Diabetes Care in the Hospital: It Ain’t Pretty (Diabetes Mine blog post)

Diabetes Advocacy Self Advocacy
41

In February I was admitted to the local hospital with a severe case of colitis. I spent 12 days in the hospital before I was able to return home to recover on my own.

However, my hospital stay was worse than a nightmare because I was forced to disconnect my insulin pump, though, thankfully, my CGM continued to operate. The hospital required me to submit to its own insulin protocol using both Lantus and a fast acting insulin. They would Ijectect Lantus in the evening around 11 p.m. and fast acting insulin twice a day. They would test my blood at 4 p.m. prior to dinner and inject the fast acting insulin at 7 pm based on the 4 pm reading.

One night at 12 pm my CGM showed my BG level over 400 and another night my CGM showed a BG level of 59 and over the next 3 hours I had to consume seven half pints of orange juice in order to bring my BGs above 70.

The attending physician advised that the decision to turn off my pump was “above his pay grade” even though my endocrinologist called to persuade him to allow me to use my pump.

I am now deathly afraid to be admitted to a hospital for any reason

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I’ve been in the hospital twice since I was diagnosed w diabetes.
Both times, they asked me how I wanted to manage my diabetes. I told them I wanted to manage it.
And that was it, they didn’t ask me about it again.
They would just ask me what my sugar was before breakfast.

If a hospital told me I needed to take off my pump, I would find another hospital. I was on MDI for a lot of years and I know I could do it, but changing like that would be hard to do, and while in the hospital, it would be a disaster.

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