A long post--a little history, a little opinion
I was diagnosed in 1960. Our family had no insurance and not a lot of money. Our family doctor diagnosed me and sent me home with urine testing tubes and tablets, glass syringes and stainless needles and a bottle of NPH and one of Regular insulin. I was the kid who had three months of sleepless nights knowing a polio shot was coming up...I learned basically to suck it up and be brave or die. Scary into. I had just turned 13.
My mom and I read a lot of directions. I reacted to the prescribed insulin quickly and in two days was hospitalized for a whopping insulin reaction.
In those days, hospitals were very adult. There were three adult women sharing my room. The only education I received was a booklet put out by the ADA and the orange inection training. I thought it was silly because of course, an orange isn't YOU and feels nothing.
For years (all through my teens and early 20's) I rarely even heard of another diabetic. I read everything I could and like John, practiced a lot of observation and correction. I was following the ADA exchange diet. We had no meters then and I never coould see any pattern in my urine sugar spillage (always 4 plus), so I had to go on how I felt. I stumbled upon Atkins' book and began low-carbing, feeling better immediately. At the time, the ADA was recommending high carb, low fat diets with (ironically) NO SUGAR. But orange juice was ok, just NOT SUGAR. It took them 25 years to change that.
Trial and error. That was it. Since the urine tests and A1c's were pretty useless with day-to-day management, I really had no feedback upon which to base my decisions other than how I felt. The fastest acting insulin at the time was regular which had a 30 minute to 6 hour profile for me. Timing was crucial and I spent a lot of time feeding my insulin peaks and valleys. I didn't know about liver dumps, although I could feel the results of stress.
My first meter, a Lifescan boxy thing in about 1982, changed everything for me. I learned to fine-tune according to my results and tested often. I was lucky einough to have a family friend who was a Doc who fed me research, and a good endo who I saw every three months who did the same. Education has always been up to me. My current endo is a partner to me who knows much more than I about medicine in general. He keeps me up on reaearch and gives me pointers about how to find certain topics (which journal.) Every visit is a conversation with questions and answers going both ways. He pretty much advises me but lets me run the show day-to-day. After my diabetic history, I couldn't have it any other way.
In my opinion, the education experienced by SugarLife sounds excellent. I wish I had been "eased" into the whole thing, but they really didn't know that much at the time. Basing my opinion on thirty years of teaching, I think listening to kids, explaining with diagrams and introducing them to other diabetics is the very best thing you can do.
Mich
