Worst Possible Day

Today was a very bad day. Quite possibly the worst day I've had in about 8 or 9 years, since the last time this happened, and I've had some pretty bad days.

Today my mother was in the hospital. Well technically my dad took her to the ER last night, but she wasn't admitted until around 4 am.

My mom is diabetic and has been since I was about 16 or 17. In the last year or so it's become harder for her to control it so her doctor recommended she be placed on the pump. While changing her vial of insulin on Sunday, something happened and she was not getting any insulin injections. As her blood sugars rose, she kept trying to have get insulin but was not getting any, which meant her blood sugars continued to rise rapidly. By the time my dad called me at 6:30 Monday night, her numbers were between 400 and 500 and had been there for almost 12 hours. I told him to have her drink water but really he needed to take her to the hospital immeadiately. He had called the doctor, so as soon as they called him back and he explained the situation and they told him the same thing, she needed to be in the hospital ASAP. By the time they arrived at the hospital her number was so high it couldn't be registered on the ER machine, which caps at 600. They drew blood and it came back at 959 (for comparison: normal blood sugar range is 90-120, anything over 240 long term is cause for alarm and call to the doctor and people are known to go into a diabetic coma from 500 and over long term) so they put her on an insulin IV drip and placed her in the Critical Care Unit where she stayed until last Tuesday when they were able to take her off the IV and start her on insulin injections and allow her to start eating and drinking again for the first time since Sunday evening.

I went down Tuesday afternoon and spent the afternoon and evening with her. She was in and out all afternoon and very incoherent while awake. She definately was suffering. I brought her this cute bear because I wasn't sure if flowers were allowed in the CCU (I was right, they aren't). After my dad went home and took a shower and nap he came back and we had dinner in the cafeteria where my oldest sister joined us and we talked about what we thought had happened, what needed to happen going forward and our personal interpretations of the staff at the hospital. None of us were convinced any of them knew anything and decided it would be best to always have an advocate there to watch out for her and ask the nurses and doctors questions and keep them in check (like the following day where they didn't put her on an ADA diet and gave her a muffin for breakfast!)

I spoke with her tonight (I am writing this Thursday evening because it was too hard and I have been too tired dealing with all of this the last two days) and she sounded much better since she's been released but she has still spent most of the day sleeping and the doctors have said it will be about 6 to 9 months before all of the toxins are flushed from her system and kidneys.