Just a few days ago I was sitting in my easy chair feeling all snug and warm. I had tested my blood sugar for my bedtime reading a short while before, eaten my evening snack and taken my long-acting insulin. In my case it is Lantus. I finished watching a movie that I had in, and got up to ready myself for bed. Now I had been feeling just fine. My numbers were excellent when I ate my snack, took my meds, (I take a number of different things for diabetes related problems), and my insulin, and only about ½ hour had passed so I was not anticipating any problems. As I got up to head for bed, I felt very weak. Like my muscles couldn’t hold me up for long.
I am one who doesn’t always feel a low coming on so, as is my custom when I feel off at all for any reason, I tested my blood sugar once again. I was dangerously low! So low it scared me some. I took some glucose tablets, which I carry everywhere, to bring it back up. Then I called the hospital. If I kept going down it wouldn’t be long til I was in a coma! I live alone so I wanted someone on the line with me until I got my sugars back up. I didn’t know if I had inadvertently taken my insulin twice or what was going on. I didn’t want to slip into unconsciousness with no one being aware I was in trouble. It took me 25 minutes to get someone on the line! By then I had brought my blood sugars back up and was doing ok.
I put in a report with the diabetic teaching center the next day, as I was advised to by the hospital once I finally got through. This was, in turn, sent to the makers of Lantus in case it was a bad batch.
This type of reaction is very unusual for the long-acting insulin. I had eaten enough to keep my numbers good til morning. It was the third vial in that batch, and the fourth dose out of that vial, with no other problems, so it was not likely it was a bad batch. A report went in nevertheless.
After a lengthy discussion with the diabetic nurse at the teaching center we came to the conclusion that I may have hit a vein when I took the insulin and it worked far faster than it was supposed to as a result.
Though I usually have good control of my diabetes, the concern is now that I don’t feel a low coming on. If I hadn’t got out of my chair at that precise time and felt weak enough to check, if I had gone straight to bed, I would have slipped into a coma without anyone knowing. If I hadn’t eaten the dozen or so crackers with peanut butter, I would have already been in a coma and been unable to help myself.
The diabetes nurse is now concerned about my lack of warning symptoms. She is working with me to re-set my system. This is done, apparently, by keeping your blood sugars on the high side for a period of time. So for the next couple of weeks I will be trying to keep my readings between 8 and 12. The diabetes nurse thinks that this may reset my ability to feel a low coming on. I hope it works. It is certainly a scary feeling to know you have no physical warning of a dangerous low. Especially when you live alone and could lay there for days and not be found. I am not much of a social butterfly and may not even receive a phone call for many days at a time, let alone someone dropping by.
As Wilfred Brimley says on the diabetes commercial. “Test your blood sugar, and test it often.” Because of this lack of warning, there are days that I test 8 - 10 times. Like I said, if I feel the least bit off, I test. And it has already saved me.
Please be aware at all times of how you feel. Don’t rely on your body’s early warning system to be aware of a low, it doesn’t always work.
