Phone appointment for next hospital diabetic review: how odd; no mention of blood tests?

[Lanny]

I got a letter earlier today for my next diabetic review at the hospital on 01:10:20 but, it’s a time slot for a phone appointment where the doctor rings me at 16:04: can be later depending on circumstances but, to expect a call around that time! My last diabetic review was last September 2019.

My health centre were testing my bloods anyway for other things back in July 2020 &, unbeknownst to at the time, also took my Hba1c which was 61 but, there wasn’t a review, as such as I’ve been under the hospital team since 2015. Having had erratic BS all this year & CV in May 2020, & the ongoing after effects, I’ve kept a VERY close eye on things testing much more often: also, been much braver in bunging in more insulin when needed; at times BS readings very very high but, it didn’t stay that way for long as I did something about it! So, that, sneaky I thought since I didn’t exoect it, Hba1c result was surprisingly 1 lower than the whole of 2019, when I wasn’t so ill, at 62! I was pleasantly gobsmacked!😱 But, that was on “tons” more insulin than last year!

All my reviews are at the hospital with bloods taken beforehand. This time, the letter says, no blood tests are mentioned & it’s just to talk about my current state of health compared to my condition, ie. diabetes, & will only be seen at outpatients if the doctor thinks I need to be seen?🙄

I take it that my local hospital is still affected by the CV pandemic, then: it’s a small hospital of just 2 surgical wards that are upstairs, a day procedure unit, a gynae ward, outpatients & an A&E department on the ground floor. I know from being in A&E twice due to CV that all of that department was needed for the CV side with the rest of the ground floor for the clean side for other A&E patients: all other outpatients appointments, ops. etc. were postponed until further notice; the wards, upstairs, were for CV patients & there are only 2 floors!

So, it’s good that other normal things are now proceeding again albeit triaged, in a way, by phone appointments first!

 

[Sally71]

Yes it's tricky at the moment isn’t it. At least you are getting some sort of appointment so will be able to tell them if you are worried about anything. We are supposed to have clinic appointments every 3 months. In March, after the appointment had been changed a couple of times, we managed to get one of the very last clinic appointments before they shut them down completely. That was daughter's annual review and hba1c was 52, not terrible but had gone up a couple of points from last time so I was not too happy! In June we had a telephone appointment so no bloods done, sent in Libre data via Libreview, couldn’t send in pump data but the Libre info alone provided enough information to have a useful discussion about. This week we were supposed to have an actual clinic appointment again, unfortunately on Monday we had a letter from daughter's school saying that a student in daughter's year group had tested positive for Covid, so daughter is now isolating at home (after only 6 days back at school...) So couldn’t go for hospital appointment, managed to change it to a phone one again which is better than nothing but of course still haven’t had any bloods done! They seemed pleased with us though, new pump and CGM data is easy to send in via diasend, so hopefully hba1c isn’t awful. Maybe in December we'll actually get a face to face appointment! Then again, with the way the virus is going at the moment, maybe we won’t