Introductions

Have played with the BG diary and found the graphs and like the result. Didn't get the housework done though.

To Shelia and others, it is probably better if you start a new topic to ask questions. This topic now goes on for 6 pages and chances are people will not see your question buried in all the other posts.
You are welcome to ask questions here if you want, its just likely to get a better response as a seperate topic.

Thanks

Hello,

I'm Jess, I was diagnosed in 1993 at the wonderful Stoke Mandeville Diabetes Centre. I did DAFNE a loooong time ago at the QMC (Nottingham). So long ago I can't tell you the year, but I know there were only about 4 DAFNE centres. I left Nottingham 4-5 years ago, sadly.

I have just been referred to the pre-conception clinic, and its the first time I've been back under the care of a hospital for years, its good to be back. Frimley don't do DAFNE but say they do somethign similar so I hope they can help me back on track and low enough to conceive.

Hi,
I 'm Belinda and was diagnosed in the days when we had to boil our syringes and metal needles to sterilize them: when we had to use pee from a pipette with a tablet in a test tube to see if our sugar levels were high several hours ago!! I have seen many changes to management of Type 1 diabetes.
I have been fortunate to have had long and exceptional help from my diabetes specialist team who have passed on a deal of knowledge and kept me very well indeed. I have a lovely husband, a 25 and a 28 year old all are healthy and happy.
More changes. Thank goodness I have been DAFNE'd as now my marvellous consultants are recently retired.
Can I rely on all you out there to keep me well informed please as I intend to live a long and healthy life?!

Hello All ...

I was diagnosed T1 in August 1988 at QMC in Nottingham .. and still remember their offer for me to try out injecting an orange first to get the idea!

Did DAFNE August 2009 .. only 21 years later but well worth waiting for as gave a clear formal structure to the way I have always tried to control levels but historically with considerable guesswork and only moderate success.

Also, DAFNE advised so many other basic points in the 'why wasn't I told this before?' category. Many thanks to Debbie and Fumi our educators!

My QA is currently Novorapid, appx 30 per day, and BI Levemir 25 at breakfast and 5 at bedtime each day and it was really interesting to see how each dafne attendee had a quite different regime.

Have just used the Dafne glucose diary graph results for the first time since the course and 30day/7day comparison shows average declines of 13% lunch, 23% dinner and 33% bed but no change at breakfast. Shows a) the system works b) my bed readings were bad pre-dafne, deliberately so as I ‘ran high’ overnight to avoid the need for my partner to call out the paramedics as she had to 4 times in 2008! Now, of course, the dafne inspired Glucopen is to hand!

Future % reductions will no doubt be less but Dafne has certainly given confidence to tackle the problem areas.

My diabetic oddity is perhaps that still prefer using a syringe as a) smaller than pen b) unlikely to fail mechanically c) single mixed injections are possible.

Also, I feel most people eat a limited range of meals regularily and so have designed a simple A5 form which can be clipped in the front of the Dafne Dairy and hand filled at meal times to calculate the total CP of a meal from the ingredient CPs & portion sizes. From this form a simple personalized A5 reference list of regular meal total CPs can be drawn up and also kept in the diary. Saves me lots of hassle & time while still learning to estimate CPs accurately.

If anybody wants to try the form themselves I am happy to email the underlying excel spreadsheet for printing out. Contact me on [email protected] to request this.

I also am slowly building an A5 sized CP portion list for my individual ingredients, using portion units in the way I see them, and which is also fixed in the diary. This is much easier to use than the full CP list booklet. I would recommend all T1’s draw up their own personal list, both as an aid to learning the CPs and also speeding the mealside CP calculation.

That’s it for now .. hope the above is moderately interesting and perhaps useful to others also. Cheers, John.

John, and others, the A5 list sounds interesting but just to point out you can do this with the online carb counting pages. Its possible to add your own entries and display just your own entries on the pages. This coupled with the fact its available on mobile phones (if you have a phone that can do it) means you could save a tree ;-) Well you could have a back up for your
A5 paper copy anyway.

Its also always interesting to read other peoples experiences, one of the great things about the DAFNE course is a week of sharing experiences with other Diabetics, hopefully this site helps extend that sharing experience :-)

Hello Marke..

Thanks for the update re Carb Counter. I have indeed previously added a few items myself but only one immediate query : how the heck do you list your own entries only; I tried a search and just can’t see a button!

Assuming you can solve that one for me, the problems I see in using the Counter as you suggest are:

-Clutter & confusion for users with many ‘duplicate’ added entries merely to enable use of personal preferred usual portion size.

-The personalized A5 ingredient list I use has selected official entries together with my own entries, all alphabetically sequenced .. could this be arranged online for all users? My total list is about 80 items at present and will probably top out at 100.

If you can provide the tech solution in a practical manner then I agree this approach would be good and the CP info benefit all members. Might even cause me to ask for a smart phone for xmas!

Cheers, John

Hello Marke..

Have finally figured how the Views of the Carb Counter works!

The category tab at the top currently gives the description of the category which will be displayed next, WHEN the tab is clicked with sequence Verified > All> My>Verified etc

Just a touch confusing as for example the Tab is showing All when the Verified items are displayed etc .

Not a high priority, but perhaps a slightly clearer control mechanism could be implemented?

Following my earlier comments, a method of selecting list items (of any category) and downloading in excel format (.xls) would enable personalised excel ists to be maintained by all at the mealside.

Over to the IT experts!

Cheers, John

John, the text at the bottom right of the table shows what type of view is being displayed i.e verified> All > my. The button at the top shows you what will be displayed if the click on it. I can look at highlighting the text at the bottom right more and also add a better description on the introduction page.

With regard to your request for selection and excel download, this should be possible and I have noted your request. However at the moment I am focused on getting the Australian DAFNE documents in the correct format for the site and changing the site to work with them. I then have the user group pages to do. Simon is working on new features that will be released soon as well. Unfortunately with just two of us, we can only do what we can in the time we have. We will try to implement your request in future, I just can't give a timescale at the moment.

Hello Marke .. ok and thanks for that. I am hoping to encourage Nottingham QMC user group activity when time permits and pending other educator & graduate registrations. Have not yet thought through how best it can work in relation to the overall DO facilities.

Also, by coincidence, I have just had a request from a dietician in Australia for a copy of the estimator form!

Cheers, John