How do i get on a DAFNE course

I am a Type 1 diabetic and jabbing 4 times daily. Was diagnosed in July. Have spoken to my dietician and she reckons i'm doing a pretty good job and dont need to go on the DAFNE course. Is this good advice? or should i try and push a little harder? I havent had any serious problems since leaving hospital and am using books and net resources to calculate carbs vs insulin, would DAFNE make it easier for me to say work it all out in my head. Have just signed up on this site so dont have any further info to add as yet.

Are you in the UK?
If so, make contact with your local hospital and find out what local diabetic support is available from there, who your local diabetic consultant and diabetic nurses are. You may find that your GP practice wants to keep hold of you as they get paid more money that way. I suggest you get the best professional help available which inevitably comes from the hospital specialists as they see a much larger population and are far more clued up about developments in diabetic control than your GP practice could ever be.
You may find that your area hospital is not signed up to the programme, trained or provide any form of DAFNE support, but I hope not.
DAFNE will not make it easier to work it out in your head......all the time.....but DAFNE training and its disciplined approach will give you a strong framework to help you control things so much better.
If you at least input your results into the Online diary it can help you understand significant variations and patterns in your results that you input yourself. The colour coding system indicates expected ranges against time of day. Hover the cursory over a result and see what happens. Not sure whether you get to see range too.
Give the Online diary a try and see what you think

Regards
Garry

Many thanks for your reply, i intend to start the online diary asap. But yes i will certainly ask to see the nurse, i'll keep you posted. Cheers

Just spoken on the phone with Nurse. Looks like my area doesnt have funding for the course and if i want to go on it, it will be out of my own pocket, but they will look into it for me. The diabetic team here is very good but seems they are under the cosh from these stupid government cut-backs and the advice they have given me is very good. At the moment my regime is 3xNovorapid taken before meals and 1xLevemir taken at bedtime. I am working on a 1:1 ratio, lessening the dosage depending on how much physical exercise i do (horse riding). So far have had about 3 hypos since diagnosis.

Would it be possible to try other clinics/hospitals out...............


I had to travel to another hospital to attend the DAFNE course, in a totally different county, this was down to my clinic not having the trained staff as opposed to funding, but it would definitely be worth inquiring elsewhere....

you seem to be pro active already in your approach to control, so well done............

as mentioned previously, try the diary out, I have made up a spreadsheet that I use to write everything down as well as the online diary, this allows me to spot patterns and adjust dose accordingly, getting everything down on paper is the foundation for DAFNE, so I cant emphasize it enough..........

let me know if you would like me to email you the spreadsheet to give you and idea/start..........

Hi again, I am using my own spreadsheet as well, its interesting to pull the data into a chart and spot where the peaks and troughs are and because i am physically active, i can take the necessary measures. I have just put my first entry into the diary, at the moment i am not following the DAFNE program, but one my local team have given me. Lets see what happens...

Thats great your following some kind of program, I actually did DAFNE unofficially for about a year at my clinic through my dietician........

The online diary can do some basic graph production which is good.............

Is your home made diary similar to the DAFNE one....?

Its something i knocked up myself using my knowledge of excel formulas. Be happy to send it to you, its pretty basic.

its OK, I have one, it doesn't contain formulas, as I dont require and graphs or totals/averages to be produced, that is all done on here through the online diary................it gives you 7, 14, 30 and 90 day averages and lots of different graphs.............

I like to write down my results through the day and then back them up on here, which also gives me the averages, so I can work out my guesstimated HbA1c, so that's the main purpose of the spreadsheet.........

For the daytime i use the log book the hospital gave me then transfer the results to my spreadsheet later and now i have joined this site i can do it here too. The reason i have the graphs etc is useful as i can stick it on my memory stick or email it to the doc if need be.....its a voyage of discovery at the moment, i have yet to decide what is best for me.