My hospital-based diabetic horror stories include:
1. not being allowed to keep my insulin and syringes with me! The nurses took them away and put them in a fridge (not sure if it was for pharmaceuticals or for the nurses’ lunches and milk for tea and coffee!). When I asked to have my insulin it came back from the fridge frozen solid! The hospital pharmacy was closed for the weekend (no, I don’t understand how a hospital is supposed to work without access to drugs?!) so there was a major exercise to get a pharmacist back in to issue some more insulin. Of course, they didn’t have any porcine insulin in stock so I was forced to accept the pseudo-human stuff that takes away my hypo warnings! Stressful? Oh, yes! Moral of the story: guard your insulin with your life, don’t let it out of your sight, and don’t believe anyone who says they will “look after it” for you!
2. being put on a “sliding scale” while undergoing surgery after which I woke up feeling like I was about to drift off into a diabetic coma; the nurses thought that a blood sugar in the low 20s was appropriate! After much argument with the nurses it turned out that part of the reason for my startospheric blood sugar was that rather than the standard post-operative saline drip they had decided that a 10% glucose drip would be safer! When they refused to change it for a normal drip I disconnected it myself which provoked hysterical panic among the nurses who called the surgeon to “reason with me”! The surgeon was horrified, told the nurses to disconnect the sliding scale and to give me back my insulin! [In this case I don’t think ANY of the nurses on the ward spoke English as their native language]