Well it’s official. I’m a Type II Diabetic. I have the body composition of a large bag of Mr Tate and Mr Lyle’s finest product. Dealing with this issue is why I’ve been less than vigorous with writing recently but it’s not the condition that has stressed me out but dealing with the NHS.

Because the nearest private doctor who could have tested me for Diabetes is miles away I decided to chance my arm with the NHS to get this diagnosed and treated. This has been an interesting experience to say the least.

Although I’ve now got a lovely Diabetes nurse at my local surgery the journey to where I am now has been fraught with WTF moments. I first approached the GP surgery about a raging thirst and excessive urination back in late January of this year. The first WTF moment was being treated like dirt by a practise nurse when I went for my first blood test. The failure of the nurse to get blood meant that I had to see a phlebotomist which added a week to the diagnosis time. The results came back and I was advised to have a fasting glucose blood test.

I then had to see the GP who prescribed me Glicazide to increase insulin production. The problem is that nobody, not any of the initial nurses nor the GP would tell me what my actual glucose levels were. In addition nobody, until I had my first proper Diabetic Nurse appointment, told me anything about the drug I was being put on which meant that when I had a reaction to the drug I immediately assumed that it was some sort of low blood sugar event caused by the medication, something that affects 10% of users, which I’ve recently found out was not the case.

What gets me about my experience with the NHS is that I the patient have been kept in the dark about stuff I’d like to have been told about because the GP surgery has a policy of not telling patients their glucose levels until after they’ve seen the diabetic nurse. Personally I would have preferred that the GP told me such information as it would have meant that I would have not assumed that the reaction to the drug I was put on was a hypo event.

I’m fine with the treatment I’m on so far which is basically to follow a sensible diet and take Glicazide and Metformin in order to bring my glucose levels down at a slow and sure rate. However what has pissed me off is the lack of information from the surgery relating to my condition.

I would have preferred to have been given much more information earlier on in this treatment process as it would have been of great assistance to me. It would have meant that I would not have unilaterally stopped my treatment when I encountered problems that I mistook for a hypo and would have saved me from an awful lot of worry about being about to keel over from excessive sugar. The glucose numbers if given to me early enough might have saved me from a lot of grief and worry.

So far, apart from my Diabetic nurse who’s very helpful, I’ve not been over impressed with the NHS. I’ve had rude and arrogant staff and at least at first have been treated a bit like a mushroom and kept in the dark when I believe that this was unnecessary. Diabetes is not an unusual condition in fact it’s quite common and there should have been no excuse for the problems that I’ve encountered in the NHS so far. The NHS should be doing better with this sort of thing and doing better should include keeping the patient informed of all relevant information at every stage and this in my view is what the NHS has not done in my case.

If I went to a car dealer and the sales person didn’t tell me relevant stuff about the vehicle that I was thinking of purchasing then I would most certainly not buy a car from that entity yet we are told to trust a health service that does something similar with vital medical information. If my experience is representative of what others have had then it’s clear that the NHS needs to get much better with information provision to its customers.