Yeah, Gordie, I had the needle in the eye also. People tell me “oh I could never do that”. Well, I tell them back that if they must, they can do it.
Treating children with diabetes,the scariest moment for me as a doctor was when I accepted a ten year old girl,misdiagnosed for days as a case of gastroenteritis,managed with loads of fluid and sodium bicarbonate,to arrive with cerebral oedema and diabetes insipidus,as a complication added to her missed diagnosis of normoglycemic DKA. She looked dead,not alive and wasted compeletly. She left well,thanks to God.
“Born again diabetic” - lol! I can relate - I had my first (and hopefully last) DKA a few weeks ago, scared the living crap out of me and I too am a “born again”!! The scariest part for me was when I couldn’t breathe (prompting the 911 call) because of the state of acidosis I was in. My other scary moment was when I accidentally injected 22 units of my rapid acting insulin instead of my Lantus - will NEVER do that again!!!
Wow, same here!
Wow you guys!! Brave!
the scariest for me has been Manuel’s lows at the middle of the night… last one was specially scary, he was almost not responding. Everything was fine… I know, ibut t is scary sometimes only to sleep profoundly not knowing if he or I will notice a low-low. I am so happy he will have a CGM soon.
and thanks to you, wow sohair. God bless you.
Without the long story recovering from a low sugar when living alone, this is beyond scary. This is where our responsibility lies to, in a user friendly manner inform those who do not understand (as we did not at one time) how EASY it is to go too high, and how DIFFICULT IT IS to stay in the VERY TINY window of reasonable control that best suits YOUR LIFESTYLE.
THE RULES ARE DIFFERENT IF YOU ARE ALONE FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME so please err on the side of caution by running sugars a little higher, and let your family, friends, coworkers and DOCTORS know if this is the case. Leave as many ways as possible for someone to get a hold of, or track you if they think you are not O.K.
Love Always
The Anonymous Diabetic.
P.S. It would be very interesting to hold a “Diabetes Carnival” where people could either make a small donation or take a small injection of fast acting insulin to see the effects, especially those who think we are “making a bigger deal out of it than it really is”
No that would be absolutely crazy however, there are those who believe we are in fact making a big deal out of it. This is an actual quote from someone in H.R. at my workplace. Yes this would be extreme and sadly there are many of us doing exactly that every day. Continued success to all, let’s get together and get the word out. If it were easy everyone would be doing it.
two things:
The first was when I broke a needle off in my leg. I still don’t know how or why, I had given myself insulin for years and boon it broke off and I could not get it out. I went and got in a batch tube and with the cold water it extended out of my skin so I could get it. Scared me to death.
The second was a low outside a doctors office in a hospital. My BS just plummeted and i was sitting on a bench after the appointment. i knew i was going low, and could not do a thing about it. I woke up with EMT’s around and feeding me glucose tubes of stuff. They had four in me before i sort of woke up. Later I was brought to he ER, the EMT’s said their glucometer registered 21. Had someone not come out, I would have gone in the fountain and even if I did not I would have died.
I am still thankful for the perosn who found me.
rick
My friends always tease me beause I live alone and keep one of many supplys of glucose tablets on the kitchen floor. In the past 5 years I have had three times when I woke up low and could not walk, but was able to crawl. When I’m hypo I forget that I have sugar stashes in every part of my bedroom, yet, I always go to the kitchen to look for sugar. I remember one agonizing time when I crawled to the kitchen and there was a big jar of Skittles on the counter and I could only look at them and not reach them. For awhile I even had a pocket sewn into my nightgown and kept a bunch of tabs there. Never used them. .I even considered hypnosis - surely comeone could plant a message in my brain that when I’m low the tabs are right on the table next to my bed. I guess old habits are hard to break.
Before having kids, I never really cared too much about my low blood sugar levels or taking full responsibility of taking care of my Diabetic self. I’ve had Type I since I was 9 years old (1980) - so I’ve had my share of low’s, extreme low’s and extreme high’s (and even a hospitalization of an extreme high).
When my first child was a few months old, I had a low blood sugar level (I was so caught up in taking care of him, that I wasn’t taking so much good care of myself and my insulin needs dropped DRASTICALLY after giving birth… I had a tendency to give too much insulin for my meals if I did even take time to eat for myself, etc.)… Anywho… my Hubby was home (Thank God!) and I started acting goofy, almost passed out from the low blood sugar level and Hubby got me Tang - which brought me up. The high-risk ob told me something that constantly goes through my mind… “If you don’t take care of yourself first, you can’t take care of kids OR be there for your kids.” I now have hypoglycemia unawareness and don’t have symptoms so I got to a point where I was testing before I drove a car to any given place and test before I drove the car home (there are many times that my blood sugar level will be fine before going to a grocery store and once I get back to the car, get kids in carseats, etc. my blood sugar level will be 50). You should see my fingers! For a while, I was teaching my oldest child how to check my blood sugar level. Thankfully now I have a Dexcom - which has given Hubby more confidence and now I have a life line which has been pretty dead on with what my glucometer bg level is (knock on wood!). Good ol’ Dex has rescued me quite a bit of times with lows (I’ve been losing weight and my insulin needs are changing constantly - so are my basal rates, etc.). But I truly tell people now that it’s really scary not having symptoms of a low blood sugar level and caring for my three kids - my kids are constantly keeping me busy and I have to constantly remind myself, “I can’t take care of my kids if I can’t take care of myself first”.
