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I'm new here and need help please

J

janeislay

Active Member
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29
Hi
I was diagnosed Tye 2 after a trauma in 2003 and being put onto statins. I subsequently had a stroke shortly afterwards. Then in 2008 I was flown out to hospital with pulmonary oedema.

Up to that time I'd been controlling my diabetes well, eating only natural foods and very very few carbs. After being diagnosed with heart failure tho, in 2008, I've been really struggling. I do have to eat some bread/potatoes when I'm staying away from home. But my doc says I should be able to eat a "normal" diet on three metformin a day.

I'm taking 1.25mg Bisoprolol; 2mg Perindopril and 20mg Furosemide but feel that these are all conspiring against me, and raising my blood sugar. Also with an unmedicated bp of 110 over 65 and a pulse of 55, I feel I may soon expire ! I feel exceedingly well; go to the loo maybe once in the night; have no shortness of breath or irregular heartbeat - although I still can't exercise due to long term statins damage.

Can anyone advise me ? When I get up in the morning, my fasting blood glucose is 9.4. I seem to be manufacturing glucose overnight !

Jane
 
hi Jane
Do you have any meds for your blood pressure ? I have been on lasipranol for 5 yr now. But the reading your showing i think you defo need to contact your gp. I hope someone will reply better than me. JF. :)
 
The rise in blood sugar in the morning is something many of us have to accept, your liver does it's thing and dumps sugar into your bloodstream to get you going for the day. Some T2s find eating a carb snack at bedtime helps keep the morning figure down.

You BP is one for the doc. I wish mine was anywhere near that! I am on various BP meds and it stays stubbornly high.

What was your last HbA1c?

It would be nice to have a steady BG level without any peaks and troughs but we are T2 and that makes it difficult. some peaks and troughs have to be accepted, but if your HbA1c stays reasonable
then maybe the higher morning figure has to be lived with.

I also find taking Metformin last thing at night helps keep my morning figures lower.

We are, however, all different, it might or might not work for you.

H
 
Hi Jane!

Welcome to the forum - I'm no expert, so I hope someone with more experience will be along soon who can advise you better. I have great sympathy with you over statins - me too! I got a little book off Amazon called 'Rosie's Armchair Exercises' by Rosita Evans which I find useful to keep my muscles toned a bit.

Have you discussed your other problems with your heart specialist or diabetes specialist as well as your GP? Maybe your medication needs to be more of a team effort. Yours sounds a complicated case, and possibly ought to be dealt with at a higher level than GP. Good though they are, they can't be specialists in everything.

Best wishes

Viv
 
JUSTFOCUS said:
hi Jane
Do you have any meds for your blood pressure ? I have been on lasipranol for 5 yr now. But the reading your showing i think you defo need to contact your gp. I hope someone will reply better than me. JF. :)
Click to expand...

Do you mean meds to RAISE my blood pressure ? They're giving me an Ace Inhibitor and a Beta blocker - which I'm sure don't help. I don't seem to have a GP any more - he retired soon after my pulmonary oedema and I've been seeing the nurse.

I was on 4 x the meds I'm on now, but managed to persuade them to put me down to the lowest dose. I don't trust the medical profession one little jot.
 
hallii said:
The rise in blood sugar in the morning is something many of us have to accept, your liver does it's thing and dumps sugar into your bloodstream to get you going for the day. Some T2s find eating a carb snack at bedtime helps keep the morning figure down.

You BP is one for the doc. I wish mine was anywhere near that! I am on various BP meds and it stays stubbornly high.

What was your last HbA1c?

It would be nice to have a steady BG level without any peaks and troughs but we are T2 and that makes it difficult. some peaks and troughs have to be accepted, but if your HbA1c stays reasonable
then maybe the higher morning figure has to be lived with.

I also find taking Metformin last thing at night helps keep my morning figures lower.

We are, however, all different, it might or might not work for you.

H
Click to expand...

Thanks hallii - I'll try a snack and a Metformin last thing at night. The nurse didn't tell me what my last HbA1c was but I was told it was not good enough and he gave me two months to try to do something about it :(
 
viviennem said:
Hi Jane!

