brightgardener8 said:Maybe it would be better if my sister wrote this, since she was the one taking mom to the ER with her husband yesterday...
Anyway, they were stuck waiting there for over three hours. It felt like everyone just wanted to get rid of them and pass them off to someone else... just the usual. At first, they told us they wouldn't give mom mannitol because she didn't need it (or some excuse like that), but then, in the end, she actually got it.
In the middle of all that, some medical professional made the brilliant observation that we shouldn't feed mom because her blood sugar was over 9 (?!?!?!).
Honestly, guys, when you hear stuff like that from someone who is supposed to be a medical expert, it makes you want to lose it.
First of all, mom is a diabetic on insulin, so her sugar needs to be LOWERED, and 9 is an elevated reading (she had eaten breakfast before we arrived at the hospital).
Now we're dealing with a whole other headache involving mom's primary care physician. According to him, WE are now responsible for bringing all the documentation to the board every single month (just so she can be assigned a medical professional to give her injections), even though until recently, he and his staff handled everything.
So, I called the emergency line. I didn't really need to explain anything, but they just told me the ambulance was on its way. Once we arrived, the ER doctor started "lecturing" me right off the bat, claiming that the ER isn't meant for cases like this—that patient transport should be organized through the primary doctor and that we should have had a referral for outpatient care. Basically, they acted like it was our fault for not planning this specific situation out perfectly... 😵
Back at the hospital, we were once again told that mom is actually doing okay considering her diagnosis, and that she doesn't actually need Mannitol because based on her labs (blood sugar, enzymes, urea, pupil response, etc.), there wasn't any sign that her condition was caused by edema or anything similar. So, we sat there waiting for about three hours, completely unsure if they were ever going to administer the Mannitol or not, only for it to turn out that she did receive it... after which she finally woke up and started talking. 😍
Throughout this whole ordeal, I actually stayed pretty quiet. I just explained to the doctor that this wasn't the first time this happened, and that mom has received Mannitol in similar situations before, which I guess was enough. 🙏
And that "brilliant" medical professional who tried to explain mom's glucose levels to me... and then later tried to explain things that actually fall within my own professional field, but misinterpreted everything absolutely incorrectly... honestly, what can I even say? It was pathetic.