Are you confident that you would receive adequate care in an emergency situation, related to your diabetes (i.e. low BG, seizure, loss of consciousness, etc) or not (i.e. car accident, etc).
Have you had experiences with emergency treatement that have influenced your feelings, opinions?
Do you have ideas on how to improve emergency care of Type 1 diabetics?
Other thoughts?
I have heard some references to this topic on the “do you wear medical ID jewelry” discussion board and thought it might make it’s own interesting discussion topic.
I’m really interested in hearing your thoughts on this…
i have little confidence—mainly due to experience. I have been in the ER for issues outside of diabetes, but ended up having diabetic issues—BG hit 450 - they were insisting to give me 10 units of insulin. Knowing my insulin sensitivity, 5 units is more than enough and I had to forcebly refuse the 10 units and insist that i administer it myself. It became terrifying to me…what if i was uncouncious? They wanted to put me on an insulin drip—NEVER.
Improvement can only come thru education. Many hospitals still use only a sliding scale to administer insulin. My younger brother was recently diagnosed with Type I, at 34 years old, within a day he was educated (by me) and refused the sliding scale…he said the hospital staff was perplexed.
I am like Mollie I have no insulin resistance so unless I am in DKA or not conscience because of a sever hypo no one is allowed to touch my BG. My hubby and daughters have power of att. if I can not communicate. They have copies of my insulin to BG ratio and they can give me insulin from that. The ER has a standard that works well for most people if your the exception you have to take charge of it. The ER has to do this for the better of all since they see such a wide range of people. I have confidence for them to save my life if needed not to treat long term conditions. I even like the sometimes fresh eyes on my multi medical issue’s I get from them. They have saved me many times and for that I am forever grateful I just make sure they know my diabetes is off the table of options to treat unless it is life threatening.
Last time I was in the ER for dangerous anemia as I was receiving treatment I simply did my own checks and called the nurse on the phone and said this is my BG and this is what insulin and food I am eating they write it down it works well. I don’t blame them though since I have so many health issues I am there alot they see so many diabetics who simply do not take there insulin or take it and don’t eat it makes them a bit jaded but I understand it.
Be loved
