What Happens if I Am Diagnosed With Type 1 Diabetes?
Monday, May 10th, 2010 at
9:36 am
Will I have to go to the hospital if I am diagnosed with type 1 diabetes? If so, what will i do there? Will they just teach me how to control my diabetes? Will they just monitor me? Will they do anything that hurts to me besides insulin injections, and checking my blood sugar?
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Tagged with: Blood Sugar • Diabetes • Insulin Injections • Type 1 Diabetes
Filed under: Diabetes
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i’m not quite sure why you’re asking this if you haven’t even been diagnosed. did your doctor tell you he suspects you have t1? there is no way that a doctor would tell you that and then simply send you home without insulin or education. you don’t even know if you have it, you don’t claim to have any symptoms, and yet you’re jumping to conclusions. take it one step at a time instead of freaking out over this. oh, and you DON’T need a catheter unless you are severely ill, unconscious, or physically unable to void on your own. stop obsessing over this…it’s not healthy!
you’ll have blood tests, injections, and blood sugar checks, a catheter put between your legs and i think thats it, nothing thats really gonna hurt haha.
they teach you control and monitor you until they think your sugars are stable enough for you to go home, then you’ll have to go back for check up a few months later at clinic, and get your eyes checked for diabetic retinopathy
I would be very sad if you were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It is not a ‘nice’ disease BUT with the advances over the past five plus years we have never been in a better position to treat it. The diagnosis of type 1 diabetes does not require a trip to the hospital. If you are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes you are likely to be referred to a Diabetic Nurse Educator and they are often located at a hospital. No one will hurt you other than the annoyance of needing to check your glucose four or more times a day. The glucometers available today are more accurate and less painful than previous generations. (The first glucometer appeared in 1978). A modern glucometer yields the same identical glucose reading as it would if your blood was drawn from a vein. Older glucometers were 10 to 15% different than glucose as determined by drawing blood. Glucometers now offer sites other the sides of the finger tips to obtain a reading. Many people find ‘lancing’ the forearm less painful than the finger. All type 1 diabetics require treatment with insulin. The most common initial approach is to use basal and bolus insulin. Novo Nordisk sells 85% of the insulin world-wide while Lilly sells 85% of the insulin in the US. Novo Nordisk’s insulins are detemir (Levemir) as the basal insulin and aspart (Novolog) as the bolus insulin. Lilly’s insulins are glargine (Lantus) as the basal insulin and lispro (Humalog) as the bolus insulin. Basal insulins are injected once daily while bolus insulins are injected prior to each meal – with the dose being determined by the pre-meal glucose reading. I prefer Novo Nordisk insulin because I prefer their FlexPen system. Each pen – whether basal or bolus – contains 300 units of insulin. The needles are quite small, extremely sharp, and Teflon coated. The injections are referred to as virtually painless injections and most people find the forearm or finger stick to obtain a glucose reading more painful than the injection of insulin itself. There are several options for testing glucose other than lancing the skin. One is a needle inserted under the skin which continuously monitors glucose. The next is a ‘watch’ like device worn on the risk which also continuously monitors glucose – although the accuracy of this still has a way to go. In the near future we will have microchips to insert under the skin to continuously monitor glucose. Many type 1 diabetics are referred for insertion of an insulin pump. You still need to check your glucose but you then adjust the rate of insulin delivery via the pump rather than inject insulin. The best website for type 1 or type 2 diabetes is Joslin which is an affiliate of Harvard. If you need more specific information please email me at johnerussomd@jhu.edu. I wish you the very best of health and may God Bless.
Okay one you will not have anything put in between your legs! Unless you are unable to use the bathroom by yourself.
What they will do is draw blood by inserting a IV (intravenous) line into your arm or hand. This will most likely stay there until you are ready to go home. They will use this for most medications that need to enter the body quickly but not for insulin they will most likely put the insulin into your upper arm,abdomen, leg. They will teach you and/or your parents/spouse/family to do blood sugar (or Blood glucose) checks and how to inject insulin. You will also meet with someone called a Certified Diabetes Educator (CDE) and a Nurtion Educator (they might be the same person) You will also get a doctor called a Endocrinologist who specializes in Diabetes treatment. You will learn how to count carbohydrates and what a Beta cell is. It will be A LOT of information that they are throwing at you but you will get it down. The nurses and doctors should give you information about all the groups looking for a cure. Such as JDRF,American Diabetes Association, and such. You will be scared and feel like you are alone but know that you are not.
They’ll go over diet plans and how to manage diabetes
There are several ways to test:
1) A simple urine test will give an indication for howhigh your blood sugar is.
2) They can do a resting blood sugar test to see how high your sugar is.
3) They can do a Hemoglobin A1C to see on average, how high your sugar has been.
Symptoms of diabetes include: Weight loss, irritability, sudden poor eyesight, insatiable thirst, leg cramps when you lay down, horrid pain in your kidneys, increased urination