To have told dh not to take me to the hospital if I’m really ill?

[Butterbear86]

With anything really, there’s currently no point, but if I get cv and I’m really ill am I correct in thinking as a t1 diabetic no one would treat me?
I’ve told dh to leave me in the spare bedroom as I’d sooner die at home.

I hadn’t appreciated that they aren’t going to ventilate the vulnerable until I read it here yesterday. But is it really as simple as that?

Oh my God don’t martyr yourself to die in your spare room
Catching co-vid is not inevitable dying from it is certainly not inevitable why on earth would you even think this way

My other half said he will just lie and say I have no conditions but I told him you can’t do that as how can they know how medications might interact.

For goodness sake, no one knows what is going to happen yet. Just follow the official advice. Everyone in the NHS will do their very best for every patient for as long as they can. Please have confidence in them and follow the advice.

Work at steadying your blood sugars OP. That’s something you can do to make sure you’re in the best possible shape if you do get sick.

How many months of pump supplies and insulin do you have at present?

Look, this is really scary I know, but do not give up.

How many years do you have diabetes? You’re obviously doing something right - you have kept yourself alive this long. Think of a time you’ve had a crap week of illness and crazy bloods yet you managed. I don’t know you or your life history but think of any challenging times or utterly grim shit times you’ve lived through, as a diabetic, and muddled through. You are still here, alive and kicking.

DONT give up now. You are alive, you have tools to manage your diabetes as best you can, you do not know if you will be hit hard if you do get sick, and medics will do everything they can to help if you do need care.

The UK isn't in the same situation as Italy. Hopefully it won't reach it. If it does, you are young and mostly healthy.

You are either a complete martyr like PP's father, or you are in an anxiety spiral and potentially having intrusive thoughts. Either way, worrying about it won't change it. So protect yourself as best you can and go and Do Something Else.

And should you get sick enough, go to hospital for treatment. You can't just crawl off to die in the spare room, you'd ruin the mattress.

@Ginfilledcats...no, they won’t treat everyone. That’s the point...it’ll be left to the medics to decide who gets what AVAILABLE treatment. That’s the whole point of social distancing and self isolation.

No Splodgetastic, it absolutely is not as simple as that.

If you are anxious, address it. Google "free NHS online CBT anxiety" - there are various resources available.

If you are just being a drama queen - stop. This thread will add to worry of genuinely anxious people.

As others on this thread have said, there is a whole range of things that can be done for you in hospital before you need full ventilation. Not everyone who goes into hospital needs to be ventilated, but in hospital you can be given extra oxygen and pain relief which is surely worth going for!

Also, new treatments are being tested all the time, if you go into hospital there may be chances of treatment with antivirals or other drugs which may help you recover.

Also, awful to say but if you do die, it will be much easier for your DH than if he has to try to find someone to collect your body at the worst of the crisis.

I'm guessing that those saying they will definitely treat you have missed what has been going on behind the scenes for weeks, what is currently happening in the hospitals in Italy and what is in the news today?
Medical guidance being drawn up to help doctors decide who to treat in the coming weeks when things move to the phase when are hospitals are at capacity. When not if.

The guidance says that they can prioritse medical care and ventilation based on a patients co morbidites and ventilation can be removed from those less likely to survive if necessary.

I think unless you have a condition that puts you in this category it's easy to accuse the op of being unduly anxious.

imo you are totally not unreasonable. it's good to make your wishes clear, but also your dh should make his clear.

BBC article: Coronavirus: Doctors urge conversations about dying

I guess it’s dangerous for non-medical people to talk about this. I don’t even know the difference between getting oxygen from a mask and being ventilated (which I guess is the machine forces the oxygen in and out) and other options between, such as tubes going into nose from tank.

Thebrain - yeah the same has gone through my mind tbh.

butterbear . Have you thought about what an unassisted death fromCovid 19 would involve? You do know that it attacks your lungs and clogs them up so that your lungs slowly close off, without help you would become more and more unable to breathe, it is sometimes called air hunger and is very distressing . If you were conscious it would be terrifying, your body desperate for air as you die from suffocation. It would not be a kind or gentle way to die.

Awful for you, devastating for your OH to witness and have as their last memory of you. In hospital if you came to an end of life scenario you would be offered supported breathing and deep sedation to ease your passing. But the chances are that on admission you would be given breathing support in the hope that this would give your body enough time to fight the effects of the virus so you would survive.

