Venting

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone -

I've had a rough week. I'll skip the details and try to just get to the

main issue... my father's Diabetes.

I'm not sure if I responded to the thread a few days ago about family

problems. My personal family problems came to a head on Monday when my

grandmother died. She was 96 and really sick and even though I'll miss her

a lot, I'm glad she didn't suffer any longer.

Her death and subsequent wake & funeral meant seeing all of my extremely

dysfunctional family, including my parents who hadn't spoken to me in a

couple of years... not since I disclosed the details of my mental illness to

them.

I haven't been around them in a very long time, and didn't know much of

anything about Diabetes until this past year. My father was diagnosed in

1973 as Type 2, ignored all advice about diet, wound up on oral medication,

continued to ignore all advice about diet and exercise, and eventually wound

up on insulin. I'm only guessing, but I'd say he's now Type 1. He's 70

years old.

On Wednesday night, about an hour after dinner he was shaking from head to

toe. Apparently he had some kind of virus/flu and his temp was 101. My

mother, who is a retired registered nurse, responded to this by putting some

blankets on him and giving him a couple of shots of brandy and some tylenol.

I asked if she had checked his BG recently (he does NOTHING for himself) and

she looked at me like I had two heads. Her response was that she didn't

take the meter along to the funeral home and she didn't see what BG had to

do with it anyway. Fifteen minutes later, she gave him a piece of carrot

cake.

He has already had 4 bypass operations, heart, and both legs, one leg done

twice. He has heart problems, neuropathy, and has had 4 laser surgeries

done on his eyes. She only checks his BG in the morning, and injects NPH

twice a day. The following morning his BG was 328 at 7 AM. This seems like

an obvious result after having fish and chips, brandy and carrot cake the

night before with no short-acting insulin to cover the carbs. Am I missing

something? My mother retired from nursing about 2 years ago.

I made her call his doctor about the BG. I know that some of the problem

was the fever he had. The doc prescribed a shorter acting insulin in

addition to the other stuff without actually seeing him. But my mother was

unconcerned about the high reading and acted like it happens fairly often.

She also saw no reason to test other than a fasting reading in the morning.

I guess I just needed to vent. Nothing I do is going to change their way of

dealing with his illness. All I can do is take mine more seriously so I

don't wind up like him.

Anne