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    Showing posts with label prescriptions. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label prescriptions. Show all posts

  1. New Kit

    Sunday, 6 June 2010

    Despite my wardrobe malfunction, my prescription review the other day was actually fairly useful. I managed to increase it so I get two boxes of needles in one go, rather than one. I also got a prescription for a glucagon injection kit. Now that is one scary looking piece of kit. It's currently sitting in my fridge. 

    According to the instructions, it will last for up to eighteen months in the fridge. I really hope that it's one of those things that I will need to replace after eighteen months because it's expired, rather than because I've had to use it. Or rather because someone has had to use it on me. 


    Glucagon Kit

    Posted by Becky at 21:59 | Labels: , , | 3 comments |

  2. Oops...

    Thursday, 3 June 2010

    Up and about bright and early this morning, to be at my GP's in time for my prescription review. Nice, bright warm morning, so I pop on a sundress, with buttons down part of the front. Blue belt round the middle, good to go. 

    Walk on down to the surgery, sat waiting for a while. Managed to get a couple of things sorted, which I'll talk about tomorrow. As I walk out of the consult room, I'm in a fairly good mood. Nice day, why shouldn't I be? 

    Well, I happened to lower my gaze for a moment, and realised the top button of my dress was well and truly open. I quickly tried to button it up, but I guess I wasn't very subtle. 

    No wonder the elderly gentleman in the waiting room gave me a bit of an interesting stare!

    As a side note, I'd like to say a huge thank you to all of you who gave your opinion on whether pumping would be a good option for me to think about - you've given me some points to consider :)

    Posted by Becky at 21:25 | Labels: , , , , | 1 comments |

  3. June appointments, round one

    Wednesday, 2 June 2010

    * Ring ring.....ring ring *

    Hello, this is 'my GP's surgery', press one for same day appointments, press two for everything else.

    Huh. That's new, I think. OK, press two.

    Thank you. You will now be placed in a queue.

    Oh yey, a queue. Jolly good then. A quick blast of 'White Flag' by Dido, then get through to the receptionist, who for some reason, sounds like she's stood in the middle of a field.
    When I got my last prescription back, there was a note on my repeat slip saying I needed to have a prescription review before they'd give me anything else. I looked into my 'stash' boxes this morning, and realised I was really running low on test strips, and there was no putting it off any longer. 

    I find it a bit of a pain to go and do these sorts of appointments, because they're always really annoyingly timed. I know I need to go and do these things, but I'm using all the same stuff, so I wanted to check that I couldn't just do it over phone with the doctor doing phone consults - would save an appointment for someone else, surely? But nope, I've got to go in and see someone. 

    So when can I get an appointment? I wait, imagining, oh a week or so. How is 9:40am tomorrow? With interestingly, my boss's brother in law? Works for me.

    Hopefully the actual appointment will be as quick and easy!

    Posted by Becky at 23:13 | Labels: , , | 0 comments |


  4. So this morning I had my baffling appointment with the Health Care Assistant. I came in and sat down.


    'Now, Rebecca, why exactly are you here?' 

    'To be honest, I have absolutely no idea.'

    'Doesn't the hospital do all your care?'

    'Yep, as far as I know.'

    'So who told you that you had to do it here as well?'

    'One of the women on reception.'

    'Oh, I am going to have to go and shout at someone later!'

    Basically, it was a completely pointless appointment in one sense. I didn't need to do it. However, I did get told how impressed she was with my improved HbA1c - down from 12 at diagnosis to 6 at last check. Had my foot check done, and then we moved on to my prescription review.

    Rid of the stupid test strips that aren't for my meter? Check
    Increase the number of boxes of strips I get in one go from two to four? Check
    Ketone urine testing strips on repeat? Check

    So whilst it wasn't useful in a lot of respects, I still got a lot out of it!


    Posted by Becky at 22:53 | Labels: , , , , , , | 0 comments |

  5. Now, first things first. The big news is.....*drumroll*......


    I managed to get the chocolate out of the bed sheet!


    Hoorah! Now I've got to tackle the mattress. That will probably be harder, but I'm sure that will all come out ok as well. 


    So this morning, I had an appointment with the dietician. Back in September, I did a morning's carb counting workshop. I really wanted to use the skills, and work out my insulin-carb ratio, and what have you. What I didn't realise was that because I'm still on such tiny doses, and my sensitivity is so high, they wouldn't be able to come up with a ratio for me. Which was a bit frustrating. However, all the information was useful, and when I start increasing my doses, and we CAN work out a insulin-carb ration, then I'll have all the appropriate knowledge in place. 


