What happens next? Need a bit of guidance

Hi and welcome. You seem to have had the "information is dangerous" introduction to Type 2. It happens, probably too frequently.

So a series of questions and some answers - clinical-related information from Bilous and Donnelly's Handbook of Diabetes , which is not advice to people with diabetes, but advice and information for clinical staff:

Did they tell you what the results of the two blood tests was? These will have been HbA1c tests and that test is currently how Type 2 is diagnosed. Automatic diagnosis happens at 48mmol/mol and above. I'd guess you were close to that as they've done a confirmatory second test.

They almost certainly won't assess the impact of the metformin. Starting someone on metformin is just the clinical protocol set by the NICE guidelines. The NICE guidelines (now over 20 years old) assume that T2 is a progressive disease that will need to be increasingly managed for the rest of your life by more and different drugs. The NICE guidelines do not consider that it is easily possible to reduce blood glucose levels by limiting carbohydrate in the diet.

In any case, metformin does not affect glucose in or produced by the food you eat. What it does do is interfere with the ability of your liver to adjust your blood glucose (mainly upwards).

I can't be much help about the eye and foot checks and the diabetes course. Each local area will arrange these to suit, and there's no set national pattern. I did a course in 2020, which was equally good and bad in parts. I've had one eye check in three (?) years but had a foot check last month. The eye checks used to happen in the next town over, which I could only get to by driving, and they won't let you have the eye check if you need to drive home.

I still get the same checks as someone with elevated blood glucose, even though my BG has been normal for five years. This is because the NHS as a system doesn't accept that anything can happen except for the condition getting worse.

You will be contacted for the tests etc, in due course and in the fullness of time when the wheels of the bureaucracy turn, because GPs have a list of activites that they have to complete around Type 2, and are paid for levels of completion. You might find that nothing happens for weeks and then you get four separate appointments within a couple of days.

Back when I was diagnosed, I found this forum to be consistently the best source or advice and support. It beats the official line easily. There's a wealth of experience on here, and the thing you may find interesting is the variation in experience of those of us who have on the surface got "the same disease" but in practice have very widely different conditions to manage. The trick is to find what works for you, rather than what works for me or somebody else, and be really wary of anyone trying to tell you there's only one way to do it.

best of luck!