The Tide is Turning

I went to my third different endocrinologist appointment within 6 months today.

Needless to say, I was a little worked up, nervous, and edgy.

Endo appointments are very touchy things by nature. It's a snippet of a very complicated disease wrapped within a complicated life written down on paper. Your life transcribed in numbers - blood sugars, carb ratios, grams, correction factors. It's difficult not to feel judged, especially by someone who doesn't know because they don't live with it.

I went with a doctor who just happened to be trained by my old endocrinologist back at the Joslin in Boston. Just mentioning that I used to go to the Joslin Clinic around here made other endos I visited very defensive. Before anything else even came out of my mouth, I heard, "Well, yeah, the Joslin's good. But we do things different here. That doesn't make us wrong!!!" I had never assumed that different was wrong - but there was a standard of care that I do expect in any endocrinologist, anywhere.

Seeking out this standard of care meant that I had to drive an hour and a half to Ann Arbor. When I arrived, I was immediately whisked back to the nurses, where they did a fingerstick, downloaded both my meters, and then - asked for my pump. Whoops. Not the day to use an arm site.

"What do you want my pump for?" I asked suspiciously. This was something I had never even done at the Joslin. "I don't use a Medtronic sensor. I use a Dexcom. And I already downloaded all the information."

"Oh, you did? We normally download the dexcoms here too." Weird..... Once I (awkwardly) unhooked and handed over the Paradigm, the nurse retrieved all my settings off my pump, saving me from doing it (very tediously) manually.

After that, I didn't even wait two minutes before the doctor was in my room. She did an actual physical exam. She looked at my dexcom read outs and my blood sugar logs and knew how to use them. She made good, acceptable suggestions while asking me my thoughts on what was going on. She spent two and a half hours with me, her patient. When was the last time a doctor spent more than 10 minutes in my presence? I can't even remember!

What the heck was going on here?? Had I actually found a knowledgeable, caring, empathetic doctor? And then, while looking at my meal logs, she leaned over and said -
"I see you have sushi listed here and then two hours later you went low. Sushi's really hard to count. I try all the time at restaurants, and IT IS NOT EASY."

I think I have just died and gone to diabetic heaven.

My doctor, a non-diabetic, apparently tries to understand what her patients live every day by learning the ins and outs (and difficulties) of carb counting! She also remarked on which of the lancets she had tried out and which brand she thought were the most comfortable.

I never once felt *judged*. I felt the way I think you are supposed to feel after an endo appointment - empowered and educated to take care of yourself and your disease. I felt that she acknowledged my efforts in my control while still managing to fine tune things. And she listened. When I told her about some difficulties with another specialist I see, she immediately asked, "Do you want a second opinion? Because that just doesn't sound right." Exactly what I'd been thinking, but it's much more comforting coming out of a medical professional's mouth.

The drive home sure didn't feel as long as getting there. I was flying high on the slivers of hope that she had given me. I am so thankful that there are still doctors like this out there, even if it is a hike.

And I think she beat out even the Joslin. :)