Type 1'stars R Us

Just turned on the TV and Steel Magnolias is on. Julia Roberts plays a T1 in it and there’s a scene where she’s hypo - now I’ve only been diabetic since 2013, I know insulin would have been quite different in the late 80s when it’s set, but did anyone really have hypos the way it’s shown in the film? Were diabetics told they shouldn’t have children? They’ve dialled up the drama for the film of course, I was just wondering how much was based on reality at that time...

Well google tells me it was based on a true story! So I guess more realistic than I thought!

Good morning everyone on this very windy morning have a good day everyone

Morning all!

That will teach me to look at work e-mails before I've had sufficient caffeine. I am now utterly awash on behalf of a colleague, who's Guide Dog unexpectedly and very suddenly took ill then died last week. It's part of the nature of my workplace that some colleagues and students will have Guide Dogs. They are part of the workplace team and we are all so used to seeing them around. This one was one of the best I've ever seen in action and was so patient with those of our students who have to be taught they are working dogs, and not to distract them whilst they are working. We do have a number of Buddy Dogs as well, and the students likely to leap at the working Guide Dogs are usually directed to the also very lovely Buddy Dogs.

Now, I am so not an animal person (as you may have gathered,) and will never have any of my own. I rarely comment on any of the pets pictures, though I like to see them. but I will always sympathise with illness/death of much-loved pets. I enjoy friends' pets as it's only for the space of time I am in their homes, I've even been known to pet sit for animals I know. But, it's always with a sense of relief it's temporary. However, every now and then, an animal wriggles its way deeply into my affections and this one so did!

I will take myself to the garden and take out my emotions on the weeds. Yeah, it's garden bin week again...

ArtemisBow said:

Just turned on the TV and Steel Magnolias is on. Julia Roberts plays a T1 in it and there’s a scene where she’s hypo - now I’ve only been diabetic since 2013, I know insulin would have been quite different in the late 80s when it’s set, but did anyone really have hypos the way it’s shown in the film? Were diabetics told they shouldn’t have children? They’ve dialled up the drama for the film of course, I was just wondering how much was based on reality at that time...

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I certainly did see a classmate (mid-70s) and a colleague (late 80s) have occasional hypos every bit as dramatic! And, yes, I do believe that was the medical advice - don't have children.

I will, however, defer to those who would have been T1 in those times who will have other things to say, I am sure!.

I just got my Miao Miao for the Libre on my dog!!!! My dog has always been erratic. So hopefully this helps.

Question, I did a calibration with a meter, from it reading 100 points too low, I calibrated it and it then went 50 points over????
Will it adjust out or does it need a few calibrations the first day or?????? My dog runs higher than a person so I'm not sure if that is going to affect it.

EDIT An hour later it was within 10 points. But anything I should know about how often to calibrate it or?

I just had to watch that scene in Steel Magnolias to remind myself @ArtemisBow.
Yes, hypos were bad, as they still are today for some people.
I had my children in 1978 and 1980. The first was born in Bristol where the BMH were trialling a way to keep expectant T1’s blood sugars low, lower than ‘normal’, and I had some interesting hypos, we all did (there were a few of us). We came into the hospital for 24 hour monitoring once a fortnight, then once a week in the last month. Portable blood sugar testing was just becoming more widely available for T1s back then and insulins were still bovine or porcine, and there wasn’t much variety. Syringes, no half unit pens.
I remember being woken one night on the T1 pregnant mothers ward when a group of four staff were trying to hold one of us still to administer intravenous glucose.
I felt really really lucky to have my first baby in Bristol and used what I’d learned there when I had my second in a smaller town in the SE. Back then, too many T1s babies were too large when they were born and had various problems if the mother’s blood sugars weren’t properly monitored. When I had baby number two, the staff in the small, unprogressive hospital, found it hard to believe I had T1 as “diabetics always have very big babies”.
I don’t think we were told we couldn’t have babies here, but I don’t know about the States. Maybe @Marie 2 can shed light on that?

As a PS, I’d flown back from West Africa when I discovered I was pregnant, as T1 wasn’t in much evidence where I was living, and there was little understanding of how to deal with it. The good, very good, doctors we knew were working 100+ miles from us, and they weren’t Diabetes specialists.
When people in the town where we lived discovered I had diabetes the common reactions were “My mother/cousin/sister/uncle/brother died of that”. There was a word for diabetes in the language which translates as ‘wound of sweetness’.

When I first watched Steel Magnolias, it was the kidney failure side of it which got to me - I have a very good friend with only one kidney, and that remaining one was giving grief at the time. We'd just gone through a very dramatic few weeks, (including a strong warning that that one was likely to fail any time soon - it didn't but that's a-whole-nother story) and the thought of a very good friend dying far too young did me in as I watched it.

Marie 2 said:

I just got my Miao Miao for the Libre on my dog!!!! My dog has always been erratic. So hopefully this helps.

Question, I did a calibration with a meter, from it reading 100 points too low, I calibrated it and it then went 50 points over????
Will it adjust out or does it need a few calibrations the first day or?????? My dog runs higher than a person so I'm not sure if that is going to affect it.

