M
Matt2023
Guest
Hi,
My name is Matt and I have come to this forum hoping for some help, advice and guidance in managing my diabetes better and also be of assitance to any member who has a question that I might be able to answer from my experience with diabetes.
I am a Type 1 long-term diabetic 25+ years, so I know my way around the condition a little bit, but these past five years I have really been trying to keep things under control. Why only in the last 5 years? Honestly it is because for the first 20 years I was not the best diabetic patient in the world and because I could not feel the long-term effects that the diabetes was causing me in the background, I did not take it as seriously as I should had done. I was in my early 20's when I was diagnosed and just had better things to get on with at that time of my life than watching everything I ate and drank. I did however in those 25 years, not miss one day without taking insulin, though it could have only been once a day, I was then on human Mixtard 70/30.
Fast forward 20 years and now the hidden long term effects of diabetes have reared their ugly head.
Starting about five years ago, I started getting a lot of cramps in my lower legs which turned out to be peripheral artery disease (PAD) at 45 years old. That was my first sign of complications arising from my diabetes and so from that point onwards I started taking much better care of my diabetes and keeping a much careful eye on my sugar levels throughout the day. Better late than never.
I stopped also with Mixtard 70/30 and moved over to Lantus and Apidra insulins to try and get better control of my sugars which has happened and I have been using those insulins for the past four years now.
This is one of the reasons why I joined this forum because I need advice on taking these insulins. I have never been given any guidance or advice when I started them as you do not always need a prescription for insulin where I live. I will start questions in a separate post specific to a question. All I have learnt on taking them on what they are, has been learnt by research online, I am not injecting my body blindly, I do research.
If I can give one piece of advice to any newly diagnosed diabetic patient especially someone my type of age early 20s when diagnosed, you may not feel the effects of the diabetes for many a year and you may put it back on the back burner but believe you me, it will catch up with you, much younger than it will your peers if you do not start taking care of your diabetes from the get go. I wish that was told to me at a young age, whether it would have made any difference I have no idea, but at least I would have been told.
For the past 15 years I have had no diabetic care of any type and I have self-managed it entirely on my own. The first ten years was not much of a problem but these past five years now that I'm trying to get it more stabilized, I have been struggling.
Why do I not have any diabetic care in place? It is because I live in the middle of nowhere and I have no doctors locally that have any diabetic experience. In the years I have been here and have unfortunately ended up in hospital for various reasons, (Broken Bones) I have had arguments with doctors on the ward in front of others over what type of medication I should be taking for type one diabetes. they were shouting me down telling me that I do not need to be injecting insulin for type 1 diabetes and that I only need to be taken for metformin. When I argued back and tried to explain the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes I was again talked down to and shouted at and told I do not know what I am talking about. These are the doctors I have to deal with when it comes to diabetes care, this has happened on three occasions with 3 doctors and I even checked online that they did not call type 1 and type 2 the other way around, but no they believed that I did not need to inject insulin for either type 1 or 2 and metformin can treat both just at different doses.
Oh I was also offered once a plant substitute rather than having to inject insulin, of course I turned it down politely and stuck with injecting insulin.
I have looked high and low for a specialized diabetic doctor locally and I mean within a 500 kilometer radius and the only two I have been able to locate, they are both fully booked with patients already, this was about a year ago now.
So, I have been trying to look locally for help, I really have.
In the past six months I have started buying Libra sensors version 1, versions two and three are not available in my part of the world yet. With that I have a MiaoMiao 3 transmitter set an on top of the Libra sensor so as to get a continuous blood monitoring on my phone. I used the app GLIMP and I also use HEDIA both work well for my personal needs. As you can see I am willing to pay the expense to have these in place. I am serious about getting my sugars in check.
These sensors are a blessing and a curse as in they are a blessing because you can see what your blood is doing throughout the day and night but a curse because it makes you or me personally try my darndest to keep my sugars within range. It's a daily battle. From not really caring for the first 20 years of diabetes, I now find it consuming my entire life to try and keep it within range. Polar opposites.
And there are some anomalies that I just cannot figure out and I have tried to locate and look online and also ask but I just do not know where to go with it. Again I will not ask on this post, this is an introductory post but this is one of the questions I will be asking when I have an anomaly to ask if anybody can understand why that happened.
I also appreciate that this forum is not a medical forum and that if I am given any type of advice or guidance, that I take full responsibility for that advice should I act on it. Due to my unique situation of not having any local doctors who know anything about diabetes I hope I can get that advice, suggestions or guidance because I'm not sure what else I can do or where else to turn to anymore and I am getting to a point where I just want to give up. I'm sure others have been in this situation in the past and probably can understand that feeling.
My blood is not really all that bad my diabetes time in range is between 65% and 70% and reading online, that is not bad at all, though to achieve this I have to inject up to 15 times a day which is not ideal and I would love to be able to inject less but also keep my time in range, that is one of my goals for joining this forum.
I will of course answer any questions that people have posed on the forum that I think I can answer in an honest way or have been in a similar situation and can relate to the same situation to be able to give that advice. I have travelled around the world and I can advise people should they come to my part of the world on what to expect when they get here and what they should bring with them, so I am hopeful I can be of some use to some of your members too.
Thank you for taking the time to reading my short essay
), but I want to do things “right” from the start so you have some background information on me should you wish to know who I am from reading a question in the main forum.
Best Regards,
Matt.
