Well its Day 4 of the Diabetes Blog Week and todays topic is…
Today let’s talk about changes, in one of two ways. Either tell us what you’d most like to see change about diabetes, in any way. This can be management tools, devices, medications, people’s perceptions, your own feelings – anything at all that you feel could use changing. OR reflect back on some changes you or your loved one has seen or been through since being diagnosed with diabetes. Were they expected or did they surprise you? – Bitter-Sweet Diabetes
Heavy topic that is for sure, there are a lot of things that have changed over the years of diabetic care, such as more man made insulins hitting the market yet the market price for the older insulins hasn’t gone down as you’d expect it to, its actually increased (which is a sad thing to see). I’d love to have more affordable insulin on the market, similar to the lower cost version that walmart in the US apparently sells (doesn’t do that here in Canada, that I’ve heard).
I’d like to see the test strips become cheaper, cause paying 90 odd bucks just for 100 strips when you can easy go though twice or three times that amount in a month equals a LOT of struggle to pay for it when you are unemployed or underemployed or flat out both or don’t have insurance that will cover some of the cost – the out of pocket cost for diabetes is a drain on so many people (myself included) that when I hear that someone didn’t get their script because they didn’t have the funds I totally understand because its something that I struggle with myself, streching my insulin as long as I can until it doesn’t do the job that it needs to do to bring my glucose down type deal.
Diabetes is still a medical condition that isn’t very well understood – so many people still don’t understand that a child can be diagnoses as a type 2 and an adult can be diagnosed as type 1, many assume that if you are diabetic and adult it must be your fault because you didn’t take care of yourself or ate to many sweets and brought it on to yourself from unhealthy eating habits (which in most cases is very much far from the actual truth of the matter). It would be nice if there was more general diabetic education going on that playing the blame game wasn’t so blasted common out there (but don’t see that changing in my lifetime – though it would be nice to see).
One thing that I think would help greatly is if general doc’s where more versed in diabetic care, and could actually by default screen for diabetes at various life stages to maybe catch those who fall though the current cracks and can get treatment before complications force a diagnosis. I think having a standard GTT test dun would help get thought who go undiagnosed for years faster treatment and might help change the blame game that’s out there.
I’d also like to see real food cheaper and instead of jacking up the cost of real food, jack up the cost of the processed junk that is more harmful then the natural real food.
Oh well things have changed as I’ve got older, the food thing is one area – I remember in my youth where unprocessed foods use to be cheaper to get and more affordable then the processed junk, but now its the other way around, which is sad and disheartening to see.
Post more tomorrow, take care everyone!