I should add that our endocrinologist probably saved my son’s life when he was diagnosed deep into DKA. I am not dissing her!
The fact is that, when we are dealing with ongoing treatment, there is nothing in the world that I feel compares with FUD. Endos in our clinic do not really understand our everyday reality (although many of the nurses do). It is here, at FUD, that we ask the hard questions and get answers we can use.
You might get that feeling only because there is nothing in the world that compares to FUD. Where else can one go to learn their basal rates, hear about the newest studies and advances in technology, watch others enjoy all those things while they continue to use their own Christine insulin delivering device, AND get roasted about their lacking organizational skills? Nowhere. That’s where.
And the personalized song lyrics. You might not be here for that, but…
I have learned more in here with you all than what I’d learned in the 14 years prior to finding you. It’s all so cheesy but all so true— I’m just no longer afraid. And now I have a PDM and some pods on the way! I hope I don’t kill myself with it.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect an endocrinologist to really understand our daily lives as PWD’s. I do think they should be able to answer a question we pose concerning our daily lives.
I look at my endocrinologist as a partner. He makes reasoned suggestions and I implement them into daily life as I choose. For instance, he prescribed Victoza for me, but I haven’t implemented it because I don’t see it’s value in my situation.
If the endocrinologist does not understand the ground rules he will quickly become my ex-endocrinologist.
My endo leaves day-to-day diabetes management to CDEs and that’s fine with me. His job is to interpret the bloodwork and keep an eye on my kidney function, eyes and other things that could be ruined by diabetes. I think it’s much more valuable use of his time if he concentrates on that and doing research, than spending much time figuring out basal rates and carb ratios.
I’m sure some are rad, but the one we saw made a serious miscalculation of the basal rate. It would have killed EH. But he’s good at math and caught it. And I’m sure he knew how to calculate it because of @Eric and the wisdom here at FUD.
I wemy to my endo appointment this week and I asked him about the victoza recommendation. He took about ten minutes explaining it to me, along with mentioning studies, and now I’m taking it.
He had squeezed me in, so he only spent a half hour with me. This guy is Golden.
I was a medievalist in a previous stage of life (the “Dr” in my moniker) and one of the fun little teaching tools I used was a 14thC medical “recipe” book (the term had a broader meaning back then). The OP reminded me of the section on Prognostications of Plague:
If the wind is from the north, there will be plague.
If the wind is from the south, there will be plague.
If the summer is too hot, there will be plague.
If the summer is too cold, there will be plague.
If the winter is too warm, there will be plague.
If the winter is too cold…
etc etc etc
There was a also a pretty nifty procedure for diagnosing a cracked skull.
ETA: sorry not to have put in an appearance here for a while. They asked me to be an admin over on TUD a month or two back and I only have so much time for this stuff!
Hi @CatLady! Mostly it’s pretty routine–zapping spammers primarily. Every once in a while there’s some comment-flagging, which requires more thought and time to deal with. Oddly there’s been more of that recently–maybe people are just getting more irascible as we approach election day?–but I think we’ve got a good mix of people to keep our responses proportional, and minimal. Better for members to work things out themselves, always. People with axes to grind, or who just get off on being confrontational and disruptive are the worst, but they can turn up on any site. As always YDMV is really the main thing people need to be reminded of, and most of us PWDs with any history understand that on a deep level, but there are always people who just don’t–or don’t want to–and they can turn up anywhere.
your endo! And I hope the Victroza is helpful.