My New Year’s Resolution for 2016 was to get my A1C to 6.5
or less. I started at 7.9 in January and
am happy to say I met my goal in July with an A1C of 6.5. January 19th of this year I hit
the lowest A1C I can remember – 6.2! I
was ecstatic, but actually relieved that all my hard work had paid off. I spent every 3 days evaluating my blood sugars,
emailing my (very patient) CDE, and losing sleep.
This year, my New Year’s Resolution is to start a diabetes
blog. I think with over 18 years of
living with Type 1, being a runner since age 4 (yes 4!) and getting my A1C’s
from high 7’s to low 6’s, I have a lot to say on the topic – and I should be
talking to more than my bestie and my husband.
I figure it will help me relieve some of the mental part of living with
Type 1. So here it goes...
A week after I decided to start the blog, I happen to
experience some “great” material.
Last Wednesday night after dinner, I started throwing
up. It was very scary, because I had
already bolused for dinner and my blood sugar dropped to 57. I thought maybe I had food poisoning so I
tried to stomach some fruit snacks and sip milk to get my glucose back to normal. Well, that did not stay down either. My husband got the glucose tabs (which I
never use for lows) and I was able to suck on them until I got to a BG of
83. Phew!
Well, I threw up again. At this point I did not know what was going
on. I put my pump on a temp basal for the next
few hours to avoid going low again since I wasn’t holding anything down. My night was the most horrendous sickness I
had ever experienced. I threw up every
20 minutes from 9pm to 3am, at which point I had my husband drive me to the
ER. I had never felt so dehydrated. What was it?
A stomach bug?
The flu?
Food poisoning?
The nurse took us back to the triage room immediately but we were
there over an hour before they gave me anti-nausea medicine intravenously. They tested my BG at intake and it was
194. Shocking to me, since I had set a
20% basal for 6 hours. I expected it to be
much higher. Once they got the
anti-nausea meds going I began to feel better, but they decided to test my blood for
everything under the sun (so they can charge me for it?).
The
triage nurse said my levels of beta-hydroxybutyrate were 5
times the normal amount and I was in DKA. He explained that the DKA had started the vomiting.
I said hold on there, I was low when I started throwing up. Everything I know about DKA points to it
happening when your BG is high. I told him this and he said I was wrong.
The nurse said
they would have to admit me to the hospital, take me off my pump and put me on an
insulin drip. I was not happy. I pushed the button on the hospital bed and
asked to speak with the doctor and the same nurse came back in! I was livid, but without energy. My husband knows 80% of what I know about
diabetes (he gets the 20% benefit, as he has a working pancreas) and he was
livid too. He asked lots of
questions. In the end we gave in.
Because they admitted me as
“DKA” I was sent to the ICU. So
fun. I spoke with the endocrinologist on
site at 8am (after a night in the ER) and she said it was not DKA, but
something way less severe called Starvation Ketosis. Meaning, without eating or drinking my body
started producing ketones (small) on it’s own even though I was still receiving
insulin. She called it a stomach bug,
and said we really were lucky to have come in when we did because if we had
waited even a couple hours more, the likelihood of actual DKA was very
high.
I stayed in the hospital all
day Thursday, with perfect blood sugars – those ICU nurses are amazing! I
stayed between 70 and 130 for 30 hours straight. I got to go home Friday afternoon. Even though I ended up being ok, it is not an
experience I want to repeat any time soon.
I hate IV’s and I had 4 in at one point.
I did however get some good
news, my A1C dropped from 6.5 (October) to 6.3.
So that made me feel good.
