This is all so strange, but my every contact with the NHS this year has gone wrong for some reason.
My diabetes experience so far has been little more than 'here's some tablets and lose some weight'. So imagine my delight when I actually get an appointment at the Diabetese Clinic at St George's Hospital - at last, some proper advice! My enthusiasm slightly reduced when I found out I had an afternoon appointment and had to fast for 10 hours for the blood test. But I can do that, no problem.
I turn up and am sent for a urine sample (I'd actually just been to the toilet but managed to squeeze some out). I'm weighed and measured. Then I'm called in to see the diabetic nurse and we have a good chat, explains what's happening to my body, chat about my slippd disc and various ailments and how I'm going through a major change, etc etc. All good stuff and she gives me a load of leaflets, forms for a blood test and ECG scan of my heart. I don't ask about the tests since I'm overjoyed to finally have some information about diabetese.
Then I see the diabetese dietician and again we have a good chat, explains how food releases glucose and my body absorbs or doesn't absorb it, food and bad cholesterol and lipids, balancing meals and all that stuff. More leaflets and a nice little poster for my fridge. Then a rather long wait to see the chiropodist (diabetic feet are problems) for a short time and him telling me to go back if I have any problems with my feet because they might need to be amputated (yes, pleasant, I know).
Then off to find the blood test room and I'm starting to feel a little light-headed after no food all day and no pills. This is in another part of the hospital so it's not my previous vampires, but they draw blood and I ask where to go for the ECG... 15 minutes or so walk later I find it, as far from the clinic as it's possible to get and remain within the hospital, walking through empty, badly sign-posted corridors. After a 15 minutes wait I'm seen, shirt off, electrodes stuck on me in various places (including ankles) with double sticky strips put on my chest so she can rip them off, pulling on the hair so she can say an absent minded 'sorry' when I winced (the kind of 'sorry' you know isn't meant and has been uttered so many times during the day that's it's automatic), puts the cardiac print-out on the end of the couch and tells me to take it back to whoever referred me and walks out the door while I'm dressing (is that rude or is that being efficient?).
I told the nurses at the cardiac place and the receptionists at the clinic that I hadn't eaten all day. What I thought I was saying was, 'help, I'm not well because I haven't eaten' but what they heard was, 'poor mite must be starving'. I should have gone for something to eat after the blood test since I was light-headed but it was so late in the afternoon that I was worried that the cardiac place would shut and I would have to come back another day. Clearly I'm partly to blame in all this for letting things happen to me and simply doing what I'm told but how come no-one noticed or listened? I turn up fasting for a 2.30pm appointment and no-one thinks to suggest I eat something, particularly since, as the dietician told me, it's important for diabeatniks to eat regularly.
By this time I'm very light-headed and my back is aching. I hobble back to the clinic to hand in the ECG print-out and I'm told to wait for a doctor to look at it. I hold onto the counter to steady myself, then I'm told to go and sit down because they can't find a doctor. I'm then told, 'the doctor says it's ok to go' (not whether my ECG is ok or that I'm going to die, but not until next week so I can go home now). I stand up and nearly faint, obviously swaying and one of the receptions reaches out to help. I say I'm ok because I just want to get home and they let me walk out. I vaguely ask what happens next over my shoulder as I leave and they say (I think) that they'll write to me. I just want to leave.
I spent 2 1/2 hours there. No food since the previous night and no tablets (and it's the lack of tablets that send the glucose spiraling). I head straight for the hospital shop for a mars bar and locozade to get some calories into my body and weave my way out and off the hospital grounds. I have another near-faint as I walk down the road to get to the bus-stop, leaning against a wall for a minute, and all I want is to get home. I ring my physio (with whom I had an appointment) to cancel and say I'll just pay the late cancellation fee.
Luckily, a bus arrives straight away and I get on. Off the bus goes, only to be stopped by the police who get on and do a quick search - for what? who knows? It just seems right that there's a further delay to my getting home!
I get home and I need food and pills but all I can do is check my blood glucose level (the nurse drummed in reguar testing and gave a booklet to record test results in) and then I collapse on the bed and sleep for three hours ... then I wake up, have food and tablets and start feeling more like a human being.
I get up this morning and my glucose level was still 3 times what it should be so I went to the gym to get it down (I had a training session booked in any case). And my back was aching from all the walking round endless hospital corridors. Not a happy bunny.
What started off so well went so wrong and I don't understand why. I should clearly be more assertive about how I feel and what I need (but that runs in my family where medical stuff is concerned). How can I nearly faint in a hospital and be able to just walk out the door without anyone saying something? Why did I have to wait so long for the blood test that I was fasting and not taking tablets for? I should have said something.
You'd think a diabetes clinic would know better really - I now do and won't be putting up with that again.
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