Paramedics said my bs was 46 on arrival-which I’ve been many times w/o a problem. I don’t know why it was this time. (I’d had 7 oz jc b4 seizure, then knew I was still in trouble but unable to get more myself).
(This posting is in response to MY seizure post).
Maybe you are one of the lucky ones that gets one of those rescue dogs - I suppose you’d have to pick between a low BG dog and a seizure dog. Maybe there are low bg dogs that minored in seizures. LOL. I vote DOG!
I’d have to say you’re probably right. I’d have to vote seizure dog.
Seizures are terrifying.
I had severe lows as a kid where I knew something was wrong but was unable to treat or get help. During those times no one would bother to test me. I figure I must have been pretty low, though, because at other times I would have readings too low for the meter to read and be fully functional.
I also had seizures as a kid, but as far as we can tell it wasn’t related to blood sugar. I had abnormal EEGs and was almost diagnosed with epilepsy at one point.
Thankfully, as an adult I’ve had no seizures (or perhaps one several years ago unrelated to diabetes) and no severe lows (in the sense of needing assistance from others).
I run my sugar levels very low, with an A1c in the four range for the last decade, so I can go to the twenties and still be conscious, and even sufficiently conversational that other people don’t recognize anything is wrong with me. Generally the response to hypoglycemia depends on how far the current level is below the ordinary level for you, and how fast it has fallen.
The problem people fail to consider with hypoglycemia is that the person suffering it and the person who is supposed to recognize and treat it is the same, yet the person in charge of treating it is becoming increasingly confused and losing consciousness. I have often been sufficiently low not even to know I was low, or even what a low is, so how could I have treated it? I am often gripped by bizarre fantasies about having to repeat some strange ritualistic motions in order to feel better, since I no longer know who I am, where I am, what diabetes is, that I have it, or what to do about it. The most severe hypoglycemia episodes occur while asleep or appear on waking, when the prodromal signs were suppressed, or when the blood sugar falls so far and so fast that consciousness fades before anything can be done.
@Seydlitz, Been there! That occasionally happens to me, but sometimes I’m not 100% sure if it was seizure stuff or hypo stuff, or some combo of the two. Generally, I figure its seizure stuff if I think that I can travel through time or read people’s minds or if I can’t move and think that a bunch of snakes are going to pick me up for work in a plane and that we will fly so fast that we go back in time to get there (thanks a lot, Snakes on a Plane movie!). That type of thinking stinks of lower left lobe seizure. Always perfectly reasonable at the time.
To my knowledge and like everyone has said, everyone is different until the exact science is figured out. But like hypoglycemic unawareness, it seems to be correlated to repetitive (ultra) lows. There was an article a while back that I read that found a possible link to hypoglycemic unawareness to a section in the brain where the cells, overtime & repeated lows, shrank. So, if proven true, could be something similar and seizures.
Hello, what I have learned is, when it comes to low bgs everyone is different.
I’ve been dealing with low bg for some time and, have passed out a few times, but usually for that to happen, my bg would have to be in the low 30’s, or sometimes high 20’s. Usually when I hit the mid 40’s I can feel something isn’t right, unless of course I am asleep.
However it’s different for everyone because, a co worker of mine passed out when his bg was 70. He later said to me that for him, he can’t function at 70.
I have had many seizures. Everyone around me understands that checking my blood sugar is secondary to waking me up when I do have seizures. When they do check my levels, it ranges. I get readings as low as 20 and readins as high as 43. For me, it all depends on how much insulin is left in my system.
EMTs are called when I don’t respond and that’s every once in a blue moon because we use Glucagon injections. I don’t have a cgm yet but I’m not sure how accurate the readings are on those things are so I’m in no rush to get one. I hope this helps.
The key thing for me is the rapidity of the blood sugar decline: going from 140 to 60 in an hour is going to produce worse intellectual and functional deficits than going from 80 to 25 in an hour. There are limits, of course, and if I go below 25 the absolute value seems to count for more than the relative decline.
@Liz_D First, Welcome! Concerning the CGM, I can’t speak for the Medtronic CGM, but the Dexcom and Freestyle CGM are very accurate IMHO. Since I started using the Dexcom, I have only had two seizure events - both times I ignored the alarms. My low alarm is set at 90 mg/dl so. I have time to address my bgs before things get out of hand. Cognitively I become very primal below 50, so getting things like Glucose tabs open can be a problem.