Big Bad Hypo (by sarah)

As some of you know Dad is diabetic this is slightly different to the gestational diabetis I had during the pregnancy. The link will probably make reading this post easier - sorry everything isn't clearer.

Last night we got back to Gloucestershire and having put Jean to bed I set out to do some sorely needed work, I saw that it was late and went to find Dad - who was laying on the bed, he responded dopily and I initially thought he was just tired. But when he came out onto the landing he kept checking his glasses becuase he thought they were dirty - this gave me the first glue as it ment his vision was blurry and as soon as he stepped into the light I saw the sweat pouring out off him covering his face and bald spot.

Dad was deepish into a hypo (hypoglycimic or low sugar levels) if I had left him or not checked on him he would have gone into a coma and died before I would have fetched him for breakfast in the morning. I was so annoyed with myself as I normally check he's eaten enough and keeping the sugar level steady-ish but of course with all the hospital stuff it turned out he had just had some toast for both breakfast and lunch with a bannana thrown in for goood measure. I hadn't thought to check and hadn't been at home when they where having these meals as I'd fallen asleep on route back from Highgate to Upminster and had ended up in Leytonstow (sp).

He was on the very cusp of it being a major hypo and failed to navigate the stairs perfectly which scared me (he slide down like three steps). I had to initially feed him as he wasn't with it enough to do this him self but I have had to deal with worse hypos in the past (he is a type 1 juvinile onset diabetic - insuline controlled and had a bit of an allergic reaction or something to a new type of insuline made synthetically in the 90's. On that stuff I had been unable to get him out of the coma even with the sugar solution and so had had to call an ambulance.) We'd been doing so well and he hadn't had a hypo for a while 🙁

Until...

The day of mum's opp. he'd just started to go hypo then too but me and David spotted it and fed him lunch - now he had eaten properlly that day and so everything should have been fine but I think that stress may have an effect on his metabolic system or something, I know tempuratures can affect things.

I was in the middle of dealing with this when Barbara came to find out what had happened to us and then ensued a confused conversation about why had I let dad get that cold - realisation that she thought I ment HYPO-thermia and that was sort of straightened out though she still insisted that I make him a hot drink :/ Alarmingly for me she thought he was fine and just a bit sleepy though his behaviour was erratic and speach slurred etc...

I was then stuck with a dilema - in his worrying about mum he had not packed his blood test kit - I had checked up on medicans and made sure he had all of them but had stupidly assumed that the blood test kit would just be with them. This ment we could not monitor Dads sugar levels and so we are running a bit blind. I didn't want to feed him too much sugary junk as that would just result in a short term high - at this point I was cursing myself for not having pinched the diabetic uk mag I'd seen in the bog at their home. I waited a bit and he seemed to be coming out of it and we both agreed that I would make him some proper food with the long term carbohydrates in (now I've probably got this all round my neck as I'm not medically trained and haven't really looked into things too well but I think that its the things like startch and that that the body actually has to digest to get the sugars that makes them long term - again I have no idea what the actual terms are or even if this is correct.)

This shook me up a bit and at some point I'll have to tell mum that I let him go that hypo - mew :'(

I get concerned about the hypos becuase as far as I know its not just the danger of death from the coma but each time it happens brain cells die, and capillaries do something odd which can result in blindness, uncontrolled sugar levels can also lead to gangreen and all sorts. It is so important that the surgar is controlled.

I've been trying so hard with this one as well as mum has type 2 diabetis and I have got the special cook books and read up on the GI of certian foods and stuff like that but I just wasn't thinking with everything that was going on.

Mum’s Opp. (by sarah)

Mum had her oppuration yesturday, they removed the lump from the breast and the lymph nodes undernieth her right arm. When I went to see her she had blue lips and very pale with two drains coming from her breast (this was two tubes full of what looked like just blood ending in what I think of as a plimsol bag). She was also drifting in and out of concousness whilst sitting up with the cup of tea they'd given her to re-hydrate/replace the fluids she'd lost (I'm really not sure this is a good technique as I thought tea was a diarrectic and it contained milk when she was feeling quesy from the drugs and it was hot and I had to keep rescuing it otherwise she'd have tipped it all down herself!).

Apparently she had been bleeding alot and they'd had trouble stopping it, she'd just come off of the oxygen which she would have hated as the masks make her feel closterfobic. They had given her morphine as well for the pain and she really was away with the fearies!

To my suprise there was actually stuff to wash your hands with though it did run out whilst we where there and I was actually really impressed as when one of the woman fell over on route to the toliet three nurses appeared like lightning from the woodwork!

Jean was very quiet and still for most of the time in there, she was fine with mum if a bit subdued but seemed highly concerned about all the other people on the ward. When she started to become fractous I took her out of the ward and instantly had a hell of a fight on my hands as she wanted to go back and got annoyed with me as, 'Nanny ouchy, Nanny stuck, no like, Nanny!' She seemed quiet concerned that we had left nanny behind.

Mum did look very bad when we went to see her - I actually cried a bit when I took Jean outside to the shop that was supposed to be open until 7 but was closed at 5, but Al visited later on and she was fine and coherant by that point.

