Hi there,
Hope you can help, I am posting this on behalf of my partner who has been blind for the majority of her life, but has now been recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
My partner lives in Birmingham independently and I live in Coventry, due to work and other commitments I am not able to test her levels regularly with her freestyle Optium Neo that she has been given by her hospital.
We were also given an old talking test meter that I had to purchase test strips for as they claimed they could not get them, this is very difficult to use independently as you still are required to get a blood sample on a test strip, which as you can imagine is very difficult when you have no vision.
Being recently diagnosed (3 months) we are still learning to balance levels, but as we are having difficulty getting regular readings this makes it more difficult to manage and get a clear picture of what is happening with her levels, currently she is experiencing a lot of high and low levels to the extreme that she recently had a hypo at work and past out and they had to call an ambulance.
We have spoken to her consultant and other diabetes health care professionals to try and source a suitable device, but they have not been able to provide good a solution.
Having looked at scanning type monitors (CGM) they look to be the perfect solution to allow a visually impaired person to easily monitor their levels, please could you advise if any of them talk as this would be ideal solution.
To make matter worse my partner has recently been to visit a dietitian and they want her to do carb counting which not only involves reading food labels but taking regular tests which is not possible. They also wanted to sell her a book for £10 that had a lot of pictures and information which is useless unless it is available in braille.
We would be very great full of any help or advice people can give as the NHS seems to be really struggling to provide support for visually impaired and it is starting to get really frustrating for my partner, as she does not normally let her disabillity stand in the way of her indenpendance and so does not like to rely on other people.
Many thanks
Hope you can help, I am posting this on behalf of my partner who has been blind for the majority of her life, but has now been recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
My partner lives in Birmingham independently and I live in Coventry, due to work and other commitments I am not able to test her levels regularly with her freestyle Optium Neo that she has been given by her hospital.
We were also given an old talking test meter that I had to purchase test strips for as they claimed they could not get them, this is very difficult to use independently as you still are required to get a blood sample on a test strip, which as you can imagine is very difficult when you have no vision.
Being recently diagnosed (3 months) we are still learning to balance levels, but as we are having difficulty getting regular readings this makes it more difficult to manage and get a clear picture of what is happening with her levels, currently she is experiencing a lot of high and low levels to the extreme that she recently had a hypo at work and past out and they had to call an ambulance.
We have spoken to her consultant and other diabetes health care professionals to try and source a suitable device, but they have not been able to provide good a solution.
Having looked at scanning type monitors (CGM) they look to be the perfect solution to allow a visually impaired person to easily monitor their levels, please could you advise if any of them talk as this would be ideal solution.
To make matter worse my partner has recently been to visit a dietitian and they want her to do carb counting which not only involves reading food labels but taking regular tests which is not possible. They also wanted to sell her a book for £10 that had a lot of pictures and information which is useless unless it is available in braille.
We would be very great full of any help or advice people can give as the NHS seems to be really struggling to provide support for visually impaired and it is starting to get really frustrating for my partner, as she does not normally let her disabillity stand in the way of her indenpendance and so does not like to rely on other people.
Many thanks
