.
I've since switched endos to one who is fantastic and who supports me in the changes that I want to make.