Who said a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?

Before starting out on any diet and exercise routine what are you always told? Talk to your doctor first. So being a girly swot I went to see my GP last night.
Primarily I went get my blood glucose (BG) test strips on prescription as they are seriously pricey and secondly to run my master plan by him. I must admit that I had expected to get a pat on the back for even considering tackling my diabetes by diet and exercise. But he was writing out the prescription he told me there was no need to test my BG as I was on Metformin and I shouldn't get hypos (very low BG levels).  This suprised me as most Type 2's don't really suffer from hypos but they do suffer from hypers (yip you guessed it, high BG levels).

I told him I wasn't particularly concerned about hypos but wanted to see what each food I ate did to my BG levels i.e. check for hypers. My barely post pubescent GP then said with great resignation ... 'you're 47, the cells in your pancreas are dying off'. He went on to describe in great detail how my diabetes was going to progress in the future and what drugs I would have to move on to. It's fair to say that it didn't paint a pretty picture.

I responded by saying I didn't want my diabetes to progress at all and in fact I want to regress it by exercising more and losing weight. He said very dismissively that I would have to lose a lot of weight and handed me my prescription. Despite his well rehearsed method of signifying that the appointment was at an end I settled into my seat, crossed my legs and placed my glasses on his desk.

Now comfy, I asked him what support he could offer me in losing weight and he responded by surfing the NHS website but found nothing, he said someone would call me with some information. When I mentioned that I heard about the DESMOND course (a diabetes patient education course for Type 2 diabetics) he said that it would be very good for me to attend but another search on the NHS website proved useless and another follow up phone call was promised.

I walked out of there feeling pretty frustrated, clearly my GP was more interested in diabetes than me! I now realise that as far as my diabetes management is concerned I am on my own.

It's really sharpened my resolve however, I really want to teach him a lesson by walking in there one day with normal BG levels. It's a bit like when the school careers advice tells you to go for a job in the corner shop and you end up an astronaut!

In his defence when I got home I did have a voicemail from the surgery giving me the number for Lighten Up but I'm still waiting for the DESMOND information.