Daniel’s progress on his 5 week DAFNE course

By Instagrammer: Daniel @coeliacanddiabetic

Sweet Victory Products asked to follow Daniel’s progress as he embarks on his 5 week DAFNE course. Read about his first week below.

It has been a long time coming for me. After being diagnosed with diabetes for 8 years I finally made the choice to get to grips with it properly. I took the plunge. I contacted my Diabetes Specialist Nurse and told her I wanted to go on the DAFNE course. 

DAFNE is an acronym and it stands for Dosage Adjustment for Normal Eating. In real terms, it means that I would learn new strategies so that my overall control would improve.

Sounds straightforward? Well, there aren’t many health authorities that offer this course and near me, even fewer and those hospitals that do offer the course have waiting lists longer than most rolls of toilet paper! After my place had been confirmed and each time the courses were cancelled (people pulling out at the last minute, funding problems etc.) I was offered a place and naturally, I said Yes!

Fast forward 2 months and, after attending a pre-assessment appointment, I arrived at my local hospital to take my place at the education centre. As I sit here now typing, my head is buzzing with new knowledge, ideas, tips and most importantly, homework!

I have to fill out a food diary and begin counting the carbohydrates in the products I eat. Once this is done, I then I have to use a simple formula to calculate how much insulin I have to give myself. 

The two specialists leading the training aren’t just experts but they are real people with real knowledge of diabetes, not just the knowledge of how a ‘perfect diabetic’ should be and what they should do but they are professionals who understand that we’re all human and life happens. They understand that we might get things wrong; eat lots of chocolate, forget to have an injection and they support and show us how to deal with this. I honestly couldn’t have asked for nicer people to help me on this new journey.

I’ve made this first day and what I have learnt sound short and snappy when all this information was given to me (in much greater detail) over an eight-hour day.

How do I feel right now? Excited, scared, hopeful but most of all positive. Positive that I have made the right choice, a choice that will hopefully lead to a better, more controlled approach to living with diabetes. I think that’s key, you know? Diabetes is not my life, its part of my life. I live with diabetes, it doesn’t live with me.

I hope this insight into my thoughts and what’s happening in my journey with diabetes (I have coeliac disease too, but that’s another story!) goes some way to showing that even though it can be hard living with an auto-immune disease, there is help out there and sometimes, its ok to ask for that help in your own time.

For more information about DAFNE (the people who are responsible for the course materials that were given to me today and feature in my photographs) you can visit: http://www.dafne.uk.com/

Photos belong to Daniel – (The author)

Sweet Victory Products will continue to follow Daniel as he embarks on his 5-week course. Come back next week to find out more. If you can’t wait until then follow him on his social media: @coeliacanddiabetic 

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