Share review of St Mary's Hospital

St Mary's Hospital 2018-03-21 Person 4 5 0

I had a very experienced surgeon, Mr Javeed Khan, carrying out my second cataract operation. The whole surgical and ward team worked with quiet efficiency and did everything I expected them to with regard to my care, including the administering of the catheter for the general annasethetic into my arm in the inside of my elbow which was not as painful as with the first cataract operation when it was inserted into a vein of a very cold hand. I really appreciated the kindness and compassion shown by all and was especially glad that Nurse Sarah dispensed the eyes drops. I feel the understanding of type 1 diabetes by all ward staff could be improved. A short delay in having my operation meant that I had still not had my Humalog insulin for lunch by 5 pm (three hours later than advised by the Diabetes Clinic as the outside time limit.) Nurses were reluctant to let me have access to my locked up insulin 'pen' and said they could not help me give the injection. They arranged for me to see the on-call annaethetist to see me at 5 pm but he was over-cautious about my Humalog dose (not wanting me to have a hypo-glaecemic reaction) and asked me to reduce it to just 3 units, resulting in poor blood glucose readings of 16.2 and 19.2 at home the same day and 16.4 and 19.2 at home the next day (21 March 2018) as a result of following my normal food carbohydrate allowances but having no exercise as I recovered from the operation and general anaesthetic. I did also take my normal Lantus insulin dose before bed. I feel this was unfortunate, as the on-call annaethetist starting by saying to me that I almost certainly knew more about my diabetes than he did! (Please note that the above blood sugar readings are worse than those I had when I suffered for 25 days with a severe flu infection (with vomiting on one day) in late Jan/Feb this year, as I was able to deal with it correctly by taking considerably increased doses of insulin, subsequently reduced as I gradually recovered over 25 days.)