Diabetes in the past

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http://www.tudiabetes.org/group/diabetesphotomusuem

Well I have not had diabetes all that long compared to some, 17 years, what I have noticed is the big increase in home testing and the metres have got much better, used to have to wait a whole 2 minutes for the blood glucose test result, now it's only five secs, plus the machine was really big so difficult to carry around.

I dream of the day when continuous glucose monitoring is available for all, perhaps they could combine it with a watch or something so monitoring your sugars would be as easy as telling the time!

Hi
I've had diabetes for about 42 years. The times have been hard as I remember when I had to sterilise a glass syringe in a pan with boiling water and the needles were stainless steel and you didn't change them until they felt blunt Ouch!! The help I get now from diabetes nurses and doctors has come on leaps and bounds.however as I didn't get the help and support that you get now and the understanding from doctors and nurses as you have now. The problems I have now cannot be reversed but just monitored. I wish I could try to get through to younger diabetics and try and get them to understand WHY they need to follow the advise and not just brush it under the carpet as I did. I get so frustrated with myself now as I didn't listen and I now have the peripheraal vascular disease which I have had by pass operations twice in my legs which has still not worked and is just being monitored. Sorry for sounding off but I wanted to explain in great detail why it's important to listen and act. Jo

Ditto about boiling the blunt needles and glass syringes to keep them sterilised. This was back in the 1960s. My Father had a special saucepan he used for the boiling. Once sterilised they were put in a small glass jar with meths. The insulin was porcine in those days. My diabetic specialist was a chain smoker. His office was full of cigarette smoke. Unbelievable isn't it?
Clinitest was used for urine testing. The H1AC1 results involved a day off school. I would go to the hospital and have blood taken at 9am, 12pm and 3pm then we would drive home on a narrow windy road which took about two hours.
The doctors were quite strict and unforgiving. General ethos I should do better.
It's fantastic what we have nowadays, the technological advances and better training of health care professionals.

I was lucky enough to avoid the glass syringes, and get the disposable syringes But before meters were available I had the BM blood strips... And razor blade lancets :shock:

I remember my first meter was lucky to loan one during my pregancy, then brought my own costing £150 took 2 minutes to actually read, blood on the BM stick wripe off after 1 minute, the stick in meter and wait for a minute for the result :shock: the meter memory contained, time, date and BG result that was it... The battery was an camera battery that cost tenner a throw :shock:

The regime was tightly controlled, you injected twice a day, and feed your insulin with carbs, 3 main meals and 3 sancks spead out through the day... Each meal/snack had a set amount of carbs allocated to it :cry: :cry: And you ate at the same time every day :cry: :cry: :cry:

Now I use an insulin pump, eat when I want to eat, and carbs well it's my choice 8) I can download my data of my pump and also my bg meter building graphs and charts to manage my diabetes...

Sadly my pump is a bit outdated, as it doesn't have the different wizards that the pumps have now, but it does it's job it just means I get to do a lot more number crunching that newer pumpers