Disasters of a dumbass diabetic
May 24th, 2007 Denham CooteOn Saturday morning I came around to the sound of puking. The person puking, it appeared, was me.
“Why am I hunched over the toilet, puking?”
“Why is there, what appears to be, blood mixed with my puke?”
“and WHO is this person standing next to me in the bath?” I think to myself.
Incoherent noises.
“You’ve had a seizure” I hear the voice telling me.
Then it dawns on me. This would be the reason I have been speaking with a lisp this past week.
OK, so for those of you that have NO idea what I’m rambling on about, I’m a diabetic. My diabetes is fairly well controlled. My doctors are generally happy with me. Just over 2 years ago I had the following series of unfortunate events take place:
I woke up on Friday morning and went to work, as per normal.
I did not eat anything during the day, for reasons I can’t recall.
I went home, skipped dinner, changed, and went out to Sutra (A club).
I proceeded to drink (and dance) the night away.
I went home, checked my sugar, established it was high, and injected the appropriate (or so I thought) amount of insulin.
Having not slept for the past 26 hours, fell into a very deep sleep.
Now usually, when I go low, I will wake up. I will stumble through to the kitchen and find something to eat. The problem here is that I was so tired (and/or trashed) that I didn’t wake up. My glucose levels continued to drop. Having not eaten anything and having exercised (the dancing), they were dropping faster than normal. They dropped so low (1.2) that I had a seizure and bit my tongue. My folks had to get the paramedics out to get me stabilised. This landed me a week long stint in hospital. Needless to say I learnt a lesson the harsh way, and have since endeavoured to avoid a similar situation.
I’m still trying to figure out all the details, but it seems that something very similar happened on Saturday. Yes, I had been out that night, but I had not had nearly as much to drink as before. Yes, I did get to bed late (about 4am), but I didn’t inject nearly as much insulin as I did before. This is something that I’ve become very weary of, and I would rather go high than have another fit! Additionally, I had made sure I ate something before going to bed.
Perplexing. The only thing I can think of that makes any amount of reasonable sense is that my insulin wasn’t mixed well enough, and I got a stronger-than-usual dose. This isn’t really supposed to happen, but I cannot think of any other logical explanation.
Regardless, we were at least a lot more prepared. Since the last incident I keep a glucogen injection in the fridge, which is easy to use. My folks immediately recognised what was happening and injected me. This, I later found out, was also what induced the vomiting, and not my alcohol intake.
I should probably apologise to the paramedics - apparently I was quite aggressive and very rude. All I wanted to do was hang on to the toilet bowl and puke away my sad existence. I made that very clear to them, and I sort of remember them saying something along the lines of “we can’t take him without his consent” to my Dad. I think I told them exactly where to get off when they tried to take me away from my porcelain telephone!
Anyway, the point of the story is: Always make sure you mix your insulin (or drink, for that matter) properly!
