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We found 10 result(s) that match your search "hospital":

Prior to the birth of my son, I'd never been in the hospital before. I know the nurses have experience treating diabetes, but I was still worried about how my blood sugar would be managed.
Every diabetic reacts differently to the same situations. And living with the disease day in and day out for a few years-and managing to keep my a1c under 6 the whole time-really makes me an expert in what works for me and what doesn't.
What doesn't work for me is white flour, white rice, white potatoes, sugar or corn syrup. What does work is lean protein, healthy fats, whole grains, vegetables and fresh fruit, and, most importantly, food combining. (READ MORE)

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Where to even start...?

 

And that is the point, you don't know where.

 

When someone is newly diagnosed with diabetes, where should their educational journey begin? Sure, there is the inevitable hospital stay, and the chat with a doctor, and possibly a self-injection tutorial (for the insulin requiring crowd), but what is the next step... after the hospital scene?

 

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It has been three years, seven months, and fourteen days since I was first sitting on that powder keg in the emergency room. I sat with my parents as my blood sugar was checked for the first time and the diagnosis was made. As plain as day, the doctor said the string of words I had never known before that time, type-1 diabetes. (READ MORE)

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Part 2 of a 4 part series. See part 1.

On the way to the hospital, my husband commented that he didn't think this was really it. I wasn't curled up in a ball crying or cursing him out. Nothing like what he had seen on TV or heard about from his friends. It couldn't be the real deal. I wanted to choke him, but he was right.
As soon as we got to the hospital, the contractions stopped.
My blood pressure, however, was another story. It started climbing and continued to climb throughout the morning. Since women with diabetes are more likely to develop pre-eclampsia, the doctor ordered a 24-hour urine collection to check for protein. That meant spending the night in the hospital for observation. (READ MORE)

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Charlie was diagnosed with diabetes four years ago today.
Charlie never was a good sleeper. So when his twenty-minute naps changed to two-hour naps in the late summer of 2003, we saw it as a godsend. By September and into early October, we had to wake him from naps approaching three hours.
Suddenly he lost interest in eating. Susanne thought he surely had some sort of stomach virus brewing. But he never got sick.
Soon after, his appetite for fluids increased greatly as he voraciously guzzled tall glasses of milk and clawed at the refrigerator for more. It was never enough. This was followed by Charlie often waking up in the middle of the night drenched in urine from neckline to toe. I can remember Susanne constantly changing the sheets in the crib. (READ MORE)

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In October of 2007 we broke up with Charlie's endocrinology team.  We and St. Christopher's were together for four years. It felt as if the relationship had run its course - as if they had nothing more to offer us.

 

We stuffed our Elton John CDs, our Ficus plant and our boy with diabetes into a big box and headed 8 miles southwest - to the bright and fancy lights of Children's Hospital.

 

We were enticed by Children Hospital's high-tech A1c thingamabob and their impressive diabetes team staff. I remember staring wide-eyed at the many names on the website and their important-sounding specialties.

 

"Ooh! Congenital hyperinsulinism."

 

I was giddy.

 

"Susanne! They have their own team of pump experts!"

 

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Ever since I can remember, I've been a dreamer. Not only do I get lost in vivid day dreams, but my subconscious takes over in the darkness of night with raging images. Over the years, I've come to realize that I have a history of especially strange dreams.

 

They are a mix of nightmares, unrealistic events, and practical moments. I've had some that were premonitions, predicting coming events. Others were so far out of the box that I don't expect anything to resemble them in real life.

 

But the one thing that my mind usually keeps out of my dreams is diabetes and pain. No nightmare has ever involved diabetes complications, seizures, or even diabetes moments. It's so ingrained in my daily life that my brain doesn't find the need to remind me of it in my sleep.

 

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The things I remember most about this morning's surgery: I seemed like a diabetes marvel with all my gadgets and I was a little shocked that the procedure was expected to take about an hour (thought it would be much shorter).

 

Seriously, I can't tell you how many times this morning I heard "Hey, come look at this!" after I had explained Dexcom to a medical professional. It was actually pretty cool to be able to explain Dex to a bunch of doctors and nurses.

 

The best part, though, was when the anesthesiologist came in and we were discussing my blood sugar and where it was (over 250 mg/dL) and where he wanted it (around 150 mg/dL). He told me his brother had just been diagnosed with diabetes and had just gotten a pump. He was pretty sure it was Minimed and was surprised that his brother had been diagnosed with type 1 as an adult. "I was 30," I told him.

 

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The day after my last post, I received a bill from the hospital for my visit at the end of July. The total cost of three days in the hospital, a heart catheterization, and several other tests came to a whopping $16,141.90.

 

My jaw nearly hit the floor when read the line stating the amount that my insurance had covered. $16,041.37

 

My eyes quickly shifted to the bottom of the page where the box stating the total amount that I owed was located. It read $100.53.

 

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Had the insurance company really paid all but $100.53 of my $16,000 bill? They sure didn’t pay that much of the bill when I was in the hospital in April 2009. What could possibly be different this time around?

 

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My sister got a call from the hospital at which Mom has been recovering after valve replacement surgery. After a couple of days of perfect sinus rhythm, her care team suddenly wanted consent to insert a permanent "on demand" pacemaker. The issue was a single episode of about eight seconds of no heartbeat. While the idea of a pacemaker had been broached before, it was earlier in Mom's recovery. Since then, as far as we all could tell, things had quieted back down to "normal".

 

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