So, What Happened Was...

i have developed hypoglycemia, either in this pregnancy, or at some other time, and i just never knew.

my blood sugar was dangerously low tuesday night, and then we ate dinner and the sudden rise caused my body to go into a sort of shock, causing a seizure. it's not at all unheard of with hypoglycemia.

the problem is that we didn't find out about it until 2 days after it happened. in a routine glucose test usually done around the 26 week mark for pregnant women. my blood sugar at the time of the test was 42. that would cause a great many people to lose consciousness.

because our insurance company waited until the very last moment to complete our intake information every single step of the way, i was 2 weeks behind on taking my glucose test.

and because i'm pregnant, when i have complained of being light headed or dizzy, it has been immediately explained away. which is understandable, except i have also had a high heart rate and low blood pressure. hypoglycemia isn't rare. especially in pregnancy. at any time it would have been more than reasonable for a nurse or doctor to suggest that when i feel faint, i should sit down and maybe try to drink some juice and eat some cheese to see if that helps. but instead the advice was always the same: sit down and have some water, it will clear up. it's nothing to be worried about.

so tuesday evening, when i got into an after-dinner bath to relax and began to feel light headed, i did exactly as i've been told: i laid back, shut my eyes, took some deep breaths, and waited for it to pass.

but it didn't. instead i ended up in the hospital for 24 hours submitted to a battery of tests: eeg, ekg, mri, blood work, labs, 2 ultrasounds, 2 IVs, 3 blood draws and constant overnight monitoring of myself and the baby. e missed 2 days of work and i faced my first morning of not being home when jp woke up. at the end of it all, no real explanation could be given and i was given medical orders to not drive for 6 months and to not bathe, swim, or shower without adult supervision.

we called in favors that we had no right to ask for from people who owe us nothing. people we barely know. i recovered physically and my mind began to absorb the reality that i had no idea if this could happen again. i didn't know how to prevent it. i didn't know what caused it. i wasn't even sure i knew what it was.

and then a simple, routine test gave us the answers to everything. a test that came 3 days too late because a company allows itself to get so overwhelmed that it pushes its clients to the limits. because nurses and doctors fall into a mechanical pattern and stop really paying attention to the people instead of their charts.

i would gladly take some responsibility in all of this if i knew how i could. i'm not a trained medical professional. blood sugar levels weren't a part of my arsenal of life knowledge. i could google my symptoms, but heaven knows where that would lead me.

i listed my symptoms at least a half a dozen times. i tried to be adamant in explaining that 20 minutes of standing on my feet didn't seem like a reasonable amount of time to make me that light headed, that this didn't happen to me in my last pregnancy. i asked the insurance company to please try to rush my assignment to a doctor because i needed a referral to an OB so i could get back on track. when i got my assignment, i asked the doctor giving the referral to please hurry it along because i was getting behind on labs and appointments.

nobody listened. they've all heard it 100 times before. "i need to see a doctor now because of ____", "but MY case is truly important". i never claimed to be important. i just wanted to be seen on the timeline that every tricare beneficiary is supposed to be seen on.

and had i been seen on said timeline, we could have avoided the emotional and physical pain and the fear that we were subjected to as a family for 60 petrifying hours.

make no mistake, i am grateful for medical care. i'm grateful for insurance, for not having to pay out of pocket for these expenses. i am not grateful to have had a seizure because someone couldn't have pushed paperwork through a day or two faster. 27 days of red tape for a person to see a doctor is ridiculous. it's one thing to wait 4 weeks for an open appointment (though that it also frustrating). but when there are slots available that you cannot have because someone hasn't scanned something or something just hasn't been mailed or faxed yet, when papers are sitting in a bin... and when those waiting papers translate into what they did for my family, and for me...

what happened was unnecessary. and insofar as i have a say, it won't ever happen again.

but i wish i could say the same for everyone dealing with this healthcare system.