I've posted a bit of this from my other thread where I was ranting in fear about my retinopathy check-up. My control is poor. Although it's better than six or seven years ago, where I didn't try at all, just avoided hypos in the main and had a few months of skipping novorapid to ensure binging didn't make me fat.
So now, as a result of my youthful stupidity, I have retinopathy (and probably other stuff lurking waiting to be discovered). And I know I need to make some changes, but I am not clear on a few things.
What exactly is severe non-proliferative retinopathy? Does it mean loads and loads of small haemorrhages? But not many new vessels growing and that's why I haven't been lasered? (yet...)
I've seen people here refer to "having a bleed" sometimes- what does that mean? How do you know when you have a bleed? Is it because your opthalmologist tells you at your next eye appointment?
I'm aware that I shouldn't tighten up control very quickly as that generally makes things worse (in fact I think that's what triggered this in the first place, when I got rid of most of the soaring highs) but the doctor couldn't advise me what a sensible rate of lowering sugars would be. He told me to ask my GP, who has never heard of the danger of rapidly increasing control and said I should do it as quickly as possible.
If, on an average day, I swing between 7 and 17, with a couple of drops to 3 every week, what should I be trying for in the first instance?
So now, as a result of my youthful stupidity, I have retinopathy (and probably other stuff lurking waiting to be discovered). And I know I need to make some changes, but I am not clear on a few things.
What exactly is severe non-proliferative retinopathy? Does it mean loads and loads of small haemorrhages? But not many new vessels growing and that's why I haven't been lasered? (yet...)
I've seen people here refer to "having a bleed" sometimes- what does that mean? How do you know when you have a bleed? Is it because your opthalmologist tells you at your next eye appointment?
I'm aware that I shouldn't tighten up control very quickly as that generally makes things worse (in fact I think that's what triggered this in the first place, when I got rid of most of the soaring highs) but the doctor couldn't advise me what a sensible rate of lowering sugars would be. He told me to ask my GP, who has never heard of the danger of rapidly increasing control and said I should do it as quickly as possible.
If, on an average day, I swing between 7 and 17, with a couple of drops to 3 every week, what should I be trying for in the first instance?