Welcome to the forum - I'm no expert, so I hope someone with more experience will be along soon who can advise you better. I have great sympathy with you over statins - me too! I got a little book off Amazon called 'Rosie's Armchair Exercises' by Rosita Evans which I find useful to keep my muscles toned a bit.
Have you discussed your other problems with your heart specialist or diabetes specialist as well as your GP? Maybe your medication needs to be more of a team effort. Yours sounds a complicated case, and possibly ought to be dealt with at a higher level than GP. Good though they are, they can't be specialists in everything.
Best wishes
Viv
Click to expand...

Thanks Viv. I'll give that book a try ! The last heart specialists I saw just wanted me on statins again.

I agree my case is a bit different; my family have very high cholesterol levels (not that I'm worried about that) but my dad at 96 years old has the same bp as I do.

I do think exercise would help, but I can barely walk much at all.
Jane
 
Hi Jane and a warm welcome to the forum.

I don't understand why you are being given medication to lower your BP when your readings are low anyway? :shock:
You need to see a Dr. as opposed to a nurse as with the best will in the world she does not seem to understand. Some BP meds will raise your blood sugars but Dr's will still prescribe as it is equally important to get your BP down but this is not the case for you. You have other health problems and need a Dr's input and there will be someone available to you even though yours has retired.
Halli has given you good advice about your waking sugar levels, it is called the Dawn Phenomenon and is a pain in the proverbial for some of us.
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=17088 This advice given to newly diagnosed may help you to to tweak your diet and get your HBA1c down. It was compiled by the monitors and is excellent advice.
You deserve better care and it upsets me to see this happening to you.
 
No - I don't understand the hypertension meds either ! And I now read that the 8mg Perindopril should NOT be given to heart failure patients. Heck ! And that is what they put me on when I got flown out to the Southern General in Glasgow.

At least the nurse is on my side - he doesn't even bother to check my cholesterol now, and my anaemia/kidney etc problems have improved since we conspired to get my meds lowered.

I've been on low GI foods only for seven years; and only eat home made soda bread very occasionally (made with spelt flour and home-milled organic oats. Most of what I eat is organic and home hunted/fished/reared or grown. It's only when I have to go to the mainland that I can't find anything real to eat. (I farm on an island in the Southern Hebrides).

I certainly need to do something, but I don't know what.

Jane
 
Hi Jane

I assume you have to go to the mainland hospital occasionally to have your heart problems checked? (if not, why not?)! I would assume that hospital has a specialist diabetic team - if you can get hold of the contact details for the head of that team, you could write to him/her outlining your problems just as you have on here, and ask for an appointment, preferably in the same visit as your heart one, so that you can discuss all your medical problems and medications in great detail. You could try writing to the head of the heart team as well.

I envy you your life-style, but possibly not at this time of year! My best friend here in the Dales is a sheep farmer, and I know just how hard she works. But there are compensations.

The problem in asking to see someone higher up at the hospital is that you never know whether they are going to take you seriously, or whether they're going to pat you on the head and tell you to run away and take your pills. But it does seem to me that you need a full review. I can't imagine why you're on blood pressure meds - or at least, not all that lot!

best of luck

Viv
 
Thanks again, Viv. But no - wasn't told to go back to see anyone on the mainland. I think basically you have to wait until you're critical and get flown out :roll: Having spent a considerable time in a Stroke Ward in the same hospital, there's no way I'd ever want to go back voluntarily.

When last flown out with the oedema, I must have seen at least a dozen consultants, as well as their underdogs. They just bumped up all three medications as high as possible - keeping me on oxygen and a heart monitor. Then one morning they stopped the oxygen, unstrapped the darn monitor thingy and said I could go home, with my pile of pills. Not very satisfactory at all.

I'll plod on........and try reducing one of the meds for a bit. If I'm fine on 1/4 what they gave me, then maybe I'll be just as fine on 1/8th.

Tried a snack of nuts before bedtime last night, and also took my third metformin late. But even worse at 10.9 this morning. Just can't seem to eat ANY carbs at all.

Jane
 
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