• Please Remember: Members are only permitted to share their own experiences. Members are not qualified to give medical advice. Additionally, everyone manages their health differently. Please be respectful of other people's opinions about their own diabetes management.
  • Screening for type 1 diabetes: We now have a new forum section which is for parents who, after having their child screened for type 1, have received a positive result that at some stage their child will be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Where possible, please do offer your support and experiences of having a child diagnosed. https://forum.diabetes.org.uk/boards/forums/screening-for-type-1-community-chat.59/
  • We seem to be having technical difficulties with new user accounts. If you are trying to register please check your Spam or Junk folder for your confirmation email. If you still haven't received a confirmation email, please reach out to our support inbox: support.forum@diabetes.org.uk

Hospital admission for monitoring/observation

Status
This thread is now closed. Please contact Anna DUK, Ieva DUK or everydayupsanddowns if you would like it re-opened.

ChloeS

New Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Parent of person with diabetes
Wanting to hear from anyone else who has had this experience. Daughter is 10 years old, diagnosed 3.5 years ago. She is very independent at self-managing and has a Libre. There have been episodes of snacking without injecting which I though had ceased but am now tightly watching for. Consultant at clinic in February this year was happy with evidence of management in terms of recording and knowledge but (which I agreed with) felt her HbA1c (71) was not good enough - her advice was to consider a pump which we agreed with and I understood that daughter was to be added to the local waiting list for this.

This June a different consultant pulled us in for an early unscheduled appointment, said that daughter's then HbA1c of 76 was putting her at risk of imminent hospital admission (daughter has not had an admission since diagnosis) and insisted on much closer monitoring and manual recording which we are still doing and overall I thought things were improving (identified issues of daughter undercorrecting if not monitored though always bolusing correctly for food and not always bolusing for food immediately when outside house though far from perfect, and unexplained highs frequently but not consistently overnight), judging from appointment we had in August. Further appointment this week (when I explained again that we had agreed to a pump which neither consultant nor the DSN apparently knew about) and consultant is insisting on hospital admission for daughter for 3-4 days to identify cause of erratic levels. She presented this as a routine intervention but I have not come across this scenario of hospital admission when there isn't a history of clinical problems caused by DKA or hypo.

Am assuming that intention is to see if levels are still erratic when daughter is essentially in a closed environment and supervised by someone other than parents/school/out of school care (so finding it hard to believe that basically I'm not trusted to care for daughter though I know this is not a helpful way to think) but keen to hear from anyone else with experience of this.
 
Tagging @Sally71 and @Bronco Billy for you @ChloeS as they’re parents of T1s. It does sound strange and I understand your concern. The thing that occurs to me is that hospital is hardly like her usual environment so doesn’t give a good reflection of her normal life. When I was diagnosed, my blood sugars dropped a lot once I got out of hospital.

As she’s 10, couldn’t the cause of erratic levels be approaching puberty? Has the consultant implied any ‘bad’ cause, eg your daughter not bolusing or secretly eating? Even if they got her levels better in hospital, that doesn’t tell them what the cause is. Could she be skipping injections at school, for example?

I don’t see why the consultant can’t use the Libre information. I’d also add that if I was that age and was told I had to go into hospital to be monitored like that, I purposely wouldn’t comply and would do everything I could to mess their plans up, but maybe that’s just me. What does your daughter think of the idea? Could you make a plan to improve things and then re-evaluate in three months after an HbA1C?
 
School monitors all her injections. Another consultant suggested puberty as a reason; this one seems dubious about lifestyle (after school clubs, late evening meals) but has not actually flat out said we should change this. Daughter agreeing to go along with situation - I don't think we have a choice but to agree to this, it wasn't being presented as a choice.
 
Well, it is a choice surely? They’d need a court order to compel your daughter and as another consultant has suggested puberty and you’re working to improve things, that’s not likely. Could you get a second opinion? Eg from the consultant who suggested puberty as a reason. I understand your feelings about the whole thing. It sounds an over-reaction and rather insulting.
 
I confess I haven't heard of this before. The HbA1c, while higher than everyone would like, isn't outrageously high. It's possible that your hospital has been identified as an outlier and is looking at ways to improve the results of their patients overall.
 
Status
This thread is now closed. Please contact Anna DUK, Ieva DUK or everydayupsanddowns if you would like it re-opened.
Back
Top