April 5, 2010

Bart has an interesting medical history, and April 5th was a day in history that we will not soon forget. 

Last November, Bart started losing a lot of weight and was always tired and thirsty and didn't feel very good overall.  He would eat and eat and he still kept losing weight.  We knew he should probably go to the doctor, but we kept putting it off.  He kept saying if he got down to 140, he would go, and it got very close.

Every six months, Bart goes the University of Utah for an ERCP to check the status of his Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, which affects his liver and bile duct.  On April 5, he went in for his ERCP, and before the test, they did some bloodwork.  They came back and asked him "How long have you had diabetes?" and he said, "I don't."  Well, surprisingly enough, he had a fasting blood sugar of 485.  Also, during the ERCP, the doctor decided that he needed to put a stent in his bile duct.  This was the first time in several years of doing that test that it had been bad enough to need a stent.  The doctor asked him to come back to check it in 6 weeks, instead of the 3-6 months we had always waited before.  Needless to say, Bart was very depressed by the news he had received that day.

The next day, I took him to see my dad - one of the best diabetes doctors around.  He explained to us about checking his blood and taking insulin and how much to give and when.  They also did an A1C test which came back as a 12.4 (it is supposed to be under 7).  He also told us that his eyes had dilated because of his high blood sugars over the last several months, so he would have vision problems for a couple of weeks until he got his levels under control.  Sure enough, within a couple of days, his eyes were so bad that he started wearing reading glasses all of the time.  Luckily it only lasted a couple of weeks.  For the next few weeks, we called my dad every night to get advise about how much insulin he should take and ask crazy questions.  We also went to see the diabetes educator who taught us about eating and counting carbs - Bart didn't like her much and didn't follow hardly any of her advice.  Because Bart is the way he is, he figured out the diabetes thing pretty quickly and is able to keep it under control very well.  He can always tell when he is low because of the way he feels, but luckily it doesn't happen very often. 

Although diabetes was a huge adjustment, it wasn't the end of the world.  On the other hand, the stent gave him sepsis and he had to take strong antibiotics to get rid of it.  He also had to keep going to the U for different tests and they kept referring him to different doctors who wanted him to do all sorts of things and take more medications and stuff.  He got very sick of going to the doctor.  At one point, they did a test that told him he has celiac disease and should stop eating gluten.  We considered it for a few days, but then decided it wasn't worth it.  At the end of May, he went in for his follow-up ERCP, and they removed the stent and said it looked better, so they didn't have to put in a new one.  After that, he decided to officially take a break from the specialists until his follow up ERCP 4 months later.

He hasn't felt great, but with his history, he is used to it.  He has his ups and downs but still manages to get everything done that he needs to.  His diabetes is under control.  In July, he got his blood drawn again and his A1C was under 7.  Now we'll just have to see how his liver is when he goes back to the U in November.