    But this appointment in the morning was a bit of a waste of both my time and his. Truth be told, I like both the dieticians the hospital has at clinic, and I don't mind going and seeing them, because they're both lovely, but I didn't want to be using an appointment that could have been going to someone else. Yet, like a good girl, I had at least TRIED to keep the food diary as requested, and had my BG diaries up to date. Yet, we never really looked at either.  However, I did find out that isotonic sports drinks are a better choice for me to take to my dance classes than cereal bars. So it wasn't all a waste of time. 


    I also ended up walking over to my GP's today. Mostly on another errand, but I knew that I was due a 'prescription review' sometime after the 4th November, so I would go and talk to the receptionist, and find out if this was something I could do over the phone, or whether I needed an appointment. Turns out I do.


    Now, it seems I have a strange relationship with the receptionists. If I call up, it's like I'm poking a wasps' nest with a stick. They can be really quite vicious. However, they always seem to remember me from my D-day, and are absolutely charming if I go and see them in person. Strange. Anyhow, I asked how to do this, and they were very keen for me to have a '6 month review'. I told them that I'd had two reviews, and HbA1c's done at the hospital, but apparently 'no, you need to have it done here as well'. OK, if you say so, I suppose. So that's two appointments, with a bunch of tests by the sounds of it, that I've already had done. Seems strange, but at least it sounds like I'll get a foot check done during that. 


    But all I really wanted was to sort my prescription review out! 


    Also, I don't know what's going on with my bread-maker tonight. Instead of what normally comes out, looking through the viewing window, I appear to have a misformed, hardly risen lump of dough. Disappointing would be any understatement. Annoying is accurate but not quite covering either.


    (As a side note, I hope this font size is better, Northerner? I don't know why that last post went QUITE that small to be honest!)

    Posted by Becky at 22:42 | Labels: , , , | 2 comments |

  6. 200 needles in

    Thursday, 27 August 2009

    I have a box of pen needles on top of the bureau in my bedroom. Every morning I pick out three of them to put in the case of my meter, so that I have all the three I'll need for the day, in case I get delayed somewhere and I'm not at home for dinner. Yesterday there were three left in the box. That was my second box of 100 needles. It was then that it hit me that I've been through 200 needles. In honour of the 200 needles, I was hoping to come up with a list of 200 things that I've learned/realised/observed during the time I used them.

    Then I tried it. It's hard. So I managed 50 things. And here they are...

