Week 3: Good for Me, Bad for Mom

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