What will happen at my 1st Diabetic App at Hospital

Dont worry hun everything will be fine, for your eye test theyll use eye drops, as for the rest im presuming they'll go over everything diabetes related to make sure you know all there is to know. As for the silly person giving you too much insulin, I guess at least you was in the right place to deal with it.

Kelly

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Lol nothing wrong being firce fed choc lol
Kelly

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Hello Shelley .

With the mistake of units of insulin being given .
100 units instead of the 10 ...

Medical staff are now trained to write it in 'letter form' alongside the numbers.
like 10 [TEN] units FOR example to PREVENT this from ever happening .

Look for this next time, you ever are in hospital needing insulin being given to you .

Hope this helps?

Anna.

Your experience sounds awful, and terrifying.
Your standard diabetic appointment will be nothing like that - everyone involved will be used to diabetes and doing tasks they are familiar with, so it should be fine.

What usually happens is some or all of the following things:
- they'll weigh you (and may measure you if they don't already have your height, to get your BMI)
- they'll check your blood pressure
- they'll draw blood from your arm (sometimes your earlobe) to check your HbA1c and possibly for other blood tests to check things like cholesterol
- they'll ask for a urine sample, which they'll use to check kidney function
- they'll check the pulses in your bare feet and may poke your toes very gently with a little springy thing to check you haven't lost any sensation in your feet (neuropathy)
- they'll do the eye check. This involves an ordinary basic sight test (can you read the letters on the chart, can you see dots they flash on a grid thing etc) and may involve them checking the pressure in your eyes with a thing that puffs air at you (startling but not painful). They also should put atropine drops in your eyes to make the pupils big enough that they can see right to the back of the eye, and check your blood vessels are fine there. This doesn't hurt but can make it hard to see - things become blurry, bright lights are uncomfortable. That's why they say don't drive to the eye test, because you can't drive back. They only look at your eyes for a few minutes, but the effect of the drops lasts anything from an hour or so to several hours, depending on how much atropine they use, and how your body reacts to it.
They should tell you what the 'normal' levels for all these things are, and what you can do if they aren't normal, but if they don't explain it properly do ask them (or if you can't, then post again here and I'll look them out for you).

Those are the bodily checks they need to do, but I would hope they would also talk to you about how you are feeling, how you are coping, whether you are okay with the insulins you are on, whether you need support and help e.g. from a diabetes specialist nurse or a dietitian. If you are feeling upset or need emotional support, or just help on coping with insulin and so on, do not be afraid to ask for it. It's normal.

Another thing they are required to do is offer you diabetes education. They may not do that at your first appo but if they haven't done it by the next one, ask them specifically for it (if you want it that is!) Most Type 1s who go on structured diabetes education
get a huge amount out of it. Have a look at the threads on here about DAFNE, and also have a look at the DAFNE and DEN websites for info about courses in your area: http://www.dafne.uk.com/ and http://www.diabetes-education.net/.

come back and let us know how it went, and good luck