Kay is home from the hospital

 We brought Kay home  from Auburn hospital yesterday and she is still recovering.  The left side of her face still droops and even possibly more than yesterday when she came home.  Her speech is still damaged from how it was before the stroke but her ability to think and  make complete sentences seems about the same.  In fact it seems she is able to  express herself better than when she had the stroke. She had an appointment set up with the gastroenterologist  (sp lousy google spell checker)  before the stroke  which was a followup from her endoscopy.  As they don't do anything in these appointments except tell you how to conduct yourself from what  was learned in the endoscopy and Kay is of no help at all with the doctor I proposed to the nurse that I leave Kay here and I do the appointment instead of her as I would be doing all the talking anyway.  It was hilarious when I made the proposal as it seemed as it was something never heard of before in medicine.  At least to this person.  So she said she would have to talk to the doctor.  Later the doctor called me personally and said there was no need to get someone to stay with Kay and would just tell my in our telephone conversation.

Mary, Kay's health care worker came back today.  She has serious diabetes  problems aggravated by her ignorance of diabetes and a doctor evidently equally as ignorant. Her a1c is apparently running about 8 to 10 somewhere because her b/g is testing well over 300. More than once near 400.  She has not been here for me to have a long history of her tests.    Fortunately I heard her say she had to go to the car to get her insulin.  Insulin in a car in the weather we have been having meant it was ruined in the car probably before she could  use it.  Today her reading was over 300 so I said she could use 10 units of my fast acting insulin to see if it would bring her b/g down.  Sure enough the first reading about an hour and a half later was down nearly a hundred points. An hour or so later it was down to 170.  By the look on her face she seemed delighted.  Probably because she had not seen it there for a long time.  Her problem is that she has a sore on her foot which is common for diabetics causing amputations if it gets infected and then gets gangrene.    

From her attitude she has not been taking her b/g  readings seriously enough.  I gave her my Bernstein book "Diabetic solution" to read but told here I wanted it back in a couple weeks.  I felt that if she was serious about doing something with her diabetes she would have read it by then and perhaps asked me a few questions. The second day or so she said she went to sleep when reading it so I felt then she was not going to read it in a serious manner. As she was apparently not making any progress with it I told her to bring it back.  As disgusted as I am with her because of not reading the book I gave it to her to take to her appointment tomorrow with the Dr. so she could tell him she would be managing her diabetes with it's help. The sore on her foot is extremely serious as it is for any diabetic but especially her because with her high b/g it will heal even more slowly than better regulated diabetics. I told her it was so important that Bernstein wrote a whole chapter on care of the feet. 

Tomorrow though we will see how it goes and if she doesn't want to take the initiative on her diabetes care I will wash my hands of her and hope she gets the sore cured before it gets infected with something. 

Tomorrow I will ask her if she read the chapter on care of the feet and if she has not I think this will be the end of my efforts to help her. Really sad.  I hope she reads the chapter. Maybe with the good results of the fast acting insulin she took  she will start taking more of an interest in her diabetes management.