Additional personal costs of Diabetes care

extra cost is a very subjective matter
I don't pay for any prescriptions but...........
i have lived for 43 year pretty much knowing that in the long term D will most likely end up having a big impact on my demise irregardless of my efforts.
( so yes it did make my mind up at age 16 or so that i didn't want kids as I did not wish to inflict my life upon them )
healthcare cost = 0

The extra costs for me (for the moment) are strips and little luxuries for my LCHF diet. It's actually quite scary how easy and cheap carbs are and how much I took them for granted to pad out my diet. I don't eat more meat than usual but other things like cream, cheese, berries and nuts etc are relatively pricey (which is fair enough). Then there are other little treats like sugar free syrups, nice coffee etc that all add up. These aren't a necessity, of course, but they add a bit of fun to what is a radical change of diet.

spideog said:

Just out of curiosity, what are the extra expenses in your diet and holiday choices caused by diabetes?

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None. Apart from those two things it's only the obvious expense of test strips.
NHS funding is a hugely complex subject and test strips aren't the only thing of a medical nature I pay for.
Maybe I've become so used to the idea of having to pay for myself that I no longer expect anything from HM government. I couldn't even claim benefits after taking two years out of full time employment to gain further qualifications at the age of 50.
Apologies for negativity, have a good day everyone.

I'm not sure what you mean by additional costs? Here we have our supplies subsidised by a govt scheme. But I pay $16.50 for a pack of 100 test strips which would last me approx 20 days or less. I pay about $20 for 100 lancets, I get my needles free. I pay about $8 or more for a sharps container. I pay $35 for lantus and the same for apidra which gives me 25 pens for each insulin type. I buy juice from the grocery store to treat hypos. I did have some problem with my script once for apidra and they asked me to pay $500 for it or get the script done properly. So I had to go and get the script from my GP as they wouldn't accept the one from my endo from the diabetes clinic. Phew... otherwise yeh $500 was the full price. If I had to pay full price for my test strips they're about $50 here. I'm so grateful to have a govt diabetes scheme card to use. As for my other health conditions, well I pay between $15 - $50 for each medication I need.... they're subsidised too by a pharmaceutical benefit scheme. We have medicare too which partially subsidises tests, and fully covers most pathology ones. Although when I need to have my iron infusion I pay $50 for the iron, then $175 for the infusion and I don't get any subsidy for that.

I'm lucky that now I'm an OAP I no longer have to pay for prescriptions, but I do have to (though from choice) fund my own meter and test strips - in the region of £50-75 a month for these after shopping around; I was lucky to get my current meter from a free offer from Bayer/Diabetes.co.uk but had to pay for my original ones, about £20 all told. Lancets for my Fastclix are pretty cheap - a pack of 200 6 lancet drums has lasted me nearly 2 years so far, as they're re-usable. Other costs have been a one-off cost of around £75 for a Ketonix for testing ketones on my low carb/ketogenic diet, and more recently an initial (but VAT free) cost of about £133 for a Freestyle Libre starter kit, plus an additional £98.00 odd a month if I carry on with continuous testing.

AS far as I'm concerned my basic low carb diet should cost no more than my previous higher carb one, because I still eat much of what I did previously, as we've always eaten a fairly good basic diet. So I've just replaced bread, biscuits, jam, honey, sugar, cereal, bread, pasta, rice, skimmed milk, and high sugar fruit with extra nuts, nut oils and butters, avocados, olives & olive oil, and almond milk, thick cream, and more berries... and I'm now eating less! My husband claims low carbing is costing more but he still appears to be buying the same quantities as previously of all the higher carb stuff! However I do buy stevia, erythritol, flax seed, coconut butter and Sukrin low carb bread mix out of my own pocket rather than the food budget mainly because they're not available from Tescos online, and this can end up adding up to about £10.00 a week to my outgoings.

And of course, losing a fair bit of weight has resulted in the need for some new smaller sized clothes too....

Robbity

By far the biggest expense is seeing my private opthalmologist at £155 a visit, after the way I was treated at Manchester Eye Hospital when my retina was bleeding I have resolved never to set foot in there again if I can possibly avoid it.

Galja said:

o matter where I go, in inevitably end up passing a McDonald's and it is amazing how cheap is a Big Mac, one of the banes of my dietary history

Waaaaaaaah

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I often pop into Maccy's for a double hamburger minus the bun - it's a great low carb snack when on the road!

spideog said:

Just out of curiosity, what are the extra expenses in your diet and holiday choices caused by diabetes?

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I'm type II, so BG monitoring goes without saying. I also pay a podiatrist £35 a session, possibly not essential, but compared to the hatchet job I've managed in the past and ended up in A&E, it's a better option. It's made no difference to my holiday choices and I've travelled all over. My eyes are pretty good although I've had a cataract done recently (diabetes related), thankfully on the old insurance. From what I've read there is a connection between arthritis and diabetes, so I could suggest that my 2 TKRs have been an additional expense, thankfully health insurance paid for that as well, except for the £250 excess and other invoices that don't get paid when I think they should.

I think the bottom line is that there isn't any money in the kitty, and between us we could probably come up with at least 50 ways of increasing money going into the government's coffers.

Galja said:

o matter where I go, in inevitably end up passing a McDonald's and it is amazing how cheap is a Big Mac, one of the banes of my dietary history

Waaaaaaaah

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I hear ya ;-)

Don't think my actual shopping is more expensive now we are both T2 I never had a sweet tooth but my husband did but he gave that up when he became diabetic probably from taking steroids. We don't buy any of the sweet stuff we used to like cakes biscuits, sweet yogurts and ice cream or pasta, rice or any ready made stuff like pizzas pasta bakes or pies.. husband did love a pork pie... I only eat chicken but husband likes other meats and he has Lidl rolls and Bergen bread but I don't like them not a bread lover at all never have been I may have a slice of wholemeal occasionally for toast . What I do buy more of now is coconut oil, eggs and avocados and lots of salad stuff . I do take an eye supplement now because I have early signs of age related macular degeneration they are quite expensive we both take cod liver oil capsules have done for years so not a new expense and we buy strips for the Codefree meter but we don't test every day now so don't use so many and we usually eat out twice a week our treat

@Pinkorchid I was reading about eye supplements today. It was suggested that one needs:-

1. Lutein..................................20 mg
2. Astaxanthin...........................4 mg
3. Zeaxanthin............................4 mg

Some have less Lutein than this but you'll need the larger dose for ARMD.