Type 1 What was type 1 treatment like 20-30 years ago?

kev-w

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I got a bit nostalgic a few months back and bought some Glucoflex R colour changing strips. Only used a couple for old times sake, but I'd forgotten just how much damned blood each one needs! And also the artistry involved in lancing, squeezing, hovering the finger over the strip, carefully applying. It seems almost like an Olympic sport compared to the suck it up capillary action of modern strips!

Yeah those! Oh I do remember those, holding the pricker in one hand with a finger from the other hand on a table, lining up, cringing and banging downwards hoping for enough blood on the finger end, then debating which colours it actually lined up with...

My current Fastclix is nobbut a tickle in comparison :)
 
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Scott-C

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then debating which colours it actually lined up with...

I'm in the middle of doing my house up at the moment, so when I'm looking at paint charts in B&Q or wherever, I'll see what they call a "duck egg pastel blue" and I'll call it "6"!
 
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porl69

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I know our health service in the UK. Is in a mess but if the diabetics can look after themselves better then we will be less of a drain on the already overstretched NHS. Won't be long and we will be paying for our health service ourselves....will be going the same way as the USA. Sorry America
 

Grant_Vicat

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Thanks to smallbrit for starting this thread because the memories have been flooding back for me.

I was diagnosed in the winter of 1964 into 1965 and as a wee boy I grew up in a household where both my mother and grandmother were type 1’s.

In those days there were two types of glass syringe nozzle fittings so you had to make sure you got the right needles prescribed. The older fitting was called ‘Record’ and mother and gran used that type of syringe. The one I had was ‘luer’ fitting which I think must have been the most up to date at that time! I agree about the size of the needles and that each was expected to last about a week.

I got the Palmer Injector Gun as a gift that first Christmas and hated it. Like others in this thread, I was scared to pull its trigger. It was an instrument of torture and mines is now at rest in a little diabetic museum they have at the local hospital. Hypoguard, another company of the time, also had an injection aid (a small silver steel tube contraption) which I found easier. I feel sure that Hypoguard also made the little blue plastic travel case in the photograph Grant_VIcat posted in this thread but I might be wrong.

To test for ketones in those days it was tiny little Acetest tablets, which I think are still in use. The little plastic Ames Clinitest kit I still have somewhere and is well over 50 years old.

Other memories are the little set of food scales given to me by the hospital when I was discharged and with it the diet sheet. It was the bible. It only allowed tiny amounts of butter and cheese each day (which I find odd now because like all newly diagnosed type 1’s in those days I was tiny and stick thin and needed to get some weight on). The sheet clearly stated that potatoes were to be no larger than a hen’s egg! Every lunchtime part of my allowance was fruit but on a Sunday my mother swapped the portion and it was a small 6d block of Walls ice cream WITHOUT the wafers.

I think my first insulin was called Lente and was taken once-a-day.

Bill
Hi Bill, The blue tube was indeed made by Hypoguard of Trimley, near Felixstowe, about 30 miles from where I now live! I started off on Lente in 1959. It came in squat short bottles. I seem to remeber a dark red and lightish blue (diagonally separated colours) label. It lasted me until 1966. Then Rapitard and Monotard mixed twice daily. Did you ever get The Diabetic's ABC by R.D.Lawrence. I've still got mine, with all the Carbs listed in red type! All the very best
 
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rochari

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Hey Grant

Your picture brought the most memories back than anything else I can remember. It was great to see all our stuff from days gone by.

Hypoguard was a terrific company and my first ever blood meter was made by them. Before that, I used to buy disposable needles from them prior to the NHS picking up the cost. Did they close down as there doesn't seem to be a website? I bet folks don’t realise how closely they were involved in the making of the first insulin pens.

My first insulin, I think, was in a greyish little box and I remember purple on it too. I must say though my memory doesn’t serve me well as to all the others I was on over the years. They must have worked OK though as I’m still here, got my gold medal a good few years ago which, for me, was a great moment.

I bet you will remember the BDA newspaper long before it became a glossy magazine. Also, diabetic foodstuffs like the custard creams and the Cadbury’s dark diabetic chocolate in the cream wrapper (think they stopped making it in the 70’s). My favourite of them all though was the small round fruitcake sealed inside a metal canister that you had to open using a tin opener! It was so expensive that it was a once a year treat, usually at Christmas.

The Diabetic's ABC was given to my father around one possibly two years after I was diagnosed when he’d taken me to the children’s clinic. Other parents were getting them too. Another bible for me was the BDA’s Diabetic Handbook. They used to sit together on the bookcase and were well used.

Kindest regards,

Bill
 

Scott-C

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I bet folks don’t realise how closely they were involved in the making of the first insulin pens.

There's a fascinating article at the link below about how Dr Sheila Reith came up with the idea of pens to help her T1 daughter, came up with a few prototypes, went through a whole lot of politics, got some designers on board, came up with Penject, then Hypoguard got involved in making it.

Dr Reith is why we've got pens. Sure, someone else would have done it if she hadn't, but she started it.

Love this quote from the article:

it was all very tricky,” Dr Reith explains. “I remember finding myself in the ladies loo at Euston station, trying to give my daughter an insulin injection. I said to myself: ‘This is absurd! We ought to have a simple injection device that takes insulin cartridges. We must make this easier for people’.”

https://www.diabetes.org.uk/About_u...ly+2014+e-newsletter&utm_campaign=Read+more+»
 

rochari

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A fascinating article Scott and the hospital Dr Reith, at that time, was working in was Glasgow's Southern General which is where my diabetic clinic is. After major renovations and re-building they re-named it the Queen Elizabeth. It's all state of the art stuff there these days. I read about Hypoguard's involvement and the Glasgow connection many years ago but wasn't aware of this link. Thanks for that.

For me, after using syringes for so many years the new insulin pens were (and still are) great, especially when out and about.

Bill
 

Scott-C

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It's a small world, right enough, @rochari !

I'm just along the road from you at the other end of the M8.

Was interested to read that Banting's grandmother was Scottish and the boss of his lab, McLeod, was Scottish, so maybe that Scottish flair for invention played a small part in it all. Just a shame the two of them fought like cat and dog!
 

rochari

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LOL Scott, I was along the M8 only yesterday.

I mentioned the Palmer Injector Gun earlier which was a scary piece of equipment. Did you know it was made in Glasgow?

I once had a great GP whose grandfather was one of the first to be treated by Banting & Best. He was taken down to them in London from Glasgow a very sick little boy, given this new drug and lived a long life. As I mentioned, both my mother and grandmother were type1's as was my great-grandmother. Sadly, she died as there was no treatment available in those days. My gran told me her mother lived on a kind of cabbage diet for about a year before she passed away.

My gran never used Clinitest tablets, only Benedict's solution. I still smile as I remember her heating the tube over the gas ring.

Bill
 

JMK1954

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Type 1
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I was diagnosed in August 1964, aged just 10. One thing definitely hasn't improved. In those days all the nurses in the children's hospital I was admitted to could count carbs. They used to take turns testing me.
 

Gabrielle_Tai

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Type of diabetes
Type 1
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I am glad i skipped all those. Cannot imagine how hard it was for type 1 during those time.