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Groaning inwardly (minor rant)

Pitsgate

Active Member
Messages
40
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Pump
I am super grateful to my diabetes team, they've helped me enormously in getting my levels from **** to great and were vital in getting a heathy happy baby out of me. But... it feels there is one excellent doctor and then there are the extras. Whenever I go for an appointment (pregnant or not), I feel like a flattened balloon when it's one of the minions who calls my name. With them we always have to go through the list - T1 since y, pump since X, carb count blah blah blah. All vital stuff and I guess it's faster asking than reading from the papers but still. Sigh. Especially after waiting for 60min.

Last one didn't seem to be able to read the pump data and thought my post dinner highs are because I inject too early before eating (20min). Hmm.
Husband always reminds to take the diplomatic approach. Result of losing it with a dr who asked me when I was 8 months pregnant if I knew what my targets were. I said 'I'm 8 months pregnant, what do you think?' to which the dipstick 'well what are they?' - I had probably (definitely) been a bit lippy but out of pure frustration due her cluelessness. Hba1c at the time was 6.0.

Anyway. Small things in the long run. Currently early weeks pregnant with 2nd baby and just need to remember to take deep breaths and make the most out of the short straw appointments, right?
 
Give yourself a goal of smiling and nodding Then score yourself out of 10 .Pin scores on the wall and see how you do until baby is born !!! I hope that things go well with your pregnancy
CAROL
 
Right!!! Deep breaths and just smile.
In the many years of hospital appts and now for my diabetic 2yr old I think that a lot (not all..) of health professionals like to think they know better. Sometimes they will but it's different theory to living with it. (Had a pump start this week and had the rep telling me what it was like having it on for a week, ummmm a week compared to it actually working and having mine for years). Just grin and bare it-it's a lot easier in my experience. Then rant with people that understand!!
 
Oh dear, I feel your pain. Pre-IVF appointment in December was with one of the consultant's team, who had a med student with her. She was lovely but, like you, I had to go through the whole rigmarole. She even got me to read out each of my hourly basal rates............. She quizzed me on how I treat hypos, and wouldn't believe me when I said I didn't need to eat extra carbs after hypo-recovery, as I am on a pump and don't have long-acting insulin working in the background. Needless to say, my BP was a little high when checked!

That said, I gritted my teeth and smiled. Hopefully the med student learned something!! Good luck with baby
 
After nearly 33 years of this i've had enough of educating registrars (students are different ). After a particularly moronic specimen the dsn told me to request to see consultants only. So i told this to the midwives and it worked. This works if you like the consultants. Otherwise just request the doctor you like. They'll tell you it will be a longer wait but i rarely found it was. You have so many extra appointments as type 1 and have a job/other comitments to manage so why make the experience worse? I find when there is a student the consultant explains things to them briefly and doesn't bother me with silly questions. All my really frustrating experiences tend to involve registrars or nurses or non-diabetic consultants /doctors.
 
Also do your utmost to get an appt at the start of the clinic. The doctors start after ward rounds so any delay on that or with other patients accumulate
 
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