Alice sent out an email to several
members asking what to do. She had a session that was to be about
diabetes education and because she had converted to insulin the day
before, she was looking forward to some education. However, she did
not received any diabetes education because the person had a dual
title RD/CDE with her.
Alice said they started out with
carbohydrates immediately and she should be eating low fat and about
55 grams of carbohydrates per meal. Alice said the session was
supposed to be on diabetes education and since they were not going to
teach this, she was leaving and filing a complaint with the insurance
company. Alice said she left with them laughing behind her and felt
they would be doing this to more of our people if allowed.
Tim called a meeting for all that could
attend. Because of the extremely cold weather on the weekends we
had canceled our January meeting on January 16. It turns out that the weather for
January 23 was to be warmer.
When the meeting started, Tim said we
have a real problem with CDEs and they are out to create problems for
our group. They have been bringing in dual title RD/CDE to avoid
teaching anything about diabetes. To date, we have avoided the
insurance companies paying for this lack of diabetes education when a
referral happens for education. The point they are doing is
switching to nutrition and trying to bill for time that belongs to
Allison or Suzanne.
Tim thanked Alice for calling the
insurance company to prevent them from billing for teaching nutrition
and eventually they will give this up, but for now we will be sending
everyone reminders to not let this happen, even accidentally. We as
a group now have Allison and Suzanne approved for nutrition for all
members. They work with us and do not insist on whole grains and a
set number of carbohydrates. With them doing what we need, our group
receives great nutrition advice and they work with the number of
carbohydrates we want to consume individually.
Alan, another of the new members asked
if someone wanted a registered dietitian, would we allow this. Tim
said we don't demand this, but we encourage everyone to use Dr.
Bernstein's “law of small numbers” to keep medications low and
prevent problems. We don't follow his numbers exactly, but suggest
using your meter and testing in pairs to determine what works for
you. Many of us limit our carbohydrate consumption to 50 grams or
lower. We have three that are using 80 grams of carbohydrates, but
we know that works for them. Alan said he was checking, but he liked
the lower number of carbohydrates and agreed with our suggestions.
Allen said that was okay, as we don't
demand anything, but hope that everyone sees the value in what we
suggest. Jason said we started out as a group of three and then
doubled our number and have continued to grow. Jerry said that about
14 that were using his now ex-wife came over to this group and
several went back to her, and we have two of them back after their
A1c continued upward. That was a time when we had a few problems or
growing pains and we learned from that.
Alice said she felt part of the group
and was happy for the support she received for walking away from
being taught nutrition by a dual title. She admitted that she was
feeling better after asking questions about being hungry and being
advised by several to increase the amount of fat in my meal plan.
This solved my hungry problem in two weeks and now I am very
comfortable with the food plan. Testing is a key and while many of
us don't like purchasing some testing supplies on our own, it has
been worth every dollar to have an A1c below 6 percent and nearer to
5 percent.
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