I’ve been working on keeping my Blood Sugar in range. 90-140 and had been doing a pretty good job. Until this weekend. Something happened. My head is pounding and been waking up with leg pains, arm pains, and I can feel the nerve in my face on the left side. This was 2:41am and I was 142 and climbing.
I’ve been really low carb and thought stable. However, I woke up this morning at 200. Right now, I’m at 140 and feel absolutely terrible. (Do people feel terrible at 140?) Is it possible that I have another problem other than diabetes? I can hardly function with the fog.
Also… just a side note. When outside… I sweat from my head like crazy and I was never a sweating person.
These symptoms could be from a range of health issues from fairly benign to a fatal heart attack or a stroke. A diabetes peer support group is not a good place to seek help with these kind of symptoms. I could be wrong but the stakes might be very high. I would go to the nearest available doctor as soon as possible.
Ok. The arm, leg pain has only been at night. The face pain, which was new last Friday is only there sometimes during the day. Today has been slight on the face, only had it in the morning. Our prompt care is closed, but I’ll run over to the prompt care in the morning. My nurse said that if something changed to worse… I could come in. I’ll take your advice. Thank you.
As much as I criticize doctors, I think they do have their place. None of us here know your medical history. This certainly could be a false alarm; I hope it is. Too many people minimize the importance of symptoms only appreciated after a serious crisis ensues.
Asymmetrical new pain, as you reported in your face, is something I would take seriously. Good luck!
I also think you should be seeing someone now vs waiting until Tuesday. I’m hoping your GP has someone who is on call for these kind of emergency situations. Good luck & don’t wait. We are not just people with diabetes, we are people who can have many other things going on.
Some of your symptoms sound as if you might just have an infection, which of course will elevate blood sugar. Also, the fact that you ask how people know when to dose insulin suggests you might be a new patient, in which case your elevated blood sugar could be due to your continuing to move out of the honeymoon phase. Finally, I have had wild, inexplicable blood sugar swings for the entire course of the disease, so you have to accept that these sorts of things can happen, given that more factors determine blood sugar than the patient can measure or control, including stress hormones, the effect of temperature, spontaneous changes in other hormones, etc.
Sally, Seydlitz, Terry4,
I was able to make it to another “prompt care” tonight that was open. The doctor reported no major issues… his best guess was Fibromyalgia. He ran some labs and I’m just slightly low on my Red Blood Cell count. I’m assuming this is from a lack of iron. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone.
Seydlitz,
I’m pretty new to all this. I’m trying, but even my diabetes coach is stumped. I hope to have more information when more of my tests come back. I’m back running 104 now. However, with me… it can change to 130 or 73 in a matter of minutes. The morning is the toughest… I get up at 97 and twenty minutes later… I’ll be 160-170. I just assumed that my head was hurting because of the 160+ number, but maybe that really isn’t the case?
I guess each day is a learning process. Good night and thanks again… and good night diabetes…we will do battle again tomorrow.
Bajahammer, you are describing what turned out (“For Me Now”) to be a ‘precurser’ to a Stroke that I had last fall… As others have suggested, get ‘scanned’. Trust me, it is best to KNOW if your symptoms are only ‘glucose’ related than to have the much more serious ‘possibility’ actually happen as it did in my case. I always felt “bullet-proof” when I was younger, but when I hit the late 60’s & stuff like that ‘stroke’ & then ‘cancer-surgery’ 2months ago, I don’t feel ‘invulnerable’ anymore…
In my experience the single most consistent feature of blood sugar levels is their inconsistency. I eat exactly the same amounts of the same food at the same time every day, and expend exactly the same amount of calories in the exactly the same pattern of activity every day, and yet, despite that, the blood sugar levels jump around wildly because of spontaneous, internal changes in the body which I cannot measure, calculate, or anticipate. The same insulin dose, the same activity, the same food at the same time from Monday through Thursday will yield a blood sugar of 125 to 140 at 6:00 P.M., and then on Friday it will be 360. My wife’s most common comment on observing my blood sugar levels is “that’s impossible!,” and I have to agree, but there it is.
Also, perhaps I’m a bit unusual, but I have never experienced any subjectively negative symptoms of hyperglycemia beyond a little more thirstiness and urination than usual. Generally, friends of mine and I who were diagnosed in the era before home glucose monitoring report feeling fine when blood sugar is a bit high and bad only when it goes low, so I would not suspect blood sugar as the cause of any negative symptoms at a level of 160, which is very near normal.
When I had Lyme disease a decade ago, I had all those symptoms. And my bg was sky high too. If you live in, or have visited in past couple months, any place with large deer populations or known for Lyme disease, please please get checked for Lyme disease.
Oh boy. Now I’m more confused than ever. (Plus I have some vertigo today) I do live smack dab in the middle of deer heaven around here. I’ve had more tick bites than I care to count.
Please please please mention the tick bites to the doc. There are tests that they can run to determine if you have Lyme disease or not although they might (???) take a few days to run.
Knowing your symptoms and that you’ve had multiple tick bites they might just start you on antibiotics without waiting to get test results back.
The good news for me: within two days of being started on antibiotics all my symptoms went away and I felt normal and functional again for the first time in a long time.
My symptoms from Lyme disease 10 years ago: headaches. Sky-high bg’s. Tired and fuzzy headed all the time. And migrating joint pains. Some days my fingers, some days my legs, some days my jaw, just all around. And of course with me being T1, having high bg’s all the time even though I had boosted my insulin doses enormously to try to keep them down.
I ‘totally’ forgot about Lyme’s disease!! Living here in FL, I ‘should’ have remembered that one! A very good possibility that ‘might’ explain the symptoms. Great that others in this group are SO caring & Helpful!! Best Wishes for a quick diagnosis!
Interesting thing here. When I was first “self” diagnosed with High Blood Sugar… I took the remaining antibiotics from something my son had. I felt a ton better. When I ended up in the emergency room, I asked for Antibiotics, but was denied. (I told them I felt better, but only had three pills from earlier in the month). I also asked for Antibiotics from GP and was denied too. If this is it… I own someone beer or whatever they want.
If you feel bad like that again, just go directly to the ER. Its not a diabetes thing. I’m most worried about stoke/heart attack. I hope someone checked that out.
We all have different traditions. In my cultural heritage this is the traditional way to thank someone for a Lyme disease diagnosis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iipdZNg8hS0
