Well, I am going to use this post to do my update as well as
let you all know just how horrible the hospitals treat diabetics and how little
they understand this disease! Here goes
nothing…
Today I sat at my kitchen breakfast bar thinking about how
much I have NOT missed my insulin pump.
I’m 3 weeks into my MDI experiment and I have to say that I am still
LOVING it. This week has had a few hang
ups, the major one being my cell phone alarm deciding not to work for my 2am
wake up call to check my blood sugar and take correction insulin if
necessary. So, I ended up replacing the
cell phone. I know that I could easily
buy an alarm clock, but I hate the blaring radio or blaring BEEP, BEEP, BEEP,
that scares you awake. I don’t need to
initiate a stress response upon waking up!
Last week I mentioned that I was going to add the supplement
Insulow, which is R-ALA and Biotin, to my daily plan. I asked other diabetics if they’d tried it
and had noticeable differences in their blood sugars, some said no, some said
yes. From the past 7 days, I’d have to
say, thanks be to God because I seriously am crediting better blood sugars to
this supplement. I am taking this
supplement each morning previous to breakfast and each evening previous to
dinner.
(available on amazon)
What will my plan be going into week 4:
Going into this next week I’m challenging myself to do a
better job of food journaling. I
definitely want to track my macros and see exactly what I’m ingesting. I know that my carbs have been very low
(under 50g per day) but other than that I haven’t been keeping track. I eat within 45 minutes of getting up, then 5
hours later, then 5 hours after that usually to ensure that my previous dose of
fast acting insulin is completely gone before re-dosing for my next meal. If you read last week’s post you’ll be
familiar with my peanut butter and almond butter addiction and going forward
I’ll be trying to curb this as well.
That is challenge number 2!
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Ok, now it’s time for me to get onto my soapbox, we’re
moving onto our healthcare professionals and my recent experiences. If you are my Facebook friend, you know that
earlier this week I asked for prayers for my mom. She has type 2 diabetes and I have been
desperately trying to help her get on track with her diabetes treatment.
Tuesday night she experienced an episode that at first we
weren’t sure if it was hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) or a heart attack. Luckily my dad was able to check her sugar
and it was 121. They took her by
ambulance to our local hospital and the emt’s checked her sugar which read
120. At the hospital 1 doctor argued
that she did have a heart attack while the anther said she didn’t. They put her in the cardiac wing and she
waited more than 12 hours to have a stress test with radioactive dye. She told both the nurse and the doctor on
Wednesday morning she hadn’t eaten in over 12 hours and she hadn’t had her
diabetes medication in more than 12 hours.
They wouldn’t feed her and they never gave her insulin or metformin. Therefore her blood sugar began to rise. However
they did offer Tylenol…what??? Oh and
don’t forget the ice water and ice chips.
Finally they told her she could eat and said “here, you can have a
muffin.” My mom said, “no, I can’t eat
that, it has too many carbs, not to mention there’s no way for me to count the
carbs to take my insulin for it.” (it had no food wrapper with nutrition info
and no one could find it for her) They
looked at her like she was nuts and told her she could eat it. When she refused the offered her nabs and yet
again she went through the same thing telling them no and that she needed a
carb count which they didn’t have. They
finally allowed her to order something from the cafeteria from the “diabetic
friendly” menu, which we all know is crap food. Luckily the person on the other
end of the phone actually would read the labels to her, but they were
completely surprised that anyone would want them to do that.
Here’s a recap, the nurses had no idea what was acceptable
for diabetics to eat, they force chemical filled crap down their throats, have
no clue about carb counting, and never gave a diabetic taking insulin her insulin
during her hospital stay to account for the food she was finally able to
eat. My mother was completely helpless
in this situation!
Next we move on to the doctor. He tried to say my mother was suffering from
hypoglycemia. Again, her blood sugar was
121 at home and 120 in the ambulance.
She tried to talk to the doctor about her diabetes care, what she was
doing to control it and about her medication, the doctor waved his hand at her,
dismissing anything she was saying. She
also told him that she needed her medication for her diabetes and his response
was, “oh, ok, we’ll get right on that,” then nothing.
It seemed like no one cared, no one treated her and no one
paid attention to what she was saying and they definitely were missing the mark
on treating someone with diabetes. How can
we change this? If this was how my
mother was treated, that means that there have been plenty of other diabetic
patients that have been treated the same way.
How can we get nurses and doctors to understand what diabetics should
and shouldn’t be eating and about their medication needs? I feel as if I need to educate these
individuals somehow, but I’m unsure of the path to take.
I have a feeling that while this blog originated just to
document my experiment of going from insulin pumping to MDI’s, it is going to morph
into diabetes advocacy and education. My
hope is that whatever this turns into, it helps someone else along the way.
Thanks for reading,
~D
