Driving and Other Important Things

Hello People of the Internet
How are you this rather crappy December afternoon. I don't know what the weathers like where you are but for us in England this is the first time in about 3 million years its stopped raining. You don't even know how excited this makes me, its just adding to my excitement about these couple of weeks which are the best of the year. So in the middle of December it's my birthday and this year is the year I get to, legally, drive a car. However the diabetes just loves to complicate things when it comes to driving. I applied for my provisional in mid November and then a week or so later the DVLA sent me the load of forms to be filled in about the diabetes including the name and address of my doctor and a thing I had to sign saying it was okay for them to look through my records. Which is all fine and I know they need to make sure my control is good enough so that they know I wont be hazard to drive. But I sent the forms off three weeks ago now and I'm actually 17 so you know I'd like to be able to drive. 

If you have a hypo this is the advice/rule from the DVLA "Do not drive on until at least 45 minutes since your blood sugar has risen above 5.0mmols/l and you feel fully alert" okay so for a 17 year old who has had diabetes for as long as they can remember I am expected to wait almost an hour after having a hypo to drive again?! Now my control is pretty good I've only had one episode of severe hypoglycemia (classed as requiring the assistance of somebody else because you are unaware/unable to administer glucose) and then I doubt I would even drive for the rest of the day. But seriously a low hypo for me is about 2.7 and give me a good 10-15 minutes afterwards and I am fine. Don't get me wrong I fully understand where the DVLA are coming from and that for some people it will take that long to recover but as a blanket rule I feel it is a bit harsh. The DVLA seem to have looked at the worst case scenarios of people having a hypo and decided to set rules that apply to the most severe cases to everyone. 

For example if I was driving to college one day for my first lesson I would check my blood sugar before I left and if I was having a hypo and then waited 45 minutes as recommended I wouldn't get to college until half way through the lesson. I just feel that it is so impractical to expect people to wait for so long after a hypo just so the DVLA can be 100% sure they didn't mess up in their guidelines to diabetics. I think that the people deciding theses policies should try living as a diabetic for a day and see for themselves what it's like, they do consult with people but unless they actually experience it from our point of view how will they ever truly understand what they are forcing people to do?

Obviously there are ways around these rules but I won't publish them on the internet as that would be encouraging some terrible behaviour.

Merry Christmas, sorry for such a depressing post. I expect us all to be at least a stone heavier by the next time I talk to you all.

Rhona x