Released

January 6, 2012

Sunday morning arrived and Seth and I were both antsy to go home.  We thought we were going home the day before, but Seth had a high BG in the morning, so the doctor wanted to adjust his nighttime Lantus one more time and observe him.  At this point he is now up to 6 units on the Lantus.   The doctor said that it would depend on his BG reading at 10:00 (2 hours after breakfast).

10:00 came and Seth tested his BG.  The meter read 304.  We were so discouraged, but the doctor said that they were going to release us anyway and she had scheduled us an appointment with Nurse Ranft at TVC the next morning.  Nurse Ranft is a CNP who used to be the diabetes education coordinator in Fairbanks, so we feel pretty comfortable with her overseeing our case.  Please remember we live in a rural area, we do not have ready access to specialists.

We called Mark and got packed up.  We were ready and waiting when he arrived.  We were discharged and made a quick stop at Sam’s Club on our way home to pick up a few groceries.

As we were shopping, we also decided to eat at Sam’s.  We checked the carb count on the Polish Hot Dogs back in the refrigerator section 5 c’s and the bun, 45c’s.  That put Seth at 50 c’s for lunch.  We discussed where to go to do Seth’s test and injection.  Seth did not want to go to the bathroom because (in his words) they are disgusting.  Back by the buns are pallets of salt and it is kind of an isolated area that he thought would be okay.  I told him to have a seat on the salt and do his test.  He got out his tester, put the strip in, swabbed his finger with alcohol and had the lancet poised over his finger when a gentleman came over and stopped in his tracks.  Seth looked up and got a little bit nervous.  I smiled a little bit and nodded encouragement.  Just as Seth pushed the plunger the guy says, I’m going to need you to move this little party out of the way, I need the salt that you guys are blocking.  Apparently, out of all the 100’s of bags of salt back in that corner, he wanted THE ONE that Seth was sitting on.   Seth kindly moved, and told me we needed to find another spot, he didn’t want to do it there again.  Thank you for your patience and kindness sir (said in my most sarcastic voice possible).

We moved up to the front of the store to a fire exit by the pharmacy and proceeded to test and inject without further incident, but Seth was a little shaken by the experience.  We survived our first public outing.