When someone in your immediate family is diagnosed with a medical condition that could literally end their life if mismanaged, it makes sense for everyone to have the details.
Or at least, it does to me.
This young lady’s father didn’t think so, keeping the details of her brother’s diabetes treatment to himself.
And he only started to re-think that position when her brother had to be hospitalized because of it.
Check out the details!
How my father put my brother in hospital because I did what he told me to do.
For a big bit of back story, my family is a bit of a special case.
My younger brother, henceforth called Ginger, was diagnosed with auto-immune diabetes (type 1) at the age of 4. (this was just over a decade ago).
When my father was trained to manage his diabetes, he let his ego get the better of him and denied my mother and myself access to the free training the endocrine team were offering to the family to keep my brother alive.
Is anyone surprise a divorce ensued?
His mentality i think was a “too many chefs in the kitchen” approach but I think in this case it was wrong.
Fast forward to today, I live with my mother and he lives with my father. Most of us don’t get along (specifically anything to do with my father ends in a shitshow, story for another sub).
During this visit, her brother did not care for himself properly.
My brother came over to visit a few days ago.
While he was here, my father sent me a number of messages. I’ll spare you the uncut version and give you the finer points… he wanted me to:
Remind my brother to take his insulin
Bring my brother home by 10am monday no matter what
Not to bother him if my brother’s diabetes is acting up (such as ketoacidosis, low glucose levels, etc)
Mind you I’m not trained to deal with his diabetes, so I trust that my brother’s 14 years of having this condition has taught him what the correct course of action is for certain things.
In addition, my father’s old words: “his diabetes isn’t your business, piss off” still ring in my ears to this day, so naturally
I decide to comply as maliciously as possible, while keeping my brother alive.
My brother forgot to take his late night insulin on saturday and sunday, despite me reminding him.
From what I understand, this causes him to have insanely high glucose readings during the night and into the early morning, which in turn causes ketoacidosis.
The insulin he is supposed to take is slow acting and keeters out after about 8 hours, designed to get him through the night.
By the time she got him home, an ambulance had to be called.
Naturally he wakes up at 9am vomiting. Normally I’d contact my father for how to treat this, but seeing as I’m not to disturb him, I instead ask my brother what he needs me to do. “Can you prepare a glass of lemonaide and mix in a spoon full of sugar?”
Protip for anyone who has a diabetic relative: This is the very last thing you ever want to give a diabetic, especially for ketoacidosis.
But alas I gave him this, because hindsight is 20/20.
He gets about halfway through it before he’s spewing it back up. At this point, I have to get him in the car and back home to make the 10am dropoff time.
So I get him in the car with a barf bag and head on over to my fathers place.
When I get there, Ginger is almost completely passed out. My father sees this (he met us at the driveway) and freaks out, starts screaming at me and calls an ambulance.
The EMT’s had some words for her dad.
When they arrive, I’m asked what he has had and what insulin his taken. paramedics are PM1 thru 3.
PM1: “What did he have for dinner last night”
Me: “Mashed potato, grilled lamb, and assorted vegetables.”
PM1: “And how about his insulin?”
Me: “I don’t know”
PM2: “For him to be like this, he had to have missed a lot of his insulin. Do you know what the last amount of insulin he had was?”
Me: “I don’t know, I’m not sure. Is it like a pill he takes?”
PM2: “A pill? Not for his diabetes. It would be a syringe or a pen. What insulins does he normally take?”
Me: “You’ll have to ask my father, he was trained about all this and refused to train me”.
PM3: “Really? Do you mind if we have a word with your father in private?”
Me: “Sure, go ahead.”
I went and checked on Ginger while they spoke to my father in the house.
My brother was given morphine for the stomach pains he was dealing with and some fast acting insulin to try and combat the effects of the ketoacidosis, but was in the ambulance ready to be taken away.
When the paramedics came back, my father looked more defeated than ever.
Apparently he’d been lectured hard in there over not training me or my mother, because the paramedics gave me a card with a number to call and basically ORDERED me to organize diabetes training ASAP.
The ambulance bill was put in my father’s name. That cost him a few hundred dollars.
I sure hope things will change going forward.
I bet this story made Reddit livid.
The top comment wonders if the kid even knows how to help himself.
They all need to know what to do.
Their dad seems to have serious issues.
That poor kid.
This person doesn’t have any sympathy for any of them, though.
This boy needs to have way more responsibility for his own condition.
It could save his life.
If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.