Hospital admission tomorrow

I've just got back from my appointment with the endocrinologist and my brain is in a whirl - so much information to take in. First stop was buying a new blood glucose monitor and being shown how to use it by the pharmacist. It seems quite simple and I had a go with the endocrinologist. My very first blood glucose was about 5 mmol/L so I got a big tick :-)

Next I went to see my obstetrician's secretary, who has managed to get me into RPA tomorrow morning at 7am since there are no beds available tonight. They expect one to be free some time tomorrow morning.

The plan is that I will be injected with the first dose of steroids early in the morning and I will then be monitoring my blood glucose to see how I react. If it goes really high, I'll be given short acting insulin to control it, or if that doesn't work, intravenous insulin.

Then on Thursday, I'll get the second dose and monitoring all over again. I should be allowed out on Friday lunch time.

The endocrinologist went through my medical history and concluded that the main risk factor that could be causing my diabetes is my age - no surprise there then. But she did say that there probably is also a family history factor that hasn't been revealed yet. She said I should tell my parents and siblings to get tested, especially my mother.

I wasn't expecting this. Its like the melanoma thing all over again. Not sure if my family are grateful for all this unsolicited health risk advice, or whether they are wondering what's next?!

She said I have a 50% chance of getting Type 2 diabetes within the next 10 years. This is a very scary statistic. I know only too well what the long term impact of Type 2 diabetes is. Hopefully I can beat it with diet and exercise.

The endocrinologist went through my diet in detail and she doesn't think I will need to make too many changes. That was exactly my fear - that my diet is already pretty good and I've still got diabetes. So I need to lower my expectations about whether I can control this without insulin.

She said I was at a huge disadvantage because my gestational diabetes has been diagnosed at the same time as I need the steroid treatment. Usually women would have had a chance to try and control their diet, talk to a dietician and get the sugars down before going to hospital. So she thinks there's a fair chance I might need intravenous insulin in hospital.

She also said my other big disadvantage is that I can't do any exercise to try and control my diabetes. That's just hard luck really and nothing I can do about it. She thinks there's a fair chance I will need insulin to control my diabetes.

But she really encouraged me to just go with the flow and not worry too much about all these setbacks. She said I can't change the way things have turned out and just to deal with things as best I can. She also encouraged me by telling me that her nephew was born 2o years ago at 25 weeks and he is doing very well.

It was the right thing to say because of course my greatest concern is that E3 will be somehow permanently affected by his possible premature birth. She also said one of her patients was admitted to hospital at 27 weeks with a short cervix and has just been discharged at 37 weeks to wait for labour because she still hasn't delivered!

Its really nice to hear these stories - they might not be how my story ends but at least I can hold onto the hope that things might turn out well for us too.

Tomorrow I will be 29 weeks so another week milestone achieved. Every day and every week counts at the moment. I'm still reasonably positive and just glad that we are doing everything we can for E3.

So its just one day at a time, the same old coping mechanism that I've been using for the last year to achieve the goal of becoming a mother.

Hopefully my body will cope better with being a mother than it has coped with getting pregnant and carrying this baby.