I went to the diabetes clinic last week for what I thought would be the first step in a hellish process of getting an insulin pump. I had been to this clinic once before (four years ago) at the suggestion of my then new family doctor. I remember that during that visit, I felt a little out of place.\u00a0 Most t of the people in the waiting room were over 60 and looked very unhealthy. I imagined they were newly diagnosed type 2’s or that they just hadn\u2019t taken care of themselves.<\/p>\n
The visit was composed of three parts; a consultation with a nutritionist, then a visit with a diabetes nurse, and then with the doctor. The nutritionist tried to explain to me all about carbohydrate counting which I knew about already (I had been a diabetic for 5 years).\u00a0 She gave me a whole pile of food tables and charts. The nurse was nice, asked me a few questions and checked my feet \u2013 they were fine. Then the doctor… I walked in, she looked at my blood test results from the last year or so, with HbA1c levels ranging between 6.8 and 7.2 and asked \u201cso what are you doing here what do you want?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a type 1 diabetic and this is a diabetes clinic so my doctor sent me here. I don\u2019t \u2018want\u2019 anything\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
And that was the end of my visit to the diabetes clinic. I never went back and I never thought I would need to. I wasn\u2019t angry or insulted, but I didn\u2019t see any reason for me to go back there. The truth is that from the look of the people in the waiting room that day I can understand why the doctor may have felt I was wasting her time. (Although there may have been a better way of expressing it)<\/p>\n
So when I learned that I had to go back to this same clinic again in order to get an insulin pump, I was a little put off and a little nervous.\u00a0 And that was on top of my already nervous feelings about the pump.<\/p>\n