How do you use your endocrinologist visit?

Awesome…

You just won the internet.

I hope you are atill alive because I keep hearing stacking insulin can be dangerous :joy:

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@Aaron, @Chris: bad, bad, bad boys!

And I love the pic :slight_smile:

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Sorry for hijacking your thread @LarissaW

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@Aaron I approve of this. YOU are the captain now

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Only managed 4 pen vials though. Truly not good at these yet. What do you think the Olympic record is for these?

And, yes @LarissaW, sorry for highjacking…

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Woah woah woah guys, calm down. All this insulin stacking and somebody’s gonna need a snack… :wink:

I’m only about 6 months into the whole “actually trying to manage my disease” game myself and I think my endo has mostly (but not fully) accepted the change that has occured between us.

At this point I do like to have my endo do some data analysis with me, mostly to see if he’s got any unique and interesting suggestions for me. Sometimes he does offer things I hadn’t thought of or maybe wouldn’t have done on my own. For example, a few months ago we jacked my nighttime basals way up – my logic had me thinking that there must be a different issue as there was no way my nighttime basals should need to be higher than my daytime basals, yet they absolutely do. But then sometimes he doesn’t offer me any interesting advice, and just suggests I should eat differently, which I politely ignore :blush:

Other than that I use my endo as a source of scripts, and at this stage, a cheerleader, since he is now very complimentary about my Clarity reports/hard work :stuck_out_tongue:

[Mod EDIT: copied part of this post over to split thread to Night basals: higher or lower than daytime?]

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I’m just wondering why u have so many empty vials around?? Just for this occasion??

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Thank God we finally have a real detective on this affair! Why, @Chris, why all these empty vials? J’accuse…

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Honestly, a few threads on here have made me want to keep the insulin pen vials around, and I was planning on making a light thread by gluing Christmas lights into the vial necks and putting that on our Christmas tree, but I am fundamentally lazy, so this remains an aspiration.

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You should go on…, minute to win it.

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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Night basals: higher or lower than daytime?

I’m also interested in the amount of substance use in that household … and maybe the two are related. In one picture there’s a decent-sized cocktail, and in the other it looks like a whole pile of pills next to the placemat. (Yeah, @Chris is going to say it’s just the light’s reflection. I’ve heard that one before.)

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If I didn’t have that cocktail do you think I would have made the decision to start stacking vials? Substances have valid purpose baby!

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@Chris, this is a very strong argument.

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Yes, all right, good point. Last month it was because of a very nice cocktail (actually two) that my two-day trip to London for a funeral morphed into a 10-day vacation in Sweden. They were amazing cocktails!

[ETA: Occurs to me that maybe I never went to Sweden. Maybe I was just sleeping off those cocktails in my hotel room.]

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With or without cocktail, stacking empty insulin VIALS is much safer than stacking insulin. Go for 6!

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I have to tell you that I tried for about an hour to get the 6th vial stable, but was not able. It is much harder than I would have thought, considering I got the 5 stack on my second try.

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I have yet to find an Endo that’s worth a damn. There is only one local to me and while he was probably a decent Endo back in the 1970’s I don’t think he’s read any research done in the last 20+ years.
The first time I went to see him he told me I couldn’t possibly have type 1 diabetes because only children get type 1.
The next time I went to see him he recommend I get a stationary bicycle and ride it 30 minutes a day. Now you have to understand that at the time I was riding my bicycle to/from work everyday, which was a bit over 15 miles each way. I also ride my bicycle just about everywhere else, including to his office that day. So I was sitting in front of him wearing bicycle shorts and jersey, with my helmet and water bottle in my lap.
So when he suggested I ride a stationary bike I asked him if that was in addition to the 2 -3 hours a day I spent riding a regular bike and he goes “Oh, you ride a regular bike?”

After that I switched to an Endo up in Tucson AZ, who was about 100 miles away. I went to see him about getting a CGM and Insulin pump because I didn’t feel that I was getting very good control with finger stick testing 4 times a day (my insurance only allows 4 test strips a day) and MDI, plus I was having problems with going low when I exercised (saw a drop from 235 to 60 after 30 minutes of exercise one time)
Anyway, for the first part of the appointment I only got to see his PA. When I mentioned that my daily injection of Lantus would often run out after 20-22 hours and I had to cover the extra time with a Novolog bolus he told me that wasn’t happening because Lantus lasts for 3 days (seriously, no Joke)
When the actual Endo came in he told me he would not prescribe a pump because I only exercised 2 hours a day and you don’t need a pump unless you exercise at least 8 hours a day (wtf??!!??)

The last Endo I went to see told me that according to studies, insulin pumps don’t make any difference over MDI, but she’d give me a prescription for one if I insisted (I did).
She actually seemed like a decent Endo. However, I still had to drive 100 miles to see her, I’d arrive 20-30 minutes early just in case there were any traffic problems and wouldn’t get in to see her until 30 minutes to an hour after my appointment time, then she’d spend 3-4 minutes with me and tell me to come back and see her again in 3 months. If if it was more than 3 months since the last time I’d seen her, she wouldn’t approve refills on the Pump/CGM.
I was wasting 4-5 hours of my time and 200 miles worth of travel to see her for 3 minutes. Seemed a bit of a waste so I talked my primary care doctor into approving the refills, and I don’t bother driving up to Tucson anymore.

None of them could bother to write me a prescription for either glucagon or keto test strips, even though they all said I should have some.

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I really feel bad for many of you. My son’s current endo group is really fantastic. The educators set up training sessions with us before our appointments, when they have funding we get a quick meeting with someone focused on my sons mental state, then we get 20 minutes with the endo, most of which is my son educating them on what he is doing, the rest is spent on discussing the latest research and answering questions. Every other appointment the endo offers suggestions on how to improve his care. The last visit she sat with the Dexcom data and worked with him to adjust his basal’s to get better control. It is really time well spent. I wish everyone who desires such a relationship could see a physician in this way.

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I do everything through my GP. Never had much luck with Endo’s. The last one I went to looked at my numbers and said “your numbers look good, how can I help?” He did comment you test a lot, your going to eventually drive yourself crazy.

In my mind they weren’t really bringing anything to the table.

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