I have been fighting bad lows for the last 5 days. Seems like no matter what I do I go low. So last night I am fighting lows once again and I page Dr. Anderson, he tells me he wants me to go to the e.r. if it drops one more time. So it goes down to 40, so I call 911. The paramedics show up and they sit there and argue with me for 5 minutes telling me I am not low. At one point the paramedic goes how much do you want to bet you are within normal ranges. I shoot back at him, how much you want to bet I am at least 50 or below. He comes back with in my 10 years of a paramedic I have NEVER seen anyone act coherently and calmly with a blood sugar at 50 like you are. He goes there is no way you are 50 or below. I stick my finger out and I told him to poke me. At this point I am sweating cause I am going into shock and I am starting to get incoherent but not that he would notice, I was just having trouble forming thoughts. And I am getting agitated. I don’t know how much the agitation is dealing with the idiot or the low. So he goes you win, lets go. Get into the ambulance, he starts an iv and then loads me up with an amp of D 50. Now if you have never had D 50 it is a major head rush. They load the whole thing through the iv in about 5 minutes. Best way to describe it is when you get hit with iv pain medications. The feeling you get in your head, the light headed, heavy breathing. So they get me to the e.r. They monitor me and decide to keep me overnight for observations. At this point I am feeling safe. So I feel myself dropping, grab the call light which was put out of my reach and both bed rails are up so I am trying to climb over them to get to it while fighting off a 45. I push the button a nurse comes in and informs me they are getting ready to take me to my room, I tell her that is fine but I am low. She goes you are fine, you are coherent. So I said FINE. At this point I am once again totally poed. So I record the time down and 40 minutes later I am still in the e.r. and getting worse. So I call for the nurse again, this time a different nurse comes in, looks at me and yells for the doctor to get an amp of D 50 STAT. By this point I am fighting to keep my eyes open, fighting to stay conscious, and am sweating buckets. So for the second time in an hour and half I got another full dose of D 50 hitting the old veins. Then the first nurse comes in with a cup of gatorade for me and hands it to me once I regain partial consciousness and look at everyone like why are you all standing around. Somehow I managed to hit the light but don’t remember it. I drink the gatorade and then they call up to the floor and tell them to have a tray of food in my room NOW. (We hadn’t even left the emergency room yet). So at 12:30 A.M. I get to my room. I am on finger checks every 2 hours, so no sleep and then to top it off as always I get the rebound headache from hell as anyone who has experienced massive lows understands, but this time it is about 10 times worse due to so much D 50 in me. And of course the doctor on call doesn’t think about this (my doctor doesn’t have admitting privileges) and there is nothing ordered for my head not even Tylenol and they won’t call him to get me anything. They tell me I have to wait until morning. Finally at 2 pm he decides to show his face and finally orders me Fiorcet (2 at a time) due to the fact at this point I look like I am going to pass out. He also decides to order a bunch of labs and do a urine culture and gives me a round of IV Levaquin due to I was diagnosed Monday with a massive bladder infection. Well it turns out the Keflex I was on is not working and it has moved to my kidneys. But other than that all my labs came back fine with a white high blood cell count. I have had no insulin in me for 24 hours and the highest my blood sugar went was after lunch which was high in carbs, (dr screwed up and ordered a regular diet for me) which was 230. He gave me 2 units of humalog and sent me home with only orders to take Lantus and nothing else. Well I didn’t think highly of this doctor so I called Dr. Anderson to see what he wanted. He wanted me to go back on my regular insulin routine which has been for a few weeks 1:15 ratio of humalog, but he told me to adjust it if I needed to. And he wanted to see me in his office tomorrow to make sure I was emotionally ok due to dealing with the lows and fighting ignorant medical personnal. And oh yea, I had to tell the hospital in the doctor what Lantus was and he also didn’t order all my bp meds or all my heart meds either while I was there. Thank god I got out tonight and am home safe. Shannon (Dr. A’s nurse) told me if you make it out of the hospital alive we will see you tomorrow.
Oh my gosh you hit the experience and your descriptive was flawless! It has been imperative around my friends and family if the person in the hospital is not of clear mind and conscious… have a knowledgeable family member and or friend around all the time. Hope you never have another experience like that again. Good luck!
Cody sorry to hear about your bad experience with the hospital personnel.I had a similar one like that a while ago.I was brought into the hospital because of an apparent low.I had a couple of seizures.I also have Epilepsy and they thought that was my problem.My husband told them “No she is having a low”! Finally they took his advice and tested me.Duh!
Oh yea I forgot to add the paramedic pricked me and didn’t get any blood and told his buddy to get a bigger lancet. I grabbed my own lancet device and shoved it in a finger and said HERE!!! At that point I was plenty pissed off at them.
OMG! This is hospital “care”?
It is when the morons don’t understand diabetes. I can’t say all medical profession are morons because I have an awesome Doctor, but when e.r. professionals respond to diabetes like this they are morons. E.R. have to know everything about everything, but yet they don’t, I think next time I am going to take my chances at home.
I’m sorry to hear about your experience, but sadly no matter what ailment, I think this is common. Today you almost have to be your own doctor or have a strong advocate by your side. The kicker will be when you or your insurance company gets the bill for this incompetence. It will be astronomical.
((((Cody)))))
Glad you’re home and feeling safe. I knew you were going for surgery; but had been waiting to see you post to say you were home! ( UGH. I missed it!)
Let us know what your doc says. Keep in touch!!! This D world is soooooo crazy!!!
MeadowLark
Right now my doctor wants me to keep my blood sugars on the high side for the next month in order to help my body recover from all these lows. He also told me he has filed a lawsuit against this particular hospital for various reasons. He also told me he has had a patient who died at this hospital recently and he met with the nursing staff there and the nursing staff admitted it was their fault due to not checking on the patient. He also had the doctor’s orders with him and they were NOT to check my blood sugar in between the 2 hours if I needed it checked. So this week I have to contact a lawyer, get caught up on school and also file complaints against the hospital. He said while my labs looked good he could tell just by looking at me that my body has about had it with the sugars. I was sitting in his office and almost fell asleep while he was talking to me I am so tired. He also informed me he wanted me to nap daily in order to give my body a chance to rest.
Good God Cody I hope you are feeling better. Jeez they really know how to hire the best don’t they. I hope they all get diabetes and have idiots gawking at them. That really pis*es me off. I hope your Dr and you get them thrown out of the medical profession.They couldn’t have seen that you were in trouble. You were sweating buckets and told them you were low.They can’t spend a dollar to see if you were low or not. I just hope you are well soon and I send good thoughts to you and a swift kick in their backsides. What arrogance! You know when you run low. You feel it so what was their problem???