Bewildered

[TuTusweet]

A few more details. My neighbour really is fit as a fiddle. His garden isn't big enough for him so he maintains the public/communal areas. He does not wear glasses so I think he reads his meter correctly.
Actually he is a bit of a trial to talk to because his health and his wife's is his favouite subject. I.ve heard him often say
"If you don't look after your health no-one else will" He has every available test and jab and scan if he can wangle it.
Also his wife is fierce in his defence. I can't imagine what she would do to any Doctor or nurse she thought was not giving their best. It is she who insists on his daily test and records all his food "to ensure we keep his BG level"
All in all a mystery to me. reminds me of another neighbour who had Cholesterol so high his GP said with that reading you should be dead. Didn't please him but he got his statins and told me with great glee that he could carry on eating fat by the barrow load. "That's where the flavour is young man" It was the Young man bit that narked me. I was 70 at the time !!!!

 

[Jaylee]

And thusly reducing the pensions load and cash from the NHS . Result !

Signy

You got no idea.. After feeding my T2 dad for two weeks in hospital on high carb stuff, letting him trend on some shameful numbers. Then taking him off the ward & wheeled to a side room to "slip away quietly". They gave up & sent him home, upping the care package.. A nurse rang me at work in the morning after my mum guessed something was up. So when I enquired about his BS the nurse told me he was fine at 3.5mmol.. Yarp. I had to educate this professional regarding what the meter was saying...

 

[Heathenlass]

Oh Gods I'm so sorry, Jaylee. That is shameful

Signy

 

[Jaylee]

Oh Gods I'm so sorry, Jaylee. That is shameful

Signy

I really don't want to get started on the dignity of the elderly regarding health treatment. I could start a whole new thread....At worst they get overlooked, put on the back burner & neglected... & recent experience? At best used as "lab rats" for "corporate" data collation...

 

[graj0]

So perhaps this is a national thing that old age is left to non target levels to be interpreted by nurses and we aren't going to be really looked after...

My father, T2 and 87, is expected to keep his BG below 10, which he tells me is what he manages to do. He does keep an up to date record for the morning BG readings but never bothers in the afternoon because it creeps up. So not ideal, not very strict, but better than 16 - 18.
I think maybe like a lot of things it's a bit of a lottery possibly related to where you live, very difficult to say. Sadly, although there are many people, like my father, being of a certain age, but still able to use a computer, probably don't use it in the same way that we on this forum might do. We all would like answers about how to manage our condition, because often, we don't get the answers from the place you'd expect. Also, we can get those answers any time of the night or day.

 

[graj0]

I really don't want to get started on the dignity of the elderly regarding health treatment. I could start a whole new thread....At worst they get overlooked, put on the back burner & neglected... & recent experience? At best used as "lab rats" for "corporate" data collation...

Interesting, but sadly been there, seen it, complained about it, and got shouted down as being "out of order", still, saves the flight to Zurich and the cost of Digitas. I'm pleased to say that my poor old mum is at least in a safe and caring place unlike this time last year which was a nightmare because of the way the "system" works. As you say, write a book on it, we've got all the correspondence.

 

[LucySW]

I really don't want to get started on the dignity of the elderly regarding health treatment. I could start a whole new thread....At worst they get overlooked, put on the back burner & neglected... & recent experience? At best used as "lab rats" for "corporate" data collation...

What happened, Jaylee?

 

[Jaylee]

What happened, Jaylee?

Long story. A couple of years ago they stepped up my dads "care package" to cope with his demeture & T2. Meanwhile I had tightened up his diet a little, taking my mum out of the old mindset toward D diet.. Though he had no complications apart from dementia. Though a series of "mini strokes" may have compounded that.
The doctors neglected to tell us they were actually monitoring his demise... I found out after they estimated he actually had 3 days to live.. At that time My sister was in the States.. I was messaging her saying all was well.. Then by gut instinct & Googling some stuff on his underbed notebook & seeing I big red DNR on the front cover I phoned my sister to tell her "sh@7 just got real" & said good bye to my dad.. He died within 23 hours of coming out of hospital...

Recently my mum has had "memory loss" nothing major, nothing dangerous.. I put it down to the loss of my dad more than anything..?
So last week we go to a "memory clinic" at her local hospital where they do some tests.
We walk into a swanky new building with its own free parking for patients with an appointment. Which is unusual because the rest of the site is pay & display.. I am hit by the "coporate" styling & blurb in the foyer & waiting area.. The pharmaceutical firm "Lilly" featured heavily on a pin board with various stuff on avoiding dementia & such like.. The first form we fill out is a "data protection" gubbins.
We go in a room for an interveiw. I get given another multiple choice form to fill out on any changes in my mums character &'her ability to handle household items while they ran some tests on her... Filling the form out reinforced the fact my mum hasn't changed.. She's still a scatty woman. Then I was told although my mum is fit for her age & doesn't come into the criteria for someone to develop these issues, she had failed her Q&A test putting her in the "grey area". (Whatever that is?) So they plan a CT scan in about ten weeks.... I looked at the questions & tests she was given in the other room and to be honest, I would have fudged some of them too under the circumstances....

I can't help feeling I sold my mum out to what is essentially just a "research facility" taking up valuable room for expansion or parking space for a baby unit...