A Close Call

I was in Austin a couple of weeks ago attending the SXSW Interactive conference. The morning I was supposed to leave I accidentally took 30 units of my short acting insulin instead of my long-term insulin. Fortunately I immediately realized what I did. After wondering for a bit if I had just killed myself I call my doctor and get her answering machine. Taking mattes into my own hands I then proceeded to raid the mini bar and ate 2 Milky Way bars, a bag of M&Ms and a package of Famous Amos cookies, then checked my sugar. It was 70, wow it should be like 300! No sugar products left in the mini bar so I head down to the hotel restaurant and proceed to eat a bunch of French toast loaded with maple syrup and about 4 glasses of OJ. Checked my sugar again and it was 80, waited about 20 mins checked again and it dropped back to 52 so I choked down about 4 glucose tabs.

At this point I still have not heard back from my doc and am thinking it might not be the best idea to get on a plane so I called the ask a nurse # on the back of my insurance card. The ask a nurse freaked out when I told her what I did and made me make a formal statement repeating exactly what I had told her. She must have been recording it to avoid litigation. She then told me NOT to get on a plane but to get my stupid ■■■ to the nearest emergency room.

I happened to be at this conference with my boss. I have a wonderful boss and she was not about to leave me in Austin by myself, so she and I grab a cab to the nearest emergency room. I’m feeling pretty guilty and stupid at this point but pretty happy that I’m not in a coma yet. Fortunately the waiting room had wireless internet so my boss was able to keep herself distracted from the freak show that was happening around us in this inner city hospital waiting room.

At the hospital I check my sugar again and it’s back down to 50. I tell a nurse what my sugar is and he hands me some OJ and a hospital meal consisting of some kind of mysterious meat product topped with a slab of proceed food they call cheese stuffed inside a stale bun. At this point I already feel like I’ve just eaten 2 Thanksgiving meals and have the worst sugar headache of my life but manage to force it down. Sugar goes back up to 80 for about 20 minutes then drops back into the 50’s again, more bad hospital food follows.

I finally get to see a doc. He runs off to find out how long my short term insulin dose will last. They put me in some kind of weird holding room next to a sick lady holding a puke bucket. I check my sugar, it’s in the 50’s again so they make me eat another one of those “tasty” hospital meals. Kept waiting for the lady next to me to unload into her puke bucket since I’m sitting next to her gorging on bad hospital food but luckily she manged to keep it down. Another lady notices my continuous eating binge and says “You sure are sure are skinny for someone who eats so much”.

6 hours, 3 hospital meals, 4 OJs and a vanilla ice cream cone later I finally get a reading of 102 and convince the doc to cut me loose, we grab a cab to the airport, I load up on some kind of sweet muffin thing and hop on the next flight back to Denver. Everything turned out OK and I still have my job.

I’ll bet my boss won’t be traveling with me real soon.

Sounds almost like me last week but I wasn’t out of town and the idiots at the hospital don’t realize I need food after the first dose of D 50 the paramedics gave me and then they ignored me that I was low and I ended up slipping into a coma for about an hour and then they finally realize hey she needs food or she will keep doing this. And I had the WORST headache ever.