    1: I actually have to eat. It's rather important.
    2: Chocolate is not the be all and end all of everything.
    3: I really miss the ability to freely drink fruit juice.
    4: Apparently I look like a horse chomping on polos whilst eating glucose tablets (I've been told this by my friend Jenny several times)
    5: When you don't drink coffee, and don't know how to carb count, there's basically nothing at Starbucks that you can freely eat or drink other than bottled water.
    6: When you have a 30% discount card, and go and pick up things for other people in the office relatively frequently, this can really get annoying.
    7: You cannot make a mango fool with Splenda. It makes something rather like scrambled eggs instead.
    8: Suddenly having to do fasting bloods on a night that you've invited 10 people over for food is somewhat inconvenient.
    9: Then finding out that those bloods actually had to be done at the hospital rather than the GP's and needed to make it to the lab within 30 minutes, not 40 hours (meaning they had to be done again) is irritating.
    10: Discovering that the labs at the hospital caught fire the morning you go to get those bloods redone is concerning. Thankfully they were no longer on fire when I was there.
    11: The irony that Innocent Drinks finally made a banana free smoothie which I love, and had become hooked on just before I got diagnosed, which I can't really drink any more, with 29g of carbs and 26g of sugars per 250ml, is not lost on me. (In case you don't know, I cannot stand bananas, and don't tend to eat a lot of fruit and veg, so that smoothie was like sweet lime rain from heaven)
    12: Nairn's oatcakes are amazing. Both regular and ginger.
    13: If you actually have to eat breakfast in the morning, you do need to factor in getting up earlier into the equation. Otherwise you're just late all the time.
    12: The less Cadbury's Dairy Milk you eat, the less chocolately it tastes when you eat it again, the more it tastes of cocoa butter. (Also, bravo to Cadbury's for making Dairy Milk FairTrade now!)
    13: If you accidentally lock a sharps box, it takes the force of a man with a pocket knife to get back into it.
    14: Said man will then tease you about accidentally locking it for quite some time.
    15: When you test and you come up with a score of 12.4mmol (199 mg/dl), two glasses of white wine will get you back down to under 10, and pleasantly drunk and marginally more aggressive than normal whilst playing Mario Kart on the Wii.
    16: When out and about, there is nothing more frustrating than being in bar or restaurant and having only water or diet coke as your non-alcoholic options. How about another diet drink?
    17: People who say that you should get some orange juice instead make me want to bang my head against the wall, no matter how well meaning they might be.
    18: I don't think my fingertips will ever look normal again.
    19: Pins and needles now make me worry, when before it just made me think my foot was asleep.
    20: I still wonder why no matter what time of day it is, and regardless of whether or not there are any children there, the TV in the reception at clinic always plays children's TV.
    21: The guy who does my height, weight, blood pressure et cetera, at clinic clearly has a broken measuring stick because there is just no way I am as short as he says I am, because everyone I know who is shorter than me would have to be ridiculously small!
    22: There is really nothing that can explain how miserable it is when the only long lasting carbs you have access to are some very, very soft digestive biscuits, and having to eat them anyway.
    23: Despite the fact that people have so many complaints about it, I'm very proud to be part of a country that has a system like the NHS, and I really wouldn't want to be without it. I just don't understand a society that could provide health care for all and doesn't. It just seems wrong to me. Give me the NHS even with its faults any day.
    24: I'm not totally sure that my meter reads below 1.9mmol. Either that, or the lowest I seem to go whilst hypo just happens to always be 1.9
    25: I hate having to throw away an insulin pen because it's been out of the fridge more than 28 days when there's still about 100 units left in there.
    26: Frio wallets continue to fascinate me
    27: The online diabetes community is full of pretty fantastic people.
    28: I feel extremely bad about having encouraged people to by 'diabetic' chocolates in a former job at Thorntons. I blame the fact that they expected me to sell lots of things, regardless of what they were because I was their best salesperson. However, I still feel bad!
    29: Having tried a bar of 'diabetic' fudge, I can honestly say that though it doesn't taste bad, or give me any of the rumoured laxative effects, it still has some 'interesting' effects.
    30: I shall not be hurrying back for more.
    31: My meter, the Asencia Contour seems to be deeply unsexy in the world of meters. Although they have said they will be sending me a pink case for my meter. I would have preferred a colour other than pink, but beggars can't be choosers.
    32: When you pick up a box of Splenda, it does seem like it's actually completely empty. If it were it would be a very expensive box of nothing.
    33: Glucotabs taste like slightly stale Refreshers - not unpleasant but odd.
    34: I have an incorrect set of test strips on my prescription, which I sometimes get instead of the correct ones. I still have absolutely no idea how to get rid of the wrong ones, despite telling the pharmacist again and again that I would really like to know how to do this.
    35: Cinemas have absolutely rubbish snacks when you think eating popcorn is probably a bad idea.
    36: Articles in magazines, etc, that just say 'diabetes' and don't differentiate between Type 1 and Type 2 really get my goat.
    37: Re-reading the Babysitter's Club book 'Stacey's Emergency' is quite comic with more knowledge. Also a flashback to being really little and enjoying the BSC series a lot.
    38: I find injecting in any place other than my stomach awkward, and particularly in my arm, a bit painful.
    39: This is weird, because after I left hospital, I really didn't want to inject in my stomach, because I found the idea strange.
    40: I'm oddly proud of the fact I managed to inject in the cinema without anyone noticing.
    41: I found the story of the demise of my friend's diabetic cat, Marmite upsetting. Not because of the fact it was heavily caused by the diabetes, but just because I love cats.
    42: Listening to my body is rather crucial.
    43: When I'm hypo, I find myself obsessing over the strangest things, which become the centre of my universe for that period of time, and then I can't always remember them five minutes afterwards.
    44: A dream that I had (actually last night) in which I forgot to take one shot of insulin, then decided to make up for it by taking two (whilst shopping for a basketball, if I remember correctly), disturbed me greatly. Mostly because it took me a minute or so to realise that I hadn't actually done it
    45: People behind the bar don't seem to ever listen to you when you say DIET coke. This actually caused a friend of mine to yell at one bartender. She then turned to me and asked me if I minded her bringing up my diabetes. I didn't, but it was a bit late then!
    46: Dead test strips get everywhere! I still can't work out how one got inside my sock.
    47: I still don't like needles. Especially if I'm not the one controlling them.
    48: A 45g 70% cocoa Divine Bar is 12g of carbs, and I can't easily eat a whole bar. Which makes it a good choice, as chocolate goes. And it's FairTrade (which is very important to me).
    49: I found myself amazed at achieving the magical 5.6 (90mg/dl) that seems to be on most boxes of glucose meters, today. Interestingly enough, not on the box of mine, which has 5.2
    50: I never appreciated how amazing my pancreas was until it stopped working properly.

