BeingDiabetic.co.nz » driving

Awful for all concerned.

Nic — Mon, 31 May 2010 22:17:14 +0000

I’ve done a few posts about diabetes and driving over the years. It’s a really tricky one, this topic. On the one hand I totally agree with the medical professional who taught me “Five before you drive” (as in 5mmol/l), but in reality this is not achieveable all the time, and there are going to be times when you get behind the wheel when your blood sugar is lower than that; or if you’re driving a longer distance you can have your BG plummet while you’re on the road.

This is why I was so sad when I read this article about a diabetic man…

Texting and driving…

Nic — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:33:35 +0000

…. is illegal now in NZ as we all know. However, what about bolusing and driving?

Yesterday I was in Ponsonby to have coffee with a friend. I was on my way home, sitting at the traffic lights near Three Lamps. I first of all did a BG test while I sat there. It was ever so slightly on the high side so I then reached down to my pump to program in a correction bolus.

It was at this point that I realised that I was sitting bang, smack outside the Ponsonby Police station. And a policeman was just locking up his patrol car in the carpark about 5m from where my car was sitting. Before he could…

The inconvenience of a pump.

Nic — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:28:11 +0000

I mentioned in an earlier post that going on the pump is not the silver bullet we sometimes imagine it to be. It definitely requires a lot of work, and more organisation than being on MDI that’s for sure (instead of just needles and vials you’ve got a whole new array of kit you need to carry around with you: insertion sets + devices, wipes, vials of insulin, reservoirs, lines, batteries etc etc).

This morning was case in point. My pump ran out of insulin completely just as I was running out the door. I’d taken my breakfast bolus and was planning to eat my breakfast on the way in in the car. My husband was driving me in…

The lancet-eating car.

Nic — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:27:11 +0000

So…. I posted about ‘having a mare’ two days ago – unfortunately things didn’t get any better yesterday! I started the day with a site change which seemed to go pretty smoothly. However when I clocked a 17.7 an hour after breakfast which rose to 19.1 just 15mins later, it all turned quite quickly to mush. When I inspected the insertion I’d put in that morning I found it totally bent and twisted with no hope of delivering basal or bolus insulin. Took me another three hours to get it down to a suitable level in order to have lunch, and then for some strange, inexplicable reason I got to a 15.9 after lunch!!

By the time I’d…

Guest Blog: Sympathy Vote continued…

Aaron — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:34:04 +0000

I thought that my morning was bad when I woke at 13.4 and then arrived at work 45 minutes later at 6:30am to write a presentation. That said though, I had to quickly reassess because while I was doing my usual morning peruse through the headlines on The New Zealand Herald site this morning I found an article about some poor guy that has driven his Mercedes into two cars and then ended up in the front a designer clothes shop on Ponsonby Road. Cause you ask? it was (and I quote) “a diabetic attack”.

I have two points here, the first of which is that I truthfully find the term ‘diabetic attack’ quite stupid and ignorant…

5 before you drive.

Nic — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:42:05 +0000

My diabetes nurse has all sorts of sayings – one of my favourites is “pizza is poison” which is due to pizza being so stodgy and fattening, it can take up to seven hours to allow your BGs to return to normal. Another one she has, which springs into my head from time to time is “5 before you drive” (as in, your BG should be 5.0 or over if you plan to drive a car).

I’ve talked about the dangers of driving with low blood glucose before, here. I am getting better at detecting large swings downwards in blood sugars these days – it used to be that I wouldn’t know until I was really, really low,…

dia-Driver

Nic — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:18:36 +0000

So I see someone has been working on a car which reads your blood glucose levels via an under the skin insert and a Bluetooth transmitter, here.

Interesting – but I have a couple of questions:

With the advent and increasing popularity of continuous blood glucose monitors, won’t we be able to have this functionality no matter what car we drive? Does it stop you from driving if your glucose is too low or high when you start up the car? (a la a drink-driving gauge) What does this car look like? (I bet it’s uuuug-ly)

Good point to raise though. I lived…