I hope Vic'll be fine. And I hope you get a healthy bouncing mini Squander.

Hang on, that would be kind of weird.

Oh, my God! That sounds too incredble to be true.... But a few months of reading Dr Crippen's blog leaves me in no doubt that it is exactly that bad.

Hope everything goes well.....

Okay, here's a question. How do you know that you'll be a father (congrats, btw) in six days, I mean, as opposed to eight days, or twelve?

Diabetics are induced early. Up to 8 weeks early, depending on the size of the baby and other factors. Only 2 days early in our case.

Ah, I see. Thanks, and the best to your wife and child.

Christ, that scares the crap out of me. I'm very glad to have read this so that I'm prepared if I ever do need to go into hospital.

Then again, NHS policy on diabetes is insane from the start. They don't actually fund the best means of treating it - insulin pumps - despite the fact that better-controlled diabetes saves considerably more money to the NHS than the cost of any equipment.

I'm very lucky that I happen to live in a city with a specialist diabetes unit carrying out cutting-edge research. So that if I am ever taken into hospital, there's a decent chance that I will actually be in the care of people that know what they're doing. If I was still in my hometown, God knows.

Anyway, congratulations!

Hope you gave the ward nurse an earful.

By the time Vic had the hypo, some other nurse was on duty. We've learnt the hard way: we did assume at the time that nurses, being healthcare professionals, knew what they were doing. We know now that it's safest to asusme they're idiots and to kick up a fuss whenever you think they're wrong. It must be terrible for the good nurses, being associated with the bad ones and having patients like us lose all trust in them.

It's actually a lot better here than on the mainland, due to the large number of and influence from Irish nurses. A friend of ours had her first child in England and her second in NI, and says that, bad though the hospital treatment was here, it was a grade-A paradise compared to the English experience.

Yes, the policy on insulin pumps is insane. It's even worse than simply refusing to fund them: it is possible to get one on the NHS if you live in the right area, find out who's the right person to approach, and nag them for a year or so with letters that contain all the right buzzwords and mention the right policies. There are organizations dedicated to collating all this information to help people get pumps; they have mixed success. What that means is that, yet again, people with more intelligence, more dedication, better resources, and more time on their hands get better service from our supposedly egalitarian health service than the poor plebs who do as they're told.

Similar problem happened to me in hospital (not for heart complaint), only my conflict with nurses was over control of my blood pressure within the limits set by my cardiologist.

Blimey - I thought we had problems when the hospital couldn't provide food for someone with a nut allergy (which if they eat tainted food can cause serious illness).

Just had my back operated on and of course the morons at the hospital tried to use the NHS standard. They said I can not tell them what type and amount of insulin I should have.
I
said "Your one shoe fits all, everyone wears the sdame hat size and all women must wear size 29 A cup bras makes no sense. Who the hell are you to have the prerogative to tell me what I need? You have absolutely no knowledge of my acute physiology to make that determination."

I told that to them when I was admitted and told the admittance nurse to make sure my statement was entered into the record.

After checking down stairs, the floor nurse came in and said how much do you need? I told her and magically a vial of 70/30 appeared. She lied before and said they have any 70/30.

I hope all that read this will unite and join with me and contact our politicians, surgeon general and state hospital divisions and begin to declare war on these dumb bastards and get this changed for our sake and all diabetics in the hospital.