Gotta get worse before it gets better

In addition to (and probably because of) this summer cold I've been dealing with, yesterday around dinner time I found myself in the E.R.

I awoke with a blood glucose reading of 73 mg/dl. That's pretty good - even a little bit on the low side. I then forgot my blood test kit at home when we left for church. After church, we went to Red, Hot, and Blue where I had fried catfish, french fries, and broccoli for lunch, which came back up on the way home. When I got home and tested my sugar, I was around 380 mg/dl. I gave a correction bolus, knowing it would likely not have any effect, and went to lie down. An hour later, it was 353 mg/dl. An hour later, 342 mg/dl. At that point I had Scott go out and get some Ketostix to test my ketone levels. They were HIGH. I put in a call to my doc, and she suggested I go to the ER for an insulin drip.

Scott drove me to the hospital, where we wound up spending about 2 1/2 hours. Not bad for an ER trip on a weekend. However, I managed my diabetes the whole time. I put on my check-in form "Diabetic Ketoacidosis" and that seemed to shock the nurses. I even had one say "you're a pro at this by now - you can do what you need to do". Not so reassuring.

They gave me fluids and nausea meds (despite my nausea disappearing) via IV and once I got my blood glucose down below 200 mg/dl (194 mg/dl to be precise), they let me go home. After giving me graham crackers and apple juice to "see if I could hold it down". Yep, no problem - that's what nausea meds are good for. Of course, when I got home, I was back up around 250 mg/dl until midnight, when I finally reached 140 mg/dl and decided to go to bed.

At 2:00 am I awoke to a lovely 30 mg/dl and sweat-soaked sheets. I drank 2 juice boxes and Scott brought me a piece of toast. Apparently that was too much (I knew it would be, but sometimes when you're THAT low, you need to over correct to ease your mind). So, this morning when I got up for work my BG was 254 mg/dl. Dang it!

I blame the cold.