I had a bad experience with diabetes care while in the hospital this summer.
My local peditricain and ER docs couldn't figure out why I wasn't breathing well and decided I needed to be admitted. Because of Diabetes they thought it would be better to send me to the Children's Hospital where I go for my dcare.
I got there around 12:30am so my family and I were pretty tired and stressed out. There were so many doctors and nurses in my room when I got there, but nobody from endo. The nurses would test me when my mom requested and bolus whatever we said. I was running high because of all the drugs I had been given, but they wouldn't let us do an increased temp basal. In the morning I got a low resevoir alert. The staff went searching for supplies to change my site and resevoir, but discovered there was a policy against using pumps in the hospital. They let us keep the basal going and give shots to correct in order to make the resevoir last as long as possible. In the afternoon I was in the high 300's again. We had to ask them to check for ketones- which were large. Finally decided they should call for an endo consult and advice on correcting. It took an hour to get me a shot then another 2.5 hours for someone from endo to come down. By then I was in the 130's so they didn't bother to check ketones again. The picu doctor told my mom that endo would be able to work with us over the phone. My mom didn't want to take me home with the ketones and have to come back again-its a long drive. I was discharged that night anyways. I had horrible ketones for the next 5 days. We talked with my cde and pedi, but couldn't get them down. My endo didnt hear about any of it till a week after I was discharged. He was furious when he found out about everything and got on the phone immediately with the picu and had a nice lil chat with them about changing procedures and communication. My pedi was shocked to hear about the dcare (that is why I was sent there!)
We have worked out what to do if I'm admitted again and have a meeting to discuss the situation in december.
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This may be off topic by a little bit but yeah here goes....
I recall one time when i was about eight or nine years old, and i had caught a stomach bug, or had massive ketones and was throwing up. My mom called my local pediatrician, who happens to specialize in diabetes for advice on how much to give me for my morning shot. Now, because it was before office hours a nurse answered the phone and advised my mother to stop all insulin injections at once, and not to resume until the doctor came in and gave some other instructions on what to do. That really ticked my mother off because this nurse obviously had no idea what she was doing, so my mom yelled at her saying "uhmmm no way! not having insulin is what's making her sick! Are you seriously telling me to make her worse?" so yeah the moral of this story is use your own judgement because sometimes having first hand experience is 1000000% better than getting a degree. (no offense to endocrinologists, or anyone else, I'm just making a point :D )
The End!
Skyler: Sadly,I must admit that at many times you have to go with your family's judgement especially if you actually know more than the healthcare advisor on call. It should not be that way; but it often is. Hopefully you and your family have been well educated by your own diabetes team and can deal with issues as much as possible until you talk to your trusted "people."
DrC