A Rant About Mental Health Care

so I recently got out of the hospital where I was admitted for suicidal Ideation. To be admitted they required me to remove my pump. They put me on a sliding scale treatment. I didn’t understand it and couldn’t help them get the numbers right. they weren’t even controlling my carb intake. It was weird and made my bg like over 300 for 2 days. I stopped caring the second day. I was really just trying to get my brain some place healthier. now I’m out and carb counting. My bg is ok ish. My depression is up and down but we are still trying to get the meds right. I’m out on disability for awhile. in this time is there anything I should be doing to improve my health?

lantus - 18u morning 20u evening
humalog - 5g/u
CGM - not often calibrated dexcom g5
IMG_3353%20(1)

One therapeutic suggestion would be to find a safe place, relax as best you can, and practice breathing slowly. Your breathing is somehow attached to your heart, and your serenity, and your centering yourself emotionally. Just practice doing it. I can’t do it very well.

A suggestion about diabetes is to treat it without
injecting emotions into it. Just do it because it needs to be done, not because you kinda want to, or kinda don’t want to. Eating a low carb diet is important. Less bread, less potatoes, less rice.

Good luck to you, in any case. Best wishes.

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This in more common than you would think, sounds like you made it through ok.

One thing that often helps is to get your endo, or whoever prescribes your insulin, to be involved when in the hospital. But some hospitals don’t even support that. But worth a try.

Glad to see you have dexcom. This is great for seeing patterns and deciding what to change. If you see many days in a row with similar higher BGs, it might be you need more basal. But if snacking at nighttime, that could also be cause. Emotions also can also make BGs more difficult to manage. Do you have endo or CDE to help you?

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A few years ago, I suffered panic attacks. I was able to figure it out to a new blood pressure medication. I have a very good happy married normal life so no reason for the panic attack psychologically. The doctor (my endo) who prescribed the pills refused to admit that the pills (atacand) caused my panic attack and told me to see my GP doctor to prescribe medication for it. I started using Ativan for the panic attacks. It helped, but I knew it was the Atacand that was causing it. To cut the story short, 1 year and 4 months later, my endo switched the atacand to Avapro. Poof! panic attacks disappeared. I called the stupid endo to tell him my panic attacks are gone. He said… “I will not argue with you” dismissing me. I thought to myself, what if I had committed suicide or some stupid things already. I fired him.
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However, lately, I started having panic attacks again. I started using Ativan again and it works. 0.5 mg calms me down. I only use it when I feel the attacks coming. The attacs just come with no known trigger for me. I researched how Ativan works…
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Ativan works to affect these receptors and slow down the central nervous system (CNS). This action reduces excess agitation and excitement in the brain, inducing a calming and relaxing effect. Through slowing down the CNS, Ativan is also able to help lessen the intensity of anxiety and panic attacks.Feb 16, 2018
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Disclosure…
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@Robert17 How low carb do you suggest? How many grams per meal?

@MM1 I see my endo soon, I am hoping they will help me switch to a tandom pump.

@arpida_seru They had ativan in the hospital. It was helpful I might ask my psych about that if the current plan doesn’t work.

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I just read up on sliding scale. They were doing it so wrong :frowning:

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When it comes to personal diabetes control, you are your best doctor. You are the quarterback. The others, doctors, cde, concerned friends, relatives, are just supports. You make all the final decisions. But to be able to control successfully, you have to accumulate knowledge on how your body reacts to different treatments. And what works for someone might not work for you. YDMV.
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I know you know this already.
I can see you are trying your best.
You are doing a good job.
Keep in touch.

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Low carb means different things to different people but for me personally I try to stick to less than 30 grams per day and since I’m so carb sensitive in the morning I don’t eat anything carby at that time. A more relaxed version of low carb is about 60-70 carbs per day with about 30 carbs per meal and several people on this site do really well with that balance.

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I, also, stick to around 30 carbs per day. But I’ve been doing that for almost a dozen years, so I also know how to fool around with when how I allocate those carbs, as well as working in “treats” appropriately…

I was recently in the hospital and then a nursing facility for 5 weeks, recovering from a broken femur…I was very impressed with the kitchen at the nursing facility. Being there for so long, they actually got “into” working with me on developing their low carb meals. We had fun with it. But I think that will only work if one is there for a time…But the point is—they cared and even enjoyed figuring it out…

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Judith and Firenza are both right. If you do physical labor for a job, you actually need some carbs to burn during the day. If you are retired and watch baseball, carbs just mean higher numbers on my glucometer.

I get numbers from everything I eat. Not many from veggies, not many from meats, lots from rice and bread, way lots from yummy melon.

You need to experiment with your diet, see what works for you. Good luck.

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Pixari,

Health, mental or physical, is probably more complicated than software. I guess you already knew that, eh. Being old and feeble minded myself I can’t give you any valuable advice. But, since I DO have some extra advise that I haven’t even used today I’d be glad to share it with you.

I’ve been taking prescription antidepressants for a LONG time and am currently using… hmm, what the heck IS that stuff called … it’s an SSRI and since it’s sort of expensive I thought I’d wean myself off of it, but after only about a week I realized that it was actually working, so I went right back on it. I just had a look on the bottle, it’s Viibryd. The cat was on my lap so I had to wait for her to jump down before I went out in the kitchen to get the name.

At any rate I’ve been seeing reports that depression is somehow related to diabetes. Isn’t EVERYTHING? I think more likely LIFE is related to depression. At any rate I used to use an insulin pump but now use Basaglar (twenty in the morning, fifteen at night). During the day I use Novolog and regular insulin (the cheap stuff I can get at Walmart for twenty five bucks a vial). For a little over a month now I’ve been using a Freestyle Libre. So far it has worked really well for me and it has made tracking and correcting my glucose levels actually FUN. How weird is that?

OK, I’ve been retired for about ten years. I was diagnosed with rectal cancer and the chemotherapy ■■■■■■ up my brain. I actually enjoyed the whole thing and had always figured that since I had diabetes I wouldn’t get anything else. Right! It turns out that one can have a LOT of “things”.

When I was forced to actually WORK for a living I was a cardiovascular perfusionist. I’ll let you look that up all by yourself. Once I retired I figured it would kill me. Wrong again. It only took a couple of hours for me to get used to it.

So, lemme know how YOU are doing. I’d really like to hear from you and find out how YOU are dealing with health care issues these days.

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I have done the “hospital”. I could do an epic rant about that.

How are you doing now ?