Hi all
Oral drugs haven't suited me, apart from Metformin, which never caused me any problems, so I was started on insulin in August 2011. I asked if I could have an animal insulin but apparently I couldn't, so I got Novomix 30. I put on a stone in a month and still can't lose it. :roll:
Every time I saw the DSN I asked for basal/bolus, but she wasn't keen to let me have it and was not very pleasant towards me, so I refused to see her again and asked my GP to refer me to the hospital clinic, which he did in June this year.
The consultant 'allowed' me to have basal/bolus, but said animal insulins were not always easy to obtain. I told him Wockhardt still make it and he asked me to talk to a DSN, which I did. She told me how impossible it was to have porcine insulin because nobody knows how to start a patient on it. Grr.
I was given an appointment to see another DSN in June, who said I could compromise and have NovoRapid and Levemir. I didn't want it, but it was better than Novomix 30, in my opinion. I kept asking her when I could try the porcine insulin and generally drove her up the wall about it. Then I started getting side effects, memory problems, lethargy, exhaustion, nausea, pains in my joints, my background retinopathy deteriorated and my toes tingled and burned constantly. It took a lot of reporting my feet before anyone took any notice properly, but the practice nurse finally admitted that I have peripheral neuropathy and said I could have painkillers. Nice of her, I thought. I don't need them just yet. The DSN thought the nausea and dizziness could be hypos. She kept asking me that even after I told her a dozen times that I didn't get them, so every time I emailed my food diary sheets to her I told her I don't get hypos until she stopped asking and started taking notice of what I was saying, specially after I said I wished she would take it seriously.
After several weeks of reporting the same symptoms, only worse, to my DSN, she finally made an appointment for me to see another consultant, who listened to a long list of woes, and said he had no problem with starting me on porcine insulin. I had taken note of someone else on the forum, sorry I don't remember who, and checked with the pharmacist before I saw the consultant, and he said yes, he could get it the same day, or maybe the next one. I asked the consultant why others wouldn't give it to me and he didn't know. :crazy:
I have had the porcine insulin for a week now, and I am sleeping better, the pains in my joints are starting to go away and I have some energy again. There are people on the forum who are also having trouble in getting porcine insulin, and I hope they can get it, but I found that being a pain and nagging on is a great help. That and printing out a load of items from the internet and starting to show them to the consultant
In his letter to my GP he said that I was adamant that I wanted the porcine, and I was. DSN's might not give it out, but consultants do!
Oral drugs haven't suited me, apart from Metformin, which never caused me any problems, so I was started on insulin in August 2011. I asked if I could have an animal insulin but apparently I couldn't, so I got Novomix 30. I put on a stone in a month and still can't lose it. :roll:
Every time I saw the DSN I asked for basal/bolus, but she wasn't keen to let me have it and was not very pleasant towards me, so I refused to see her again and asked my GP to refer me to the hospital clinic, which he did in June this year.
The consultant 'allowed' me to have basal/bolus, but said animal insulins were not always easy to obtain. I told him Wockhardt still make it and he asked me to talk to a DSN, which I did. She told me how impossible it was to have porcine insulin because nobody knows how to start a patient on it. Grr.
I was given an appointment to see another DSN in June, who said I could compromise and have NovoRapid and Levemir. I didn't want it, but it was better than Novomix 30, in my opinion. I kept asking her when I could try the porcine insulin and generally drove her up the wall about it. Then I started getting side effects, memory problems, lethargy, exhaustion, nausea, pains in my joints, my background retinopathy deteriorated and my toes tingled and burned constantly. It took a lot of reporting my feet before anyone took any notice properly, but the practice nurse finally admitted that I have peripheral neuropathy and said I could have painkillers. Nice of her, I thought. I don't need them just yet. The DSN thought the nausea and dizziness could be hypos. She kept asking me that even after I told her a dozen times that I didn't get them, so every time I emailed my food diary sheets to her I told her I don't get hypos until she stopped asking and started taking notice of what I was saying, specially after I said I wished she would take it seriously.
After several weeks of reporting the same symptoms, only worse, to my DSN, she finally made an appointment for me to see another consultant, who listened to a long list of woes, and said he had no problem with starting me on porcine insulin. I had taken note of someone else on the forum, sorry I don't remember who, and checked with the pharmacist before I saw the consultant, and he said yes, he could get it the same day, or maybe the next one. I asked the consultant why others wouldn't give it to me and he didn't know. :crazy:
I have had the porcine insulin for a week now, and I am sleeping better, the pains in my joints are starting to go away and I have some energy again. There are people on the forum who are also having trouble in getting porcine insulin, and I hope they can get it, but I found that being a pain and nagging on is a great help. That and printing out a load of items from the internet and starting to show them to the consultant
In his letter to my GP he said that I was adamant that I wanted the porcine, and I was. DSN's might not give it out, but consultants do!
