Doctorb Day ...

... I've pretty much caught you up on everything that has been happening with regards to diabetes. I've been still reading a bunch of things and I'll probably start ranting about some of the annoyances I've found.

Today was DoctorB today! Three appointments. One with the diabetic specialist, one with a diabetes educator (registered nurse) and one with a dietitian. I was pretty lucky about the diabetic specialist. Especially since I'm a type-1 diabetic and I absolutely NEED insulin injections. In my previous post, I really wanted to try to get away with diet management alone; however that is not possible.

The unfortunate part of the health care system is that people cannot get absolute immediate attention. It would have been nice to meet the diabetic specialist the next day after I was initially diagnosed so then I could actually get started on the insulin regimen. However, that wasn't possible. It took about 3 weeks for me to finally get an appointment with the specialist.

Diabetic Specialist:
We chatted for a little bit. He sort of scared me when he said that the Metformin that I was taking cause side effects like liver and kidney failure. He told me its impossible for me to control it through my diet alone and I was probably in a *honeymoon phase* with my diabetes - which I suspected. He also mentioned that I could actually go for a second opinion, but I'm fairly confident that he was correct in his assessment. Especially since I've read ALOT of literature about diabetes in the last 3 weeks. He wrote out a prescription for two types of insulin. A basal insulin and rapid or fast-acting insulin. I will explain what they are later. He wrote out instructions for my dosages - X units 3 times a day before meals and X units once a day. He examined my feet and told me I had to see the eye doctorb every year starting now. Then he gave me a free insulin pen - its the Novus Junior pen.

Diabetic Educator:
This was about an hour long session. There was a little mix up in that they believed that I was a type-2 diabetic since I was prescribed Metformin. Apparently, type-1 individuals need to have a longer session because of their insulin injections. Thank you Mr. Walk-in Clinic DoctorB. Luckily I had just seen the specialist and he had just given me my prescription for the insulin. I showed the educator the paper that had the doses for my insulin. Once that was sorted out, we sat down and discussed various aspects of diabetes. Diet, meals, low blood sugar, exercise and alcohol were all discussed in-depth. If you know me, I really really like beer ... alot. I haven't had a drop of alcohol since I was diagnosed.

Dietitian
Again, there was the mix-up with the type-1 and type-2 diabetes with the dietitian. She pretty much said to me, I didn't think you would be type-2 since you are underweight and pretty young ... finally someone called me young :) Anyways, she asked me to describe how I eat. Its actually pretty tough when you think about. Eating is usually something that most people just do without any regard for anything - it just happens. So, I attempted to say how I eat. I usually just graze at my desk all day and that I didn't have set meal times, I would just 'eat'. After that she looked over what I like to eat and when. She said that there wasn't really anything wrong with my diet and that we won't be counting any calories because I could really stand to use to gain some weight (Believe me, I've tried ... and failed). She outlined a pretty easy to follow diet plan with real numbers for carbs. Something that I wanted since I was first diagnosed.

That was my day. Full of medical people and talking. There was a ton of information. I'm sure I'll probably share the bulk of it over the next few posts or so.