M had her tonsils and adenoids removed yesterday. The surgery went really well but the trip to the hospital was about as much "fun" as I expected.

When the ENT dr. wanted to schedule the surgery I told him about her diabetes and he said he would check with her endocrinologist. I was told to call on Aug. 1 to find out schedule times and all of that. I feared from the beginning that getting all of this info on a Friday would be a bad thing. I was right.

I called the hospital to preregister her on Thursday-no records of her coming in. I should call her surgeon. I do that and get a recording. Later I get a phone call telling me not to worry, they have everything taken care of and will call me on Friday with a time.

So on Friday the hospital calls with all of the questions for the anesthesia dept. When I tell her M has type 1 diabetes she asks if we have orders from the endocrine dept. for her care during surgery. She also asks why our surgery is scheduled for 12:45 on Monday if she is a type 1 diabetic. I think the surgeon is taking care of this but she asks me to call and check. I call the endocrine dept. which of course is not answering the phone at 4:00 on a Friday. I call the surgeon's office and leave another message asking about the late surgery time. It takes the anesthesia dept. calling the endocrine dept. to get orders written. (And very happy they were to do that at 4:30 on a Friday I tell you!) The surgeon's office says don't worry about the late time just come in an hour earlier on Monday so they can start on IV to monitor diabetes.

On Monday we report to the surgery area at 9:45 for a 12:45 surgery time. The nurse comes out about 10:30 to take M's vitals for surgery. I ask her about the endocrine orders-they have none. I give her the copy of ours and she tells us these are parent orders not dr. orders. She calls endocrine who tells her as long as her numbers are okay not to worry about the IV. She asks me what number should we be worried about. I tell her and then I'm supposed to check numbers every 30 minutes and let her know what they are. (Even though the orders we received say the hospital will not allow us to use our meter. We must use their precised calibrated meter. I don't think there even was a meter in this area of the hospital!) So I tell her when M is at a 100 and I'm a little concerned because she's dropping fast. No concern from them though. Thirty minutes later she's at 80 and I tell them we need to get this IV set up. Before they can do that M has dropped even lower and their response is to give her apple juice. What they did not tell us was that the surgery could not be performed until at least 2 hours after fluids. So M's 12:45 surgery just got bumped to 2:30!

She had been so brave all day but asking a 7-year-old to sit in a surgery holding area for over 5 hours is ridiculous. Before she was able to go into surgery at 2:45 it took "goofy medicine" as they called it to get her in the operating doors.

The surgery went just fine. Everything was able to be done that needed to be done. Except she gets out of surgery about 4:00, doesn't want to wake up immediately and this surgery wing closes at 5:30 so I need to decide if I want her wheeled somewhere else or want to leave early. By this time I just want out so we took the early release!

It was just amazing to me that this is one of the best children's hospital around and there was such little organization. The other thing that was amazing to me was how little the nurses and staff knew about diabetes. One of the nurses asked me if we had sugar free popsicles at home. Not a concern with type 1 diabetes! The dr. told me I was an expert on her care and she would do better at home. He was right.

I will admit I just wanted to vent. Now I'll count my blessings. M came through the surgery with flying colors. So far, in her recovery, we are being able to control her pain level and maintain control of her diabetes. The poor kid is dying for food though! Keep us in your thoughts.