EDIT An hour later it was within 10 points. But anything I should know about how often to calibrate it or?

Click to expand...

I find the MM2 can be a tad erratic over the first 24 hours after binding or rebinding, so can the Libre when it’s first applied. With any luck it’ll settle down.
You’ve got a lucky dog!

I was diagnosed in 1985, and I was certainly not told I couldn't have children. I'd been living with my then partner, subsequently husband for three months and the brilliant hospital DNS in Watford told me that apart from flying a plane and getting an hgv or psv licence there was pretty much nothing I couldn't do. I know some people get aggressive when hypo; I don't, I just get more and more confused and spaced. I'd probably do what anyone told me to...

ArtemisBow said:

Just turned on the TV and Steel Magnolias is on. Julia Roberts plays a T1 in it and there’s a scene where she’s hypo - now I’ve only been diabetic since 2013, I know insulin would have been quite different in the late 80s when it’s set, but did anyone really have hypos the way it’s shown in the film? Were diabetics told they shouldn’t have children? They’ve dialled up the drama for the film of course, I was just wondering how much was based on reality at that time...

Click to expand...

Hi,

Saw that film years ago & didn't think much of it at the time.? (It wasn't for me..)
Just took a refresher with the hypo scene on youtube.

I would have still been on animal insulin around the time this film was set?
Hypos do affect people differently & i've had a couple of corkers where my legs had spasms. To this day i can still treat myself.
Personally i felt the character seemed to come out of the hypo a little too quick, considering the sort of low JR was portraying?

I can't really speak about advice on children. but it was insinuated at the time that my aspiring "rock & roll lifestyle" judged on my appearance, was not appropriate for my condition..

Marie 2 said:

I just got my Miao Miao for the Libre on my dog!!!! My dog has always been erratic. So hopefully this helps.

Question, I did a calibration with a meter, from it reading 100 points too low, I calibrated it and it then went 50 points over????
Will it adjust out or does it need a few calibrations the first day or?????? My dog runs higher than a person so I'm not sure if that is going to affect it.

EDIT An hour later it was within 10 points. But anything I should know about how often to calibrate it or?

Click to expand...

Hi,

What app are you using? With xdrip, the graph is laid out in a series of dots every 5 minutes. with a meter test to calibrate, i don't look at the recent number.being mindful of the lag with a BG meter i check it against 15 or 20 minutes back on the Libre interpreted xdrip graph..
As well as the function to calibrate i find xdrip more detailed than the Libre app. Glimp was great, but a little less stable on my device.

I agree @Jaylee about the speed of recovery in the film - I don’t get aggressive with my hypos just spaced out but it always takes me at least 10 minutes to come back up after eating/drinking. But then I never used those animal insulins either.

ArtemisBow said:

I agree @Jaylee about the speed of recovery in the film - I don’t get aggressive with my hypos just spaced out but it always takes me at least 10 minutes to come back up after eating/drinking. But then I never used those animal insulins either.

Click to expand...

Hi,

The porcine stuff for me when i dropped was like "stop the world. i wanna get off.."
It was a fight as a kid to hold it together.i learned to keep calm & focus on what would stop it.
Yep i'm pretty passive & quite reasonable at acting "normal." One DSN thought i just looked bored after i excused myself to snaffle a couple of JBs after getting my meter out during one session.
My wife is very adept at spotting it..

The JR character portrayal does not represent me.

Morning all. For the first time in 109 days, I will be in a work building for three whole hours.

Not "my" current work building, but the one I've been assigned to for the afternoon. I've got the "back to school" nerves big time in the last week of term!! But, my bag is packed with work clothes to change into when I get there, lunch will be eaten fast in the park a 10 minutes walk from work, ID badge lives in my bag all the time, as it's handy for identifying myself to parents/carers who wonder who on earth this person is that their offspring/charge has spotted and is chatting to with much enthusiasm but it will be on me for its proper purpose (unless, of course, I'm told to take it off as it could be a germ vector).

Mind you, I can't consider the possibility of term being properly ended, as the threat of mandatory on-line training is upon us. I am finding I am increasingly resenting the growing pressures and need to use my own devices for work purposes. I am finding myself wishing for a major internet fail or whether I decide to say I need to go into work next week to complete the training. There were strong indications that offer was only for those with no internet at home. I'm at the wrong end of the workplace evolutionary scale to have been allowed a work laptop for the duration.

Decisions, decisions.

Good morning all.
Interesting the ways hypos take us all slightly differently. Mine can vary ranging from deliriously happy through to grumpy and belligerent via spaced out and slow. Different parts of me seem to take it in turns to be the first to make me aware that I need to raise bloods: eyesight, balance, breathing, pace of brain, toe curling, etc etc.

Will the training be taking place indoors @Japes? Could you not ask if you could distance train at home @Japes? As someone who’s clinically vulnerable you could plead that you wouldn’t feel safe spending three days indoors for training if that’s where it will happen. A laptop could be provided for it if you’d be at risk as it’s surely a responsibility of the workplace to provide a safe working space to protect employees.

Thank you for all the hugs yesterday. Much appreciated!