October 08, 2009

Interesting Diabetes Day

I don’t usually write posts about my health. Mostly because it’s rather status quo and not much to report on. Today was such a different/weird day that I thought I would share.

It was a rather ordinary day. I went to Bible study this morning and had a wonderful time! Then ran errands, etc. Just my new regular Thursday.

In the middle of the afternoon I was starting to feel funny. I didn’t want to feel funny, I wanted to go to the fabric store to look at beautiful fabrics, then I had to pick David up from work.

On my way to the fabric store I was getting waves of nausea, not much fun, but couldn’t figure out why. I wasn’t sick. I thought it might have been food poisoning, but I couldn’t think of anything I had ate that would have been bad.

An hour later when I was waiting in the parking lot for David to finish work I thought I wasn’t going to make it home without vomiting. I was feeling so yucky and nauseated. Since I couldn’t think of anything I had eaten that would have caused this, I thought I had better check my sugars. They were over 300!!! (20 mmL for the metric people) I’m very rarely ever that high! Especially when I was sure I took insulin at lunch and thought I might be going low. Well, it was strange enough that I thought I had better check my ketones too. (I carry strips on me for emergencies.)

The test strip jumped from clear to maroon immediately. That means LARGE ketones. For those that don’t know, if ketones are left untreated people go into “diabetic ketoacidosis” which is usually the cause of comas for diabetic. I have never had large ketones before. I’ve had small ketones when I’ve been sick with the flu, that is almost standard, never large ketones.

David got me home as quick as possible and I was trying hard to keep the nausea down. He sent me to bed and I took insulin to counter act the ketones.

I was feeling better and hour and a half later, but on checking my sugars they had barely gone down at all! So I checked ketones too, they were still large! That didn’t make any sense to me. I took Plenty of insulin!

I had also just run out of insulin in my pump (as happens every 2.5-3 days) and went to change my set. When I pulled off the catheter I noticed that it had come apart. That was weird. Then I remembered!

This morning, when I went to the bathroom at Bible study, my thumb caught at the catheter and pulled. It really stung, but that was all. Come to find out at the end of the day that I really pulled it out so that I spent the whole day thinking I was getting insulin when really I was barely getting any, if any!

No wonder my sugars were out of whack and my ketones were large! It takes only 4 hours without insulin to develop ketones.

My diabetic educator told me this could happen. Or something could act up with the pump so that I wasn’t getting the needed insulin. It’s been almost 4 years with the pump and this is the first time I’ve ever had it happen.

Side note: The first thing I learned in the hospital library, the day I was diagnosed, was that before the 1920’s when insulin was discovered, a person diagnosed with diabetes essentially had a 2 year life sentence. With out insulin a person will only live 2 years, if they are “lucky.” Today I understand that just a little bit.

I am so glad I live today where I can have my health taken care of so well. I’ve been diabetic 10 years as of this year. Praise God!

On a lighter note. David and I have been legally married for 6 years now (and two week and two days).

A photo from our “First Wedding”

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