I also joke now that if someone wants good ol’ Dex or my insulin pump… they would have to pry it from my dead cold hands. (and nope, I don’t work for Dexcom but man oh man! I wish it was mandatory that once a person is diagnosed with Diabetes they be hooked up to a Dexcom - good ol’ Dex could have save me from some really humiliating low’s I had as a child that my friends and family still remember to this day… imagine passing out with your pants fully down in front of a group of people from a low blood sugar level… ugh!!! I’m still reminded to this day about that low from 1985!)
I was staying at a beach house in New Jersey in the middel of the winter alone. the beach towns in New Jersey become pretty deserted in the winter so this in itself can be scary. After a long run I juiced up on insuline to enjoy a carb loaded hoggie and some chips that I had picked up earlier in the day. It was around 3 pm and I was feeling fine. I came to at about 5 pm, soaked with sweat and urine laying on the floor with the hoggie on the counter above me. I don’t know how I came to, but I was shakeing like crazy and needed sugar. I tried to get up but couldn’t. Do you know what its like to be shakeing so bad that you can’t control anything, I could have had an oragan juice in my hand and still would not have been able to drink it. I sat back and took some deep breaths, and some how reached the hoggie, it was all there was in my reach and i just laid there and tried to chew this thing down. It didn’t take long to finish, I must of swollowed it hole. After a I finished it I was able to make it over to the fridge for some juice and started to try and remember where I was and what i was doing, It took a long while before I felt normal, I think i may have died and been brought back. Insuline is a very dangerous substance and if you are using it be very watchful of where you are and what type of sugar is available to you before you inject it.
ok i know i already wrote one, but this happened a week ago. I was feeling hungry and i decided to go to the TV room and decided to watch extreme makeover but that nagging feeling that i was hungry kept popping up, i laid there on the couch and started to black out and i couldn’t really move so i said to my mom “could you go get me something to eat?” i don’t think she realized i was low because i blacked out again then when i came too i basically blindly reached my hand out i guess i was being off and my mom finally got me food and she called my name twice then i realized she was talking to me and i literally ripped the food out of her hand and scarfed it down. it scared me so much. I still don’t know how low i was because i didn’t test.
My Mother had just passed away in March 2004. I went on a little trip up north to visit my cousin. I had taken my youngest daughter with me and we were having a nice time…hanging out at the pool and enjoying family. We were staying in a hotel and my cousin and her daughters were spending the night with us as well. I had bought a bunch of regular sodas and snacks for everyone. Well, it was time for bed and I got my insulin out and drew up 45 units of insulin ( at time I was taking large amount of Lantus at bedtime) well, I injected and then looked down and saw it was the Humalog!!!
Holy #&%*# !!! Well, I went into the bathroom and consumed about 10 regular pepsi’s and then I would throw up…I didnt want to scare my daughter or the other children. Well, long story short…had to call ambulance and they hooked me up to IV and off to the hospital, where they got me stable. But, I was cramping and having “charlie horse” in every part of my body! Awful. I had to drive home (2 hr drive) the next day and I was never so glad to get home and separate those two bottles of insulin!
To top it off…one of the nurses at the hospital was saying to somebody " I wish she would stop crying…she is going to be fine" I was crying from the “charlie horse” pain in my entire body.
I will never forget that…I really thought I was going to die.
having blurry vision when i was 9…in the hospital right after i was diagnosed.
I did the exact same mistake once! I took 45 U of Humalog by mistake thinking it was Lantus. I immediately realized it. Knowing that if your BG is very high then your insulin sensitivity is lowered, I drank orange juice and ate sugar to get my BG as high as I could - I think it reached 400 - 450 very quickly. From there on, it was just drink juice, go to the bathroom, check BG 15min later. I stopped it after 5 hours, when I was sure that all the Humalog was out of my system.
That’s great!
Even being 12, not eating for a full day was terrible. I had skipped breakfast before the doctor appointment and when we were on the way to the hospital, we almost stopped to eat, but we weren’t sure if I was allowed to eat. By the end of the day, I was basically screaming at the nurses that I needed to eat. I had 3 meat and cheese trays that didn’t have any carbs, even though I had stopped eating meat. 
Then, when I was allowed to eat really late at night, I had a bunch of chicken strips and a huge bowl of macaroni. The kitchen wasn’t even in use, but my sweet nurse made the food herself!
You must be a wonderful parent to be dealing with all of this!
thanks for sharing this because I don’t fear lows in my sleep but then I don’t notice them either! My husband is amazing in that he can notice sleep lows and I am ever thankful for that. Sadly, he often over treats them though. And as for that cgms, that’s way cool - I wonder who will be alerted when the alarm goes off 
Well one bad time I was 45 so I was like “OH S**T” and I went to a pop machine and got a pop … I then took a nap (Not!! a smart idea and I will tell you why) I woke up tested again 2hrs later I was 27 now mind you I was scared to death at the time … I check my trash … I picked Diet Pepsi. … It was so bad so now I keep juice in my room all the time for instances like that. I think it is second nature now to pick Diet and and my head was in overdrive so I will hope not to make that mistake again.
Yup, Rainbow. It pays to be prepared. However ya gotta do it.