    Posted by Becky at 21:42 | Labels: , , , , , | 0 comments |

  7. Dear Diary...

    Saturday, 8 August 2009

    Organisation. Yeah, it's not my strongest attribute. I don't write down messages, because I think I'll remember them. If I write something down, then I usually can't read it. Or if I can read it, it's usually on a post-it (someone else's, because I've lost my own pad), or the back of an envelope that I will then lose. 'Dammit, I meant to do that!' is quite often my battle-cry. Usually at either 7pm when whatever shop I've meant to go to has shut, or at 2am, when it's too late to do anything about anything.

    Now don't get me wrong, I have good intentions. I constantly think that 'Becky, you really must get yourself sorted out'. I have a diary (because it comes free with my Equity membership), a 'things to do today' book, and other such things. But I'm just one of those people. I can totally organise other people. When I was working on Shrew, people did actually ask me daily how I held all the information in my head. But that's other people. When it comes to myself, I'm terrible. I recently sat on a cheque for 5 months. Not literally, because it had actually made it from underneath my laundry basket to the pinboard over my desk, which is a major improvement. But it had stayed pinned to the wall for months, because I don't 'do' banks, and 'going to the bank' doesn't rate highly on my list of things to do in a day. And so it would slip my mind a lot. I also had another cheque from a previous job at Thorntons, that they didn't give me until it was practically out of date. So when I did take to the bank (fairly promptly for me as well) it was out of date, and they wouldn't take it. So now I have to try and remember to call human resources at my old job . Any bets how long that will take me to do?

    So this is how I quite often find that I've left my log-book of results in a stack of papers at work, usually along with my mp3 player. This is also how I have nearly two full sharps boxes that need disposing of sat under my coffee table, since I have not yet remembered to call the council to arrange disposal.

    In the past I've never really had to deal with prescriptions. Sure, I've dealt with getting renewals on my inhalers, but to be honest, I used to get several at a time that would last me til they expired. And then before I had my free prescriptions, I actually used to use my Dad's, because they were exactly the same, and he got them free because he's over 60 (bad, I know, but still...). So actually having to remember about getting prescriptions filled, to book appointments to get blood drawn or similar, and then to actually GO to said appointments is something of a brave new world to me. It's awkward, and I've made a bit of a tit of myself a couple of times. I've dealt with angry receptionists at my GP's, who have actually made me cry. As I said in my last post, I've had one of my truly amazing friends drive from Pocklington to York to pick up and fill my test strips prescription, because I'd miscalculated when I'd run out, and would have been in a bit of a jam.

    I think it's actually fairly overwhelming to suddenly have to deal with booking appointments and handling prescriptions when you've never done it before. Nobody actually tells you how to do it, and you feel a prat asking. For instance, I really want to get more pots of test strips on my prescription, rather than just two pots, so I don't have to ring up as often, and for them to take the wrong test strips off my repeats, because I don't want to end up with the wrong ones again. But how do I go about sorting this out? I have absolutely no idea. Can I do it over the phone? Then if so, who do I call? Receptionist, GP, DSN? I know that I've been told I'm entitled and encouraged to get a flu shot (and supposedly one for this ridiculous swine flu thing), but do I arrange it, or does someone send me a letter automatically? And how am I supposed to know either way?

    Please somebody, write a guide to navigating these mazes for those of us who prior to diabetes have had practically no contact with this sort of thing! Then I can try and get on with sorting the rest of my life out. And get on to calling the human resources department of Thorntons.

    xx

    Also, for the record, you should definately try Diet Cola with a hint of Almond from Tesco. It's really yummy, and reminds me of Diet Vanilla Coke, which I miss.

    Posted by Becky at 17:03 | Labels: , , | 1 comments |