Too Sweet
One of the roles I have played in my work to help train medical students and other healthcare professionals, is a diabetic mature student, whom I'll call Sue. (She has to be mature, because she's played by me).
Sue's a bit younger than I am though. She has Type 1 diabetes, the type where your body doesn't produce any insulin. Having lived at home with her parents all her life, she's finally gone off to university and thought to herself "Hurrah! Freedom!"
So she's stopped checking her blood sugar and started having a lot of fun, which to her means late nights and lots of alcohol.
Having fallen over and hurt her ankle on one of these late nights, she turns up at the Student Health service and the medical professional has the tricky job of persuading her that, although she may have left her home town and her parents behind, she hasn't left her diabetes behind, and unless she does something about it, she's putting herself in danger of terrible complications in later life - blindness, for example, and amputation of legs.
"All very well," says Sue, "but I'm fed up of this flaming diabetes. I've had it since I was a teenager, and now I want a break from it."
Hmm. I can see where she's coming from. I am a Type 2 diabetic, which means either my body doesn't produce enough insulin, or is resistant to the insulin that it does produce.
I take my tablets, morning and night. Firstly I was on Metformin, which made me feel thoroughly sick all the time, so the tablets were changed to Gliclazide, which made me incredibly hungry all the time, and since putting on weight is bad for diabetics, I asked if there was anything else that I could try, and the doctor suggested slow-release Metformin, which should make me feel less sick. And it does, in general - though I still feel thoroughly queasy from time to time. I'm really rather used to it though - if I forget to take a tablet, I can generally tell from the fact that suddenly I don't have this low-level nausea.
I don't drink alcohol, which can mess up the blood-sugar levels. And, apart from very occasionally, I don't eat sweets, chocolate, cake - - anything like that. Really, apart from occasional - and they are occasional - lapses, I am very well-behaved with the sodding thing.
But I've never found a happy medium with checking my blood sugar with the finger-pricking device. I've been through periods of getting totally obsessed with it - - let's check it before breakfast - - after breakfast - - before lunch - - enough! So I told this to some doctor and he said just check it twice a week. Before meals? After meals? - - He didn't say, or not in any way that I could understand, anyway. (We have some way to go in teaching doctors Communication Skills, clearly).
Today I had a bowl of Shreddies for breakfast and then a bread roll with peanut butter at lunchtime and I haven't eaten anything since, so I thought I'd check my blood sugar, and looked in my little notebook, and found I haven't checked it since mid-January - - - oops!
Don't let anyone tell you that stabbing your finger, even with a fine needle, doesn't hurt. I fire the little gun that the needle lives in and then find myself going "Ow!" - - even though I knew it was going to happen!
Eight point three. Too high, considering that I haven't eaten much today. It should be between four and seven before meals, and below ten two hours after a meal.
(Eight point three what? - - No, they don't tell you these things. It could be furlongs per fortnight for all I know).
So I suppose I'd better check it a few more times to see what it's getting up to and then, if necessary, go back to the doctor. I'm bored even thinking about it.
Sue's a bit younger than I am though. She has Type 1 diabetes, the type where your body doesn't produce any insulin. Having lived at home with her parents all her life, she's finally gone off to university and thought to herself "Hurrah! Freedom!"
So she's stopped checking her blood sugar and started having a lot of fun, which to her means late nights and lots of alcohol.
Having fallen over and hurt her ankle on one of these late nights, she turns up at the Student Health service and the medical professional has the tricky job of persuading her that, although she may have left her home town and her parents behind, she hasn't left her diabetes behind, and unless she does something about it, she's putting herself in danger of terrible complications in later life - blindness, for example, and amputation of legs.
"All very well," says Sue, "but I'm fed up of this flaming diabetes. I've had it since I was a teenager, and now I want a break from it."
Hmm. I can see where she's coming from. I am a Type 2 diabetic, which means either my body doesn't produce enough insulin, or is resistant to the insulin that it does produce.
