Meeting with Diabetes Scotland

For my initial research I got in contact with Diabetes Scotland to see if anyone could sit down and talk to me about Diabetes, as I did not know a lot about what having diabetes involved.
Morag Ramsay was nice enough to get back in contact and arrange a meeting to talk about having diabetes. She has type 1 herself and has had Diabetes since she was a child. So her knowledge of the diabetic equipment and what is involved is large.

We arranged to meet yesterday and the meeting was very useful to gain insights into the equipment used by diabetics and how it could be improved. She started off by showing us how people went about testing their blood, going through the process, step by step

The equipment: The glucose meter, the lancet, the test strips 

Using the lancet to extract blood, testing blood your whole life will make your fingers hard so using different areas of the hand 

Then using the test strip and glucose meter to measure the glucose level of the blood.

She also explained the different insulins and pens that go with them, the different devices which are used to measure blood glucose and gives an insight into how people with diabetes feel and respond to the different devices. 

Morag herself has an insulin pump which monitors the insulin levels in the blood and administers insulin as well. She showed us how she puts the insulin pump into her stomach, showing us this on a harder surface than a stomach.

squeeze sides to inject needle

Press down

and pull off and the tube and sticky part will be left.

This trip to Diabetes Scotland was very useful to gain more information on diabetes and what to look into which might be useful to develop on.