Endo’s are like the engineers who studied the airplane. They know all about the design and the building of the plane. They know all about aeronautics. They know every single rule about flying planes.
Diabetics are like the pilots who fly…every…single…day…
Just a lot of years…
Awesome analogy. The only difference would be those practicing Endos who ARE ALSO diabetics themselves. Then they qualify as engineers AND pilots.
I thought so until recently, because all the NPs I met that were T1s were wonderful and very knowledgeable. But I found out this is not always true: the profession must get to you. The one who told me that we should wait to dose until my son’s BG peaked (“to make sure it did not go down on its own”) was a T1.
So they’re more concerned with what I was addressing earlier in another post - liability. They fear more than anything our kids going low and dying and being potentially sued. It makes sense that the profession may result in them giving different advise than they would probably even go by in their own lives out of fear of lawsuits maybe?
I had an interesting discussion with my Endo last visit. He said he actually takes heat for my A1C’s being too low. I am not sure who he takes the heat from, he didn’t really get into that. But he was saying how they have numbers they look at, and if an A1C is too low, they have to make recommendations and do a bunch of stuff.
I wish I had gotten more information from him, but I didn’t want to press him.
The cool thing is, he told me he doesn’t go through all the warnings with me. He just takes the heat because he knows I am not going to purposefully try to make my A1C go higher, so he just accepts it as part of the package of having me as a patient.
Anyway, I found this to be very interesting. I had no idea…
I wish I knew a bit about what happens when someone goes to an endo and has a low A1C. What is the normal process?
My Endo told me that if all his patients were like me he wouldn’t have his vacation house.
I get upset if my A1C varies by .1 . He doesn’t.
I can’t say for sure, but physicians at facilities will have to have monthly meetings with management and explain outliers of all kinds, too long in the hospital, too short in the hospital, taking non-standard medication, etc.
And here is the public school system…
I think a lot of this behavior has to do with bias you develop from looking at your patient population. Some people are more willing to add nuance to their preconceived notions than others, just like with other humans.
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure that’s within the margin of error of the test, so not an interpretable difference.
It doesn’t have to be an endo, sometimes you can be at any doctor’s office, and you just hear stuff like this:
And you are just left sitting in the chair wondering what they are talking about.