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
