Clearly I am in an area that does help out significantly with 'our kind' in that in the last 10 weeks (the time since being 'labelled') I have attended a Retinopathy appt, my first meeting with a Dietician, and booked onto a Desmond course, not to mention 2 meetings with my practice nurse - I cannot fault their care and attention, and they fully acknowledge I am still struggling (emotionally) to come to terms with this. For the Desmond course I was offered a number of alternative dates and venues to attend, and booked on to one within 3 weeks - so no complaints here (well only a minor one- they are all weekday courses!)
I am going with a complete open mind, understanding there are those on here who deride anything other than an LCHF approach and HCPs who do not support it. Equally I see those 'on the other side' who advocate the NHS approach. I am still VERY confused with conflicting opinion and advice. I kind of hope the NHS approach is right as it seems less rigid / disciplined than LCHF - but I need convincing- either way. I intend to raise LCHF as a question to guage their response.
I suspect there will be a degree of very basic 'stuff' they will impart, and am a tad nervous at sitting in a room for the first time with others like me! We have been told to make our own lunch arrangements so am sure everyone will be very interested to see what everyone else is eating!
As ever my wonderful wife who has been by my side - literally and metaphorically since the beginning of my journey will also give another day and will come with me on this course, as she has so far for other appts etc - I have said this before, she really is one in a million and I really would not have made it this far without her.
I will let you know how I get on.
Well I attended yesterday and on tbh in the main personally I didn't get a great deal from it having taken the trouble to educate myself previously - but I guess did confirm what I did know! I know there were others there who obviously didn't know very much and probably benefitted, and one poor old lady who had only had her diagnosis with not much more last week - and she was like a very upset Rabbit in the headlights!
The 'memsahib' who did come with me found it very informative - and asked more questions than I did!
In some ways it has added to the confusion on what I am / am not able to eat, and it was disappointing that there was no nutritionalist there - which apparently there should have been.
I did raise LCHF and monitoring, and there was a gentleman there who already did this - several times she used the term 'I can only quote what the NHS guidelines are' which led me to think she didn't agree with them - but darent step out of line. She did talk about the effect of different foods on BS levels, but wasn't specific, and there were no values on the graphs she showed.
The mantra on 'sugary stuff' was reduce it gradually rather than eradicate completely - but I guess given the audience this would have probably been more of an acceptable and palatable step change than STOP now!
It was funny at lunchtime to see people coming back from the shops with white baguettes, munching away on bags of mini cheddars and biscuits! .... The memsahib and I were sat there with out Tuna salad and an apple! Incidentally we didn't cover diet etc til the afternoon!
There was Tea and Coffee provided, but could not believe there were sachets of sugar provided, and I had to ask if they had any sweetners - which they then produced .... very bizarre!
Having spent over 6 hours sat in a quite warm room - according to my Fitbit, it is the most inactive day I have spent in over 6 weeks!
Conclusion: probably useful at the beginning if you haven't been briefed or taken the trouble to read all the other info provided on 'it'.