We don't need no education

We don't need no education,
we don't need no thought control,
no dark sarcasm in the classroom,
hey teacher! Leave them kids alone!
all in all it's just another brick in the wall,
all in all you're just another brick in the wall.

Apologies of Pink Floyd. A momentary laps of reason on my part. Spot the other Pink Floyd reference in that one.

Well education is the name of the game. More precisely the education of type ones like myself. Type ones are expected to regulate their blood glucose levels by the use of insulin. We're expected to learn how to adjust doses and that sort of thing. There are a lucky few like myself who have been on a purpose built course to educate type ones in the use of their insulins. It's called carbohyrate counting. Some are left to learn by distance under a little supervision from their diabetes team after a back of a fag packet briefing on the subject. This was tried with me and had sod all success. The problem is that there are very few courses that run for type ones. There is the DAFNE (Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating) course which is a nationwide programme and is run by many hospitals. Some hospitals have their own local equivalents. The one I did was called SADIE (Skills fo Adjusting Diet and Insulin, Eastbourne.) However, there simply isn't enough to go around and the waiting lists are huge.
This is a real shame as the increased amount of education in the type one community would save the NHS much money in terms of hospital emergency admissions and complications because the education would give people the keys to better control. I say it'd save money but I do have to bear in mind the old saying that "you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink". It's a shame as there are people who just don't look after themselves despite the condition that they live with.
Now when I was diagnosed it was a question of two injection a day. If I recall correctly the main education was how to treat a hypo, keep meals a set times and have snacks in the mid morning and mid afternoon. Then I went onto rudimentary MDI which gave mildly better control but still we weren't taught how to alter doses nor were we really given the education we needed to make adjustments to my basal insulins. This carried on for years. It's a sad thing as if I weren't as lucky as I have been I could have fallen victim to a series of complications by now. It was only in 2009 after thirteen years of type one that I learned to carb count. This did my control so much good.
Since I learned to carb count many things have happened to me. First and foremost in diabetes is that I now use an insulin pump. For the first time in fourteen years of being type one I have since been able to achieve and maintain an HbA1c below eight percent. This never happened in the days of MDI. Granted there have been fluctuations in that but I have done things that I have never been able to do before in the terms of controlling my diabetes.
I think that's all I wanted to say. I'll probably find something else later on and then write another post about it.

Sooon to come on here will be a guest post by a friend of mine whose daughter is three and is type one. She also uses a pump. I'll put it up as soon as I get it.