I was concerned as well to find that mum only had one sexy white stocking on to help prevent clots - they had been unable to find a vein so had had to take the other one off to find one in her leg. I saw the results of their search today and I haven't seen bruising as bad as that since my nan died and her skin had gone paper thin. You could really see that it was bleeding under the skin. (mum normally has to take asperin as a prescription thing but had obviously stopped taking it in the lead up to the opperation but I think that perhapse it hadnt been stopped long enough).

I am a bit perplexed that she had trouble stopping bleeding yesturday and today they've given her Claxan (sp) which is the blood thinner I had during the pregnancy, this is 'just incase' and she had two stockings on today - her feet have also blown up like balloons which worries me quiet alot as she's had history of blood clots in the legs.

Still she seemed almost herself though a bit concerned that one boob seemed to be bigger than the other!

We now have to wait three weeks to find out what sort of cancer it was and wheather chemotherapy is needed. She will start the radiotherapy at about that time just to 'make sure' . She's alot better than we were expecting and they might let her go home tomorrow even though she will still have a drain in.

We are happyish as the main concern for me really was the strain of the opperation and the anasthetic.

Not instilled with confidence (by sarah)

Mum is due for her op today which is why I havent posted this before but she is under the care of the same hospital trust that a) basically killed my uncle (I have not posted about this due to legal reasons which is why I'm not going to mention anything specifically either) and b) mysteriously lost my notes from the pregnancy so that the drs and stuff here knew nothing of the blood thinners or antibiotics I'd been on and stuff things up over me having the emergancy c-section and stuff like that, took my panic alarm away from me and told me I had to walk to get help when the day shift had told me I mustn't get up without help and should use the alarm and so on and so forth. c) gave a diabetic fruit juice for breakfast each day that contained sugar and then wondered why his sugar was all over the place. d)didn't have enough beds for the heart attack victums so put them onto the terminal ward and then wondered why the non terminal patients begian to get depressed and didn't recover too quickly.

These are the people that have mums care in their hands and though the actual breast cancer nurses and doctors actually seem to be trying and are friendly and helpful there has already been an insidend that makes me nervous. Mum went for her pre-op tests and was given a name thing from the files and only realised when she had sat down that it was not her name. She took it back and pointed this out and the had a quick look on the file trolly and the receptionist person (or who ever it was dealing with the files) said they couldn't find it, mum pointed out that she needed the file and they said, 'its not my problem I'm going home' and thats what they did.

This ment that mum could not have the tests done and infact there was a bit of a panic as with out the test results and notes already in that mum could not be emitted for her op. To be fair the Dr was very upset and then hunted down the notes within 3 days which was good of them but this really just doesn't bode to well.

I posted this so late becuase I didnt want mum to read it before she went in for the op.

Attempts to Take a Bath (by sarah)

a) the water appeared to be orange - Alaric assured me that this was just clay particals from the heavey rain and that it was fine so I put lots of my nice bath pearls in to try and convince myself it was going to be a nice bath and that I wasn't sitting in something from a cess pit.

b) just lowered my backside into the water when - wha wah wah nick-nocks oh dear wet oh dear icky yuck wah wah wah. She had been sleeping and everybody else was out so I had mistakenly thought that I could have a bath to get rid of aches and pains and not be in the way.

c) Jean retrieved and de-festified back in the bath this time with her splashing me from the side, I here voices, Barbaras come back. I hurriedly start washing thinking they are bound to want to use the bathroom and I was right.

d) they tell Jean she must be about to enjoy her bath so now she thinks shes getting a bath and objects when I get back in the bath enough to make the bathtime unpleasant - I give up and get out.

With dispair I note that not enough time had actually passed for my nice bath pearls to have dissolved meaning that all their nice oil was wasted :'(

I should have known better really.

Public transport and the State of the World (by sarah)

I been thinking on the whole bus fare thing again and I am again struck by the stupidity of the world - like the restruant waste thing I am just erked I really am.

And you know what the worst bit is? Everyone expects me to have some radical view point on resources and oil when they find out about the degree - good grief I'd have thought that dealing with things like resources should be obvious?

Why are people so governed by mass media? Its driving me nuts. As I'm sure I've said before I think that reguardless of weather we have a significant affect on the climate we should be treating the resources as just that - resources and that means managing them properlly, nothing is infanite in this respect and to waste what we have is just stupidity on the grosses level. At the same time ramming stuff down the general publics throat continuously is not going to work. People are fed up of trying their best and being told - but its not nearly enough - the result? They give up and dont bother with anything.

I am thinking that things really do need to be targeted a level up - the companies, the countries inferstructure etc... The public transport being prohibatively expensive for a start is just pathetic as is the fact that imported food of the type we grow here is cheaper than that from just up the road! What is going on with that one? I mean come on!

Now I like variety - I would hate to see imports go but we don't need to import everything, do we? Why are our farmers commiting suicide? Why do we have very few full time farmers left, its slipping to the realms of hobby and a hard one at that.

I'd have thought that having an island that can not produce even its own food is just a bit dangerous? Maybe I'm pessamistic, maybe I am too hippy-esk for my own good but the whole thing just annoys me.

Sigh - I don't know what the answers are. I know my GCSE Business Studies teacher thought I had a humanitarian approach to running things which came through heavily in my business plans. Happy staff = less theifts etc... but never mind - I'm just babbling in dispair now.