Diabetes Trumps All

First and foremost, I have to say that I LOVE Dr. McGill. He's the ENT that operated on Brendon. I met him for the first time right before surgery as Jeff had been the one to bring Brendon to the appointments leading up to the day of surgery.

He's from Ireland and has watery blue eyes, and a very ancient Irish look to him. He's probably close to 70. Rather than a brogue, he has a sing-songy soft Irish lilt. I had to resist the urge to ask him to read me a bedtime story and curl up next to Brendon on the gurney and take a nappy-poo, LOL.

To follow up with Brendon's surgery, I'll start with the time before he went into the O.R.

Brendon had been fasting since about 6 p.m. the night before and hit a low around 3:30 a.m., so Jeff gave him some apple juice. Needless to say, because he had to fast before surgery, we were concerned that his basal would be too strong during the surgery because it takes into account the carbs he eats for breakfast.

He hovered between 100-116, but kept dropping a little at a time. We wanted to cut back his basal before surgery, but the anesthesiologist said he'd control his blood sugars with Dextrose being fed through I.V.

OK, fine.

Flash forward to recovery. We met Brendon in the recovery ward and he was crying and very hoarse...I felt horrible, but was able to keep it together somehow. Jeff wanted to test him to see if he was low, and then wanted to dose him for the popsicle he had just eaten. The nurses wouldn't let him...it's against hospital policy.

They understood our frustration and was willing to work with us as much as they could. We'd test with our meter, they'd test with theirs, and then they'd pull back on the Dextrose if he was too low.

Needless to say, this was all so inefficient.

Flash forward again to his room upstairs. The floor nurse says, let's test him every three hours. No way, we say...if not every hour, then every 2 hours because he's not getting a whole lot of carbs, plus the stress could either make him low or high.

She had orders from the Endo Dept on how and when to test and correct him...no one had consulted with us on this. We kept our cool, but we pretty much told them we wanted to determine when he'd be tested and whether he'd need to be corrected or bolused if he ate something.

So here was the plan they allowed:

1. We could test when we wanted, but we had to have a nurse test him at the same time with her own meter as well.

2. If we wanted to correct, or bolus him, there would have to be two nurses in the room to witness the dosing.

3. We could not adjust basal rates or give temp basals.

So, when Brendon had two containers of ice cream, we had to call the nurses in after he was finished...wait 20 minutes for them to show up...wait another 10 for them to calculate for themselves what the dose should be...then watch us dose him with the pump.

I guess with all of our complaining, two Endos came to see us about our "concerns". The one was a newby and gave us a speech about how the body works with stress, blood sugars up, down, blah, blah, blah...I just tuned her out.

The second was the one who wrote up the orders that she didn't consult us on. She says, "Well by not adjusting the basal rates, you can see if the basals are working for you especially since he's not eating." Nice try.

Let's just say that this was the longest, most tedious day of our lives.

Most importantly though, Brendon was kept comfortable...slept on and off all day...took care of Rufus because the surgeon told him that Rufus had the same operation.

The End!