Now what?

In an attempt to never, ever, ever have to go back to the first endo I tried out last month, I decided to look a little closer to home. It's a small town, yes, but there is a resonably sized hospital and a network of specialists affiliated with it. So when I noticed that the hospital diabetes center was having an insulin pump support group, I jumped right on the band wagon - for a couple of reasons.

Now, I've been on a pump for the entire 12 years I've been diabetic. So I can't say that I really need a "pump support group". (In reality, I DO need an insulin pen support group, or a MDI support group - if I ever had to go off my pump for ANY reason, I'd be flippin clueless.) But I figured I could use this group to kinda weasel my in and garner some information about the local endos - who's good? Who's not? Who includes the patient in care planning?

Devious? Maybe. But I can't handle going through another appointment like my last one.

Besides playing the spy, I wanted to hit this meeting, well, sadly, to meet people. People my own age. People who, like me, fight this thing every day. Having that kind of support makes such a huge difference. Moving to a new town is unbelievably hard, and diabetes puts another little wrench in the system, to say the least.

Unfortunately, after arriving at the meeting I must admit that I started to wonder if anyone in this town is under the age of 50. Kudos to these folks for learning the ropes on a pump for sure - but where are my 25-35 year old D girls?

The session itself was actually great - a nutritionist spoke about several different issues. I learned a few things I actually want to work into my meal planning, like carb factors. The most entertaining part, however, was when a "low reservoir" alarm went off somewhere. I kid you not, the entire room (me included) looked down at their waistbands. :)

At the end of the session, the floor was opened for questions and I started poking around about doctors in the area. Then the bomb dropped:

"Oh, yeah - there are two endocrinologists at the hospital. They are both very good. But they are BOTH retiring at the end of July. And there is NO REPLACEMENT for them yet."

Such it is in small town America. It is almost impossible to compete with the big cities for doctors, so often we get the rejects or it takes years to fill the hole. Not to mention the fact that I was also told that with 2 endos in town, it still took 6 months to get an appointment with one. What now?

Looks like I'm headed back to Dr. Sucktastic in May.