Doctors make decisions about who to treat and how to treat them all day every day - it's what being a doctor is about. It doesn't make sense to give a very elderly person with multiple illnesses chemotherapy for cancer for example - the treatment is very unlikely to work and will probably only cause further suffering. It's not a matter of denying treatment, it's a matter of making an informed decision about what is likely to work.

Guidelines for making treatment decisions are NOT about denying treatment. They are about making the right treatment decisions based on the available evidence.

There is, currently, no reliable treatment for a virus - it is up to your immune system to fight it. That is why the main advice for dealing with covid is to stay at home - for most people, time will do the trick. 'Treatment' in hospital involves doing things to make you comfortable while your body fights the infection and treating any other illnesses you have that could make your chances of survival worse (like diabetes). If it gets to the point where your body can't fight the infection any more, for whatever reason, then there is nothing left to do but to make the person comfortable as they die. It's awful, but, and I can't state this strongly enough, it is not the case that people will be denied a reliable, effective treatment that could cure covid, because such a treatment does not exist. It is not the case that doctors will be letting people they could help die. In many cases, the person will either get better or not, and nothing the doctors do will make a huge difference beyond making the person comfortable.

Ventilation is a very invasive and painful procedure requiring intensive care and doctors will avoid doing it if at all possible. If the person is at the point of needing ventilation, their chances of surviving are already very low. Doctors may decide that ventilation is not the right option at this point. It's very sad, but again, it is not the case that the doctors are denying treatment that could save the person, it's that they're making an informed choice about what is right for that person.

It is absolutely right and true that every effort should be made to keep the numbers of people going into hospital as low as possible by limiting the spread. It's also true that if you get covid, even if you have diabetes, chances are you won't need hospital treatment at all and you'll be absolutely fine. What we're trying to avoid, as a community, is giving covid to people who won't be fine, who will die from it, regardless of what treatment doctors can give them.

@TheDailyCarbuncle

Have you actually looked at the proposed guidelines? I'm not talking about the normal decision doctors make every day. Seriously, this isn't complicated. There guidelines are not the same general medical ones that doctors work from every day of their working lives, they are there to make decisions beyond that. Allocation of ventilators based on what co morbidities a patient has based on another patient. Allocation based on age.
There will not be enough to support every one who needs it like there is in normal situations. People who would have otherwise survived will now die.

How horrific for our medical staff to be in this situation. They are crying out on twitter about how they don't know how to cope with what is coming and they are scared.

Sorry that should say 'compared to another patient'

Don’t be daft!

Yes I have read the guidelines @Joyfulnhs.

They state:

When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.

The guidance itself basically restates the guidance on critical care that doctors normally use - ie make judgements around critical care based on the likely outcome. That is the way doctors make these judgements all the time. It is absolutely not the case that doctors will ever just look at a patient and deny care on the basis of age or comorbidities alone and to I hope your suggestion that doctors would do that is based only on ignorance and not on a desire to scaremonger.

To be clear, I am absolutely for measures that lower the admission rate, as it is never good to have stressed healthcare staff dealing with high volumes of patients - that is the situation in which mistakes are made and possible opportunities to save people are missed. There is no evidence at all from Italy that people are dying due to lack of care. Absolutely none.

To clarify further, Italy did propose a situation in which there would be mandatory conditions around treatment, but they have not implemented them.

Op you have a really really small chance of getting to the point where you are that ill. If you are social distancing now and washing your hands then the chances of even getting ill at all are slim. I do get your concerns and this situation will be making everyone question their mortality but please try not to worry. I would say if any one of us was that ill and there was little hope it is far kinder on us and our loved ones to be in hospital where there is sedation and pain relief and trained staff available. Have you got enough to keep your brain busy/distracted for now? That helps a lot.

The problem is that even with hand washing and social distancing - it’s not eradicating the problem. Unless I stay locked up for the rest of my life and no one in the house goes out either then at some point I will get it, everyone will.

It’s hard stuff to think about but if I was really ill I’d stay home but hasten the process myself.

This thread has made me feel sick.

My son has T1 so I am well aware that his chance of survival is SLIGHTLY lower than mine. But 93% chance of survival is still huge. Plus that is only people who tested. Not every single diabetic that has corona virus is tested.

My DS has a cough. We are keeping an eye on bloods and ketone. We don't know if it is corona or not but if it is, and he survives from this very mild case of a cough, he will never be included in the statistic despite being a diabetic that has survived.

I haven't considered for one second that an otherwise healthy diabetic with fair control would be denied treatment just because they have a life long condition.