Endocrinologist

Tomorrow,Brianna goes to the endocrinologist, or endo's office.   These appointment are every 3 months.  They are a check up to see how everything is going with Brianna's Diabetes.  

So what happens at the visit??   First when she gets there they always have her pee in a cup.  They check to see if she has ketones.  Brianna NEVER goes for them, at this point not sure why we even go through the effort in trying, but we do.   They are fine with her not going.  We do monitor her really close if her blood glucose is high or if we suspect she has ketones.  Then they do the typical things like height and weight.  Kinda nice to see how much she is growing every 3 months.  Then comes the part we all love/hate the A1C check.  For Brianna they check it by a finger stick.   For parents it is kinda like our report card.  I try not to think about it like that, but it is hard.  Good or bad it is not really our fault, but unfortunately we look at it that way.   Brianna has blood work done every six months to a year to monitor her thyroid, they also watch her cholesterol, and then the normal blood work. 

Then they take us back to a room.  A nurse then comes in and checks her blood pressure.  Then we go over all the settings that are currently in her pump.  All the medication she is on and if she needs any refills.  They has about lows/highs- sometimes that seems like an odd question after all she does have diabetes.

Then nurse leaves and we wait for the doctor or in our case Nurse Practitioner to come in.   We have an awesome relationship with her.  We have had almost all our appointments with her since being discharged from the hospital.  What is great about her is she takes my phone calls or answers my e-mails about changes I want to make.  She also really remember Brianna.  She will look at all her current numbers and offer suggestions on what she thinks I should change.  She has said on my occasions this is what I would do, but you know her best. It is nice to have an input in her care vs do this.  She lets me brain storm changes on what would work. They also check Brianna's skin to make sure that no site is getting used too much and offer advice on where new site could be.  

What is also nice about our Children's Hospital is they offer you to see a dietitian/nutritionist, nurse educator or social worker at each visit.  We usually just decline but it is nice to know they are there if I needed them.

So hopefully tomorrow's visit will go okay, but if it doesn't guess what there will be another one in 3 months and 3 months after that, and so on,  until a cure is found.