I take my tablets, morning and night. Firstly I was on Metformin, which made me feel thoroughly sick all the time, so the tablets were changed to Gliclazide, which made me incredibly hungry all the time, and since putting on weight is bad for diabetics, I asked if there was anything else that I could try, and the doctor suggested slow-release Metformin, which should make me feel less sick. And it does, in general - though I still feel thoroughly queasy from time to time. I'm really rather used to it though - if I forget to take a tablet, I can generally tell from the fact that suddenly I don't have this low-level nausea.
I don't drink alcohol, which can mess up the blood-sugar levels. And, apart from very occasionally, I don't eat sweets, chocolate, cake - - anything like that. Really, apart from occasional - and they are occasional - lapses, I am very well-behaved with the sodding thing.
But I've never found a happy medium with checking my blood sugar with the finger-pricking device. I've been through periods of getting totally obsessed with it - - let's check it before breakfast - - after breakfast - - before lunch - - enough! So I told this to some doctor and he said just check it twice a week. Before meals? After meals? - - He didn't say, or not in any way that I could understand, anyway. (We have some way to go in teaching doctors Communication Skills, clearly).
Today I had a bowl of Shreddies for breakfast and then a bread roll with peanut butter at lunchtime and I haven't eaten anything since, so I thought I'd check my blood sugar, and looked in my little notebook, and found I haven't checked it since mid-January - - - oops!
Don't let anyone tell you that stabbing your finger, even with a fine needle, doesn't hurt. I fire the little gun that the needle lives in and then find myself going "Ow!" - - even though I knew it was going to happen!
Eight point three. Too high, considering that I haven't eaten much today. It should be between four and seven before meals, and below ten two hours after a meal.
(Eight point three what? - - No, they don't tell you these things. It could be furlongs per fortnight for all I know).
So I suppose I'd better check it a few more times to see what it's getting up to and then, if necessary, go back to the doctor. I'm bored even thinking about it.
posted by Daphne at 7:32 pm
8 Comments:
For what little it is worth, the measurement is millimoles per litre (mmol/l).
ok so what is a millimole? is it a really tiny burrowing short sighted mammal?
I agree with you Daphne, our own infirmities can get really tedious. I have lived with knee problems since about the age of 9 and had at least 3 operations, but I decided after the last operation I would never go back to a doctor, even when it's really painful. It doesn't do any good and is tooooo boooooorrrrring.
I remember a boy at school we was diagnosed diabetic when we were about 12-13. He had to do the needle prick thing every day (perhaps more than once, I forget). My heart went out to him. I've always had a phobia of needles.
Interesting as that mmol/l business is also the measurement for cholesterol which as we know, should be under 5 overall.....unless you're American and then it needs to be under 200.
Hopefully they use a different 'mole' to us Brits. Seems to be an obese one !!
Forget the little moles...I think it's fabby that you can portray a university aged woman!
Yes, Ruth, that's exactly what a millimole is. Thank you for telling me that it's the same small burrowing creature that measures cholesterol, Silverback - I didn't know that. My cholesterol is three, so I'm pleased with that. Siegfried - these needles just hurt a bit, at least they're not the into-a-vein type which tend to freak me out too.
And, Debby - - - when they gave me the script, it said Sue was eighteen, which I felt was pushing the boundaries of reality just a teensy bit! So I doubled it and then added some. But actually, in roleplay there's a strange thing that goes on where, if you're acting it okay, you can get away with more than you'd think. Well, that's the hope I'm clinging to, anyway!broughto
a mole is six(ish) times ten to the twenty-three (I don't know how to do superscript, or even if it's possible).
So a millimole would be six times ten to the twenty, or 600 million million million.
[Hmm. It's almost 21 years since I did chemistry.]
So you have about five thousand trillion molecules of (sugar?) per litre of blood.
HTH, HAND
Julie
Wow, Julie - that's amazing, thank you - I had of course NO clue what the numbers actually meant!
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