Back home

Jen's back home after a short stay at John Muir. We're not sure what happened, it wasn't DKA. She's doing really well now and able to receive calls...

Sorry I don't update this blog when she's doing well...but no news is good news as far as this blog is concerned!

Jen back in the clutches of the White Robes

Jen has been sick the past few days and vomiting quite a bit. Her blood sugar started to rise even with aggressive insulin treatment at home, so we had to go.

Unfortunately Jen is back in the hospital, but this time I took her to John Muir in Walnut Creek instead of subjecting her to Kaiser. I hope that 'the more the merrier' applies to health care and medical opinions in general. If not, it could also serve to magnify the already overwhelming stupidity found in western medicine's approach to sickness (i.e. if we can't explain it then it must not exist). So it goes with diabetes.

It is my hope that she is back home BEFORE Halloween. It is MONUMENTALLY unfair that she has missed one Halloween due to this, it would be beyond unfair to have her miss 2.

Jen is coming home!

Dance!


Jen is coming home tomorrow!!

Too much to do!

I may be calling some of you to see if you're available to check in on her during the week...

"Man seeks revenge, kills 20 at Kaiser"

So...

Jen is coming HOME now. Turns out that the 10 people that are experts at these things all didn't bother to see that Jen apparently doesn't fit the criteria for the KPAC nursing facility. I'm too pissed off, tired, crazy to even rant about it.

So Jen is coming home (according the latest which could change at ANY moment knowing these people) within the next couple of weeks. I'm now trying to see what the best way to take care of her is once she's home, they're telling me she needs 24 hour monitoring...I'm not sure it needs to be that drastic but someone should at least talk to her once every hour or so.

Oh,

So after all the talk and promises we've finally had a 'Kaiser intervention' with representatives from all departments of Kaiser to discuss Jen's condition. Overall they are positive, but their recommendations did not go down well with Jen.

The plan at Kaiser is to evaluate Jen for release within a couple of weeks not home, but to a skilled nursing facility. This would be a stay that would probably last not more than 3 months, and then she could come home. They would like her to get more intensive physical therapy so that she is stronger before coming home. In principal I like the idea of making sure she's strong enough to be at home, but hate the fact that she is locked up in another hospital for even more time. On a side note she 'celebrated' her 1 year anniversary in the hospital this week. Yay.

Jen's feeling defeated and generally down about everything right now, understandably. I'm trying to get her to see the positive, the fact that she is finally well enough to even start the plan for a release is huge. It's hard to get through sometimes.

So...it looks like she'll not be home until at the very earliest, November. I'm going to do all I can to make sure she doesn't spend another Christmas in the hospital...unfortunately I can't do anything about our favorite holiday, Halloween. :(

Update

So, I guess there's a lot to talk about...

Jen's doing OK at the moment. The Dexcom continuous glucose monitor has been installed and has been runnning for the past couple of weeks with varied results. One of the problems is that there is only really one person in the hospital qualified to operate the device and fix it if something goes wrong. All of the nurses try to learn how to operate it but are operating on average at about an Iraq invasion success rate.

The Dexcom unit itself is pretty nice and simple. I have a feeling that it works better than is being demonstrated at Kaiser, if you do the calibrations correctly and on time I think that the unit will help her out quite a bit. Of course, we'll have to buy her one of her own...because Kaiser bought the current one just for the hospital. How nice.

At this point the Gastric pacer is off the table, due to Jen's ability to eat on her own for the past couple of months. I think that this is great news, as the less surgery, the better. Jen is nervous that she will fall back into her previous state, but her doctors think that if we keep her blood sugars under tight control than we can stave that off.

They are thinking of releasing her soon. Obviously it depends on how well her blood sugars are controlled, and switching her to oral medication...but that is the only criteria. That actually scares me at this point...she is very medicated and I am just not comfortable leaving her at home alone. If I did at the state she's in now I know that we'd have a bad scenario very quickly. Kaiser does not have a program that helps people out once they're released that is covered by insurance. I'm looking into what to do.

More later...

Yay

Jen had her continuous glucose monitor installed! Now we can actually track her blood sugar and set the alarms to warn her BEFORE she goes too low. Oh happy day, it only took Kaiser a year and a half to figure this one out. A new record!

Updates are evil

Hi all, not much that's new. Jen is doing well, been eating normally for over a month so that's fantastic. Her glucose sensor is on it's way, and no word yet from UCSF but we expect it soon (no, really).

No news is good news, unless it's...um, bad. But that ain't (contraction of: ai, not Example: I ai not going to be a phat skinny pimpin' at da clubz wit all da hoes this fine evening.) the case.

Meh

Jen has been doing well until last night, she had a low blood sugar episode but is OK now. We are still in a holding pattern until we get the OK from UCSF to transfer her there. I am also pushing them to install the glucose sensor now as opposed to after she gets out.

In other news, go see Wall-E. It's amazing. And if you're wondering what I'm going to be wanting for my birthday, it's the 'Ultimate Wall-E' shown here

Success

They removed Jen's chest port yesterday, so she's on track for getting to UCSF within a week now.

Progress...