Reddit reviews Practical Insulin: A Handbook for Prescribing Providers
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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I use the stuff that works, ignore the stuff that becomes outdated, and have about a thousand of those little, color-coded document flags marking different pages for the times when I need to look something up.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.