Not a Full Moon

As we pulled out of the parking lot and headed towards home, I turned to my daughter and asked, "Is it a full moon?"

"I don't think it's even close, but wow."

This week's endo day was full of chaos.

The traffic on the way in was full of terrible drivers making bizarre decisions.

As we turned into the parking lot, I let out a sigh of relief.  "Finally someone will take this car away from me for a little while." That was before the valet attendant nearly ran over my daughter as she tried to enter the building.

The bustle was evident as soon as we entered the clinic doors. Phones were ringing.  There were several patients waiting at the front desk.  Staff were scurrying around.  We took the last available waiting room seats and waited to be called for the traditional first step of height, weight, A1C and meter downloading. We were half an hour early for our 4:00 appointment, so expected to sit a little while.  A big dent had been made in homework when at 4:10, our endocrinologist himself came around the corner.  "Do they know you're here?" he asked.

"Yeah...I mean we checked in..."

He disappeared into the height, weight, etc. room and seconds later my daughter's name was called.

He took us into his office before her pump had finished downloading and started with the preliminary conversation. Soon the pump and its information had been delivered.  "So we were talking about lows, but I'm seeing a lot of high numbers here in the evenings."

Indeed, the week we were viewing had some awful looking 270's and 300-somethings.  Which didn't sound familiar at all.  Knowing that sometimes they print out a week or two back, I glanced over at the date.  "This says it's from August."  (Vacation week to be exact.)

On we went like that, with the doctor needing to take my daughter's pump in hand to accurately see and discuss the current basals, total daily dose, correction factors, and insulin to carb ratios.  We used the downloaded Dexcom graph to discuss some potential treatment changes. We came away with a few suggestions for dealing with the recent school lows, and a minor tweak for afternoon.  But it was hard to see the direct impact of insulin doses on blood sugars without the pump download. We never received the A1C results.  They'll let us know.  Maybe, I guess.

This is a top-notch clinic, with which we've always been happy.  I'm sure there's a good explanation for whatever trouble the medical assistants were having. There was at least one unfamiliar face in the back room, either new or subbing.  I overheard at least one other conversation about difficulty downloading data.  I'm pretty sure the whole thing was a fluke.  It would just make more sense if I could blame a full moon.