Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Other Health Issues with Diabetes

On Thursday night I had one of those evenings that had better have been teaching me something 'cause it was awful.
As I got home anticipating supper, Dexcom showed 98 with a downwards drift- perfect for supper, right? My folks had already eaten a lot of supper but there were some wonderful leftovers left. I injected and began eating the apple crisp my mother had made. Once I finished the last piece, I started licking the dish.

Then I choked. Now, I have been choking almost on a daily basis for as long as I remember. And usually, like that night, I choke on liquids. But usually it's choke, cough and swallow and then I'm fine. This time? Well, I coughed and coughed and coughed. When my mother asked if I was okay, I couldn't get any words out to say that I was. I drooled all over myself because I couldn't close my mouth while coughing. I threw up a little bit from the force of the coughing. And then... it was over. I could breathe again. My chest was sore, there was vomit in my mouth, but I was breathing.
I felt pretty done with supper, KWIM?

Unfortunately, Dexcom went of right then UNDER 90 showing an 88 angled down. Just lovely. So I sit down and start eating. Half an hour later, my stomach hurts. A lot. My sensor is showing something in the 50s and I'm feeling hypo. Oh boy, I hate this.

Another hour and probably a hundred carbs later, I'm sitting in the 40s with a massive stomach ache. I don't want to ever eat again, thank you very much. My blood sugar begins to rise. It rises by about 1-2 mg/dl per five minutes. That is very slow when your blood sugar is 48 and you've been trying to treat as hypo everything under 90.

My blood sugar continued to rise very slowly until many hours later it was high. I took a couple of units of Novolog and went to bed. I slept through the high alarms. I woke up in the morning feeling stuffed and dehydrated with a blood sugar that was in the mid 300s- apparently it had peaked around 390 at 5 AM. No sharp rises. Just a very slowly digested meal.

In retrospect, I think I should have used a miniglucagon injection.

Speaking of slowly digested meals, I have been on the lansoprazole(prevacid) long enough that if it's not working, it's not going to. So my doctor sent the nuclear medicine department (I remember them- that's where I had my iodine uptake scan and everybody else in the waiting room had cancer) an order for me to have a gastric emptying study. The diagnosis is GERD, which surprised me. I called and asked if they could accommodate a vegan diet- they said yes. I scheduled the study for 8 AM Monday, May 2nd.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

JEEZ Jonah! I am so sorry on the choking-business. That doesn't sound right...and YES, the mini-gluc would have been helpful in that occassion for sure. I am so sorry about the low.

Keep us UTD on Nuclear Med Study please.

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