Putting off the inevitable

GP studying hard to learn about diabetes

I must be brave. I must face my fears. I can’t keep avoiding it. I’ve been busy at work. Its the wrong phase of the moon and the dog ate my homework. All good excuses but I’ve run out of road. I have to take the giant leap.

My GP surgery have been harassing me for months. One of their chaps has now read his full quota of articles about diabetes in Womans Weekly, Men & Motors and Fishing Today and is now kindly going to share that knowledge via the medium of a diabetic clinic. (Note: all speculation on the potential qualifications of said GP to deliver diabetes care is based on nothing more than too many bad experiences with Dr’s who like to pretend they know more than they do which have led me to be very wary of people claiming to know about diabetes).

I’ve been stalked by the Drs receptionist for the last 2 months, begging and pleading for me to make an appointment. This naturally makes me wonder quite how much money the GP gets paid for every patient who uses this clinic because I haven’t felt so wanted since a spotty 13 year old had a bit of a scary crush on me in high school.

Previous experience of GP diabetes care hasn’t been good. Anyone who starts a conversation with a young woman with “do you take tablets for it” is off my list. “Diabetics can’t have their tonsils taken out” and “you should expect to have complications if you’ve had diabetes over 20 years” were also uttered by GP’s who supposedly had their Brownie badge in diabetes. The highlight was definitely the incredibly useful “if your blood sugar is high, you need to take more insulin” . Proof indeed that they’d read the first chapter of “Diabetes: The blindingly obvious” but sadly hadn’t progressed to “Diabetes: It’s not quite as simple as it may first appear”.  Little gems like that tend to undermine your faith in the system.

I already attend a great hospital diabetic clinic. I’m struggling to see what I’ll get out of this – all my numerous test results are up to date, I’m muddling along quite happily and I really don’t need any more help. Sadly, I’ve put this off long enough. I know from previous avoidance tactics that eventually my dealer will start withholding my insulin fix until I go and see them.

Ironically, I am quite a supporter of GP based diabetes care. I’ve met incredibly knowledgeable GPs delivering top class diabetes care to (mostly) type 2’s. I just haven’t been lucky enough to experience it personally and seem to have spent every diabetes related GP appointment over the years providing free education on living with type 1. I’m quite happy to do that and even throw in a free insulin pump tutorial at the same time, just let’s not pretend its you doing me the favour by letting me be there!

So, now I’ve delayed the inevitable a bit longer by blogging rather than making an appointment, I’d better get on with it. Although my office is looking very messy, I might just give it a bit of a tidy first.