Diabetic sick days

It's been a rough few days and we're not out of the woods yet. I thought we were doing okay until the middle of the night between Wednesday and Thursday when I just couldn't get my blood sugar to go down. I was losing the battle and the high blood sugars were fogging my brain. When my sugar went over 600 and the meter couldn't even read that high anymore, I called for reinforcements.

It hit me when my parents came over and we were all debating if I should go to the hospital or not. I looked up to see three adults all desperate to help but no one but me knew how to work my pump. And I was not in a teaching frame of mind, if you know what I mean.

We clumsily made our way through changing out my tubing and infusion site (try doing that when your sugar is 600) and giving myself 10 units of insulin via injection to kick start this baby into action. The best I can tell is that my infusion site went bad right when I needed it most and I wasn't thinking clearly enough to change it out and/or just go with an injection. I didn't want to muddy the waters changing out too many things.

But it has taken over 36 hours to wrestle my blood sugar back down from those scary moments around 2am. It's 132 right now and I am totally fine with that.

I don't get sick often. The last time I was this sick was 15 years ago or so. I ended up in the hospital then, but that was before my insulin pump and poor Jeremy didn't have the same resources to keep me at home versus throwing my ass in the car as soon as I told him I was Sailor Moon.

So hopefully we've gotten that out of our system for the next 15 years. Let's all set our clocks and plan ahead. Next time I'm going to have a document written up that says how my pump works and which insulin in the fridge is the right one and what a reservoir is versus tubing.

I'm still sick. I'm still taking 3.2 units/hr versus my normal 1.3 units/hr to combat the infection. But I'm at least lucid and able to sit upright for more than one hour. I can keep food and water down, and that's a big plus. (I did learn a trick, though, that if you feel dry heaves coming on, chug a bunch of water. You'll puke it back up anyways, but it's still cool and more soothing that plain stomach acid. That's my tip to you.)

Here's to feeling even better tomorrow.