My name is Matt and I have come to this forum hoping for some help, advice and guidance in managing my diabetes better and also be of assitance to any member who has a question that I might be able to answer from my experience with diabetes.
I am a Type 1 long-term diabetic 25+ years, so I know my way around the condition a little bit, but these past five years I have really been trying to keep things under control. Why only in the last 5 years? Honestly it is because for the first 20 years I was not the best diabetic patient in the world and because I could not feel the long-term effects that the diabetes was causing me in the background, I did not take it as seriously as I should had done. I was in my early 20's when I was diagnosed and just had better things to get on with at that time of my life than watching everything I ate and drank. I did however in those 25 years, not miss one day without taking insulin, though it could have only been once a day, I was then on human Mixtard 70/30.
Fast forward 20 years and now the hidden long term effects of diabetes have reared their ugly head.
Starting about five years ago, I started getting a lot of cramps in my lower legs which turned out to be peripheral artery disease (PAD) at 45 years old. That was my first sign of complications arising from my diabetes and so from that point onwards I started taking much better care of my diabetes and keeping a much careful eye on my sugar levels throughout the day. Better late than never.
I stopped also with Mixtard 70/30 and moved over to Lantus and Apidra insulins to try and get better control of my sugars which has happened and I have been using those insulins for the past four years now.
This is one of the reasons why I joined this forum because I need advice on taking these insulins. I have never been given any guidance or advice when I started them as you do not always need a prescription for insulin where I live. I will start questions in a separate post specific to a question. All I have learnt on taking them on what they are, has been learnt by research online, I am not injecting my body blindly, I do research.
If I can give one piece of advice to any newly diagnosed diabetic patient especially someone my type of age early 20s when diagnosed, you may not feel the effects of the diabetes for many a year and you may put it back on the back burner but believe you me, it will catch up with you, much younger than it will your peers if you do not start taking care of your diabetes from the get go. I wish that was told to me at a young age, whether it would have made any difference I have no idea, but at least I would have been told.
For the past 15 years I have had no diabetic care of any type and I have self-managed it entirely on my own. The first ten years was not much of a problem but these past five years now that I'm trying to get it more stabilized, I have been struggling.
Why do I not have any diabetic care in place? It is because I live in the middle of nowhere and I have no doctors locally that have any diabetic experience. In the years I have been here and have unfortunately ended up in hospital for various reasons, (Broken Bones) I have had arguments with doctors on the ward in front of others over what type of medication I should be taking for type one diabetes. they were shouting me down telling me that I do not need to be injecting insulin for type 1 diabetes and that I only need to be taken for metformin. When I argued back and tried to explain the difference between type 1 and type 2 diabetes I was again talked down to and shouted at and told I do not know what I am talking about. These are the doctors I have to deal with when it comes to diabetes care, this has happened on three occasions with 3 doctors and I even checked online that they did not call type 1 and type 2 the other way around, but no they believed that I did not need to inject insulin for either type 1 or 2 and metformin can treat both just at different doses.
Oh I was also offered once a plant substitute rather than having to inject insulin, of course I turned it down politely and stuck with injecting insulin.
I have looked high and low for a specialized diabetic doctor locally and I mean within a 500 kilometer radius and the only two I have been able to locate, they are both fully booked with patients already, this was about a year ago now.
So, I have been trying to look locally for help, I really have.
In the past six months I have started buying Libra sensors version 1, versions two and three are not available in my part of the world yet. With that I have a MiaoMiao 3 transmitter set an on top of the Libra sensor so as to get a continuous blood monitoring on my phone. I used the app GLIMP and I also use HEDIA both work well for my personal needs. As you can see I am willing to pay the expense to have these in place. I am serious about getting my sugars in check.
These sensors are a blessing and a curse as in they are a blessing because you can see what your blood is doing throughout the day and night but a curse because it makes you or me personally try my darndest to keep my sugars within range. It's a daily battle. From not really caring for the first 20 years of diabetes, I now find it consuming my entire life to try and keep it within range. Polar opposites.
And there are some anomalies that I just cannot figure out and I have tried to locate and look online and also ask but I just do not know where to go with it. Again I will not ask on this post, this is an introductory post but this is one of the questions I will be asking when I have an anomaly to ask if anybody can understand why that happened.
I also appreciate that this forum is not a medical forum and that if I am given any type of advice or guidance, that I take full responsibility for that advice should I act on it. Due to my unique situation of not having any local doctors who know anything about diabetes I hope I can get that advice, suggestions or guidance because I'm not sure what else I can do or where else to turn to anymore and I am getting to a point where I just want to give up. I'm sure others have been in this situation in the past and probably can understand that feeling.
My blood is not really all that bad my diabetes time in range is between 65% and 70% and reading online, that is not bad at all, though to achieve this I have to inject up to 15 times a day which is not ideal and I would love to be able to inject less but also keep my time in range, that is one of my goals for joining this forum.
I will of course answer any questions that people have posed on the forum that I think I can answer in an honest way or have been in a similar situation and can relate to the same situation to be able to give that advice. I have travelled around the world and I can advise people should they come to my part of the world on what to expect when they get here and what they should bring with them, so I am hopeful I can be of some use to some of your members too.
Thank you for taking the time to reading my short essay
), but I want to do things “right” from the start so you have some background information on me should you wish to know who I am from reading a question in the main forum. Best Regards,
Matt.
