Saturday, September 11, 2010

Sugar can put you to sleep or anger you to stay awake.

If you want to stay awake, don't go for a 2 hour glucose tolerance test. You lose your ability to sit upright within 15 minutes. Give it 25 minutes more and you'll want  to sleep because it is too much work to breathe. You will drift off waiting for empty oxygen tanks to give you some chest expansion. But you'll not to get to sleep when very shaky paramedic hands try to put screwdrivers in your veins to start an IV drip. Wonder what med this paramedic is on. 

As this time elapses your body says OK enough of this sleeping break during the middle of the day and you wake up to wait for hours in ER to be told: No, you cannot have a sugar reading test. Anger builds up. You were supposed to have your glucose tested 2 hours after drinking this fruit punch with the wallop of a volcano. You may ask to have it tested so you don't have to go through this _____ again. But no the ER wants not to hear any requests. So you stew. Wait 2-1/2  hours more to be allowed to go to the bathroom and get a blood draw on their schedule. Then you wait another hour for blood work to come in. Sure, your reading is normal now. Sure, you want me to wait another three hours to perhaps see a doctor.

Sure I value your value of me, ER department. You take the blood results and decide to leave. The ER staff wants you to leave. Do they say any precautions? Nope. Sign here and leave. But the son says cross that off saying you were advised against leaving. Do they have the readings from the lab clinic that doesn't believe in oxygen belongs in oxygen tanks. No. Do they have the paramedic's report? No. All I have is some wonderful normal lab reading taken two and a half hours after it should have been taken.

Sugar can put you to sleep but it can wake you with anger. Now, do you wonder why I want to unwind in a music box and sleep among cat whiskers?

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