Hospitals for Diabetics
I’ve had to go to hospitals on a few occasions for non-diabetes issues and EVERY TIME IT HAPPENS my blood glucose levels go crazy.
I understand hospitals run on a schedule. It helps them maintain every working part of a populated and busy building, but that doesn’t always work out for a diabetic.
November of 2018 I went to the hospital to get my appendix ripped out.
I had been feeling bad for a week, turns out it was because my appendix was failing. That’s my insides for you: failing one at a time. Pancreas, Appendix… what’s next? Something important I bet.
I get there around 1 AM and they prep for surgery the next day. I don’t have my insulin with me, but I make them aware that I’m a type 1 diabetic (many, many times. I tell everybody. It’s fun!) so they know I have certain needs.
The next morning they hospital gives me all the information for my scheduled surgery the following morning, as well as a carb-heavy, sugar filled breakfast complete with Orange Juice, Milk, some sort of potato thing and eggs, possibly a side of oatmeal or something similar.
I remind them I’m diabetic and will need insulin if I am to eat. I check my dexcom and I’m already around 160 (kinda high before a meal) and without shooting up insulin it will only go higher. This was my first overnight stay in a hospital with a dexcom.
They don’t bring insulin for another hour. I generally take my long lasting insulin in the morning, as well as my fast acting for the meal I’m about to eat. They bring me 6 units of fast acting insulin.
That’s it.
I believe they calculate the insulin for an average person who can walk around and burn sugar with a normal amount of exercise. I am a diabetic person without long lasting insulin, laying in a bed for the day.
This will not work.
I tell them my normal insulin dosage and they tell me they’ll “see what they can do”. Nothing happened.
So, I call my girlfriend and ask if she can bring my insulin to me when she’s free. She does.
I spent that first day between 250 and 300. That’s high.
I wouldn’t have known that without my dexcom.
For an average, non-diabetic person I’m sure an overnight in the hospital is fine (or as FINE as can be, considering) but every diabetic controls their blood sugar levels in their own way.
When the ways to control change or are limited your numbers fluctuate. What diabetics want is to be steady. Have as close to an even number all day.
That’s rare, regardless of the situation. Just look at my numbers from the past 24 hours:
Hospitals and non diabetic specialist doctors “figuring out” your diabetes needs don’t always workout well. Diabetes is not a “by the book” disease.
Two good takeaways from that last hospital trip:
My Mr. Bean impression
I made this silly video
AND I got this pretty boss scar.
