Tag: boston medical center

Six Years Ago Today: Diabetes-aversary

Six years ago today was a Friday. Friday November 13, 2015. It was the worst day of my life. No question. There have been other bad days, but none of them can hold a candle to 11/13/15. That was the day we almost lost Harry. I was working from home while he was home sick. All morning he just kept getting worse. I called Jen and she came home and probably saved his life by taking him to Holy Family Hospital. One of the nurses took one look at him and said he had Diabetes. Oh good, we thought, you can treat that. He’s going to be fine. The nurse saw the look of relief and let us know that it wasn’t going to be that simple. He wasn’t just really sick. He was really sick.

They moved him to Boston Medical Center where an ER doctor was straight with us. There was a chance he wasn’t going to make it. There was also a chance that his system was so fucked up it might cause other damage on top of just not being able to produce insulin anymore. We were scared shitless. You may think you know what being scared feels like, but this was so much worse than that. The head of Endocrinology told us that he had never seen a kid that far gone come back, but Harry, being the 12 year old bad ass that he was, pulled through. He was right as rain after a couple of days. You might think you’ve felt relief before, but it’s nothing compared to what we felt that day. Believe me.

The story has a happy ending though. One that has continued unabated for six years now. Harry was not only up to the challenge of managing his diabetes, he thrived on it. I have lost count of the number of doctors I’ve heard say they were impressed with how well he handles it. Sure there are days when his blood sugar spikes and it scares the crap out of everyone, and there are days when his blood sugar takes a nose dive off a cliff and scares the crap out of everyone. There are even days when they both happen. Still, Harry has been amazing. He continues to be amazing. He is amazing.

I just wish he didn’t have to be. I wish he didn’t have to manage things. I wish his pancreas was still holding up it’s end of the bargain and he didn’t have to track his blood sugar and manually inject insulin. That would be great and all, but fortunately Harry was and still remains more than up to the challenge. Again, he’s amazing and I love him and I am so thankful for the way things turned out, and I am thankful that he still lets me be a part of his life.

My holiday wish, year round wish really, for everyone is that they never have an 11/13/15 of their own. Hug your kids.

Boston’s First Full ICU

When my step son’s diabetes first tore into him he was taken to the intensive care unit at Boston Medical Center.  They were in the news yesterday.  It looks like it was the first time COVID-19 maxed the capacity of an ICU in Boston, and it was that same Boston Medical Center ICU that did so much to save Harry’s life that night.

Read this article from WBUR’s website, written by Carey Goldberg, Martha Bebinger, and Elisabeth Harrison…

In what appears to be the first time a Boston ICU has reached capacity in the coronavirus pandemic, Boston Medical Center was treating so many patients who needed intensive care on Sunday that it had to stop accepting new patients into the ICU during the overnight hours, the hospital says.

The worrisome milestone comes at a time when state, federal and local officials are warning that the viral outbreak may be entering a surge period in Massachusetts and other states.

BMC says that overnight Sunday, ambulances brought patients to other hospitals instead. By Monday, the hospital says, it was able to begin accepting ICU patients again.

Boston health officials say this is the first known case of a Boston hospital reaching ICU capacity during the current COVID-19 crisis.

According to numbers reported Monday by the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association, Boston Medical Center has 140 COVID-19 patients with 39 in the ICU. On Sunday, the group says the hospital had 147 COVID-19 patients with 42 in the ICU.