Scary Diabetic Moment Today

[Iron Woode]

I have Type 2 diabetes that was diagnosed 3 years ago. I have been on a regimen of metformin and diet and exercise. Seems I am not getting enough benefit from the metformin so my doctor put me on Gliclazide. 1 pill a day and I must still take my 4 daily metformin pills.

I am also self-testing my blood 4 times a day and logging the results.

Fast forward to today and I am at work when at 3:00PM I felt rather odd. I figured my glucose was low and it was time for testing anyway, so I tested it and it was 4.3.

My doctor said below 5 was the danger zone. He wasn't kidding. The symptoms were already effecting me while I was testing. The worst was the uncontrollable shaking of my hands. So I grabbed an orange juice to get my sugars up. That helped but it took a few minutes to take effect. I had my lunch at the same time and felt back to normal after 20 minutes.

From now on I will pay far more attention to my glucose levels.

 

[whm1974]

I would have a snack ready for those times your blood sugar is low or have a soda available for when this happens. My previous doctor recommended I carry some hard candy with me just in case.

 

[Iron Woode]

I would have a snack ready for those times your blood sugar is low or have a soda available for when this happens. My previous doctor recommended I carry some hard candy with me just in case.

This is the first time I have experienced a glucose crash. It was scary. I hope I will not go through that again. Now I know what the symptoms are and how to deal with it.

 

[lxskllr]

Always told my daughter to keep hard candy with her, but she doesn't listen. She doesn't keep as good a track of her diabetes as I think she should.

What /I/ would do is keep a journal listing blood sugar, type/quantity food consumed, and blood sugar after eating. See if you can discern a pattern. My daughter says she reacts differently to different foods that should be similar, but with her lackadaisical tracking, you're just guessing. Also, be cautious when sick. That can throw everything out of balance, and you won't react as expected to food/insulin.

and for your berating, LOSE WEIGHT, and GET EXERCISE! It's all fun and games til body parts start coming off. Type2 can sometimes be fully recovered from(optimistic), but it can at least be mediated with diet and exercise.

 

[mikeymikec]

What /I/ would do is keep a journal listing blood sugar, type/quantity food consumed, and blood sugar after eating. See if you can discern a pattern.

I don't have diabetes, I have Crohn's instead (which requires me to be careful with what I'm eating), and I have some experience with the food journals aspect. Believe me, keeping up such a detailed regimen (yet not a "I need to do this or I will become ill shortly" tactic, which is far easier to personally justify) in the long term requires long term willpower of a sort that IMO people without a chronic condition have little to provide any frame of reference for.

I was saying to my wife this morning that ideally I should record every occasion I eat what I call 'chance food' (ie. there's a non-zero chance that if I eat this, I may get Crohn's symptoms such as diarrhoea / painful bowel inflammation, and 'chance food' is basically every single food/drink except maybe 10 that are in my 'safe no matter what' diet, which took me about 15 years to establish) , along with every occasion I have a non-ideal bowel movement: This would allow me to compile potentially useful data to give me more insight into whether some of the foods I consider to be chancy really are. But the fact of the matter is that even people with chronic conditions want to just be able to live life. Crohn's already controls significant portions of my life and there's little I can do about that; I can't get certain jobs because of it, I need to be able to access my safe foods for at least 80% of my meals every day). I don't want it to be my 24/7 obsession.

I'm not saying your idea is crap (I don't know diabetes beyond a first-paragraph-of-wikipedia understanding of it and no kind of personal experience of it - e.g. family member, so I've basically got nothing to make a value judgement of it), to people with such conditions such a perspective can smack somewhat like a 'just world hypothesis'. Hopefully you're not that kind of person, and if so hopefully your daughter knows that too. If you're not sure if she knows, make sure she does, because from personal experience there's nothing quite as toxic as having a family member who maybe acts like one's issues are avoidable when they're not.

 

[lxskllr]

My daughter's type1. That /just happens/. When she got it, she was in the best physical health of her life. Dancing pre-professional, and putting in about 15hrs/week of exercise :shrugs: I do get on her about taking care of the disease. It's workable, but you have to put in the effort. Life sucks, and it sucks more for some people than others. Making your disease a job beats having your feet removed every single time imo.

 

[whm1974]

This is the first time I have experienced a glucose crash. It was scary. I hope I will not go through that again. Now I know what the symptoms are and how to deal with it.

I had a scare too as about almost four years ago with my blood sugar reaching 350. My case manager came to my apartment because I haven't gotten my medicine for a few days. She check my blood sugar and then made me go to the ER.

I am more careful now about managing my diabetes.

 

[tortoise]

No affiliation . . just a Reddit link about a diabetic-breath smelling cat.

 

[TheVrolok]

I know this is a month old, but just an observation. Interesting that your doc put you on a sulfonylurea, rather than any number of other drug classes. Unless you happen to be MODY, there are many many better options. Although as you're outside of the US, maybe there are cost issues that I don't understand.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Interesting that you all mentioned having hard candy, or something to "spike" your blood sugar when it's low. I told my mother that I wanted to get some cookies or something sweet to have around the house, just in case I need to raise my blood sugar, and she was like, "your doctor told you NO white sugar, NO white flour, NO white potatoes, etc.".

She's so dogmatic, she's caught up in things, without being able to think things through rationally. I DONT "pig out" on sweets. (She does.) I could have a tray of cookies on my desk for a month without finishing them.

 

[whm1974]

Interesting that you all mentioned having hard candy, or something to "spike" your blood sugar when it's low. I told my mother that I wanted to get some cookies or something sweet to have around the house, just in case I need to raise my blood sugar, and she was like, "your doctor told you NO white sugar, NO white flour, NO white potatoes, etc.".

She's so dogmatic, she's caught up in things, without being able to think things through rationally. I DONT "pig out" on sweets. (She does.) I could have a tray of cookies on my desk for a month without finishing them.

Potatoes are fine, just eat them with their skins on. I cook mine in the microwave which is a better method then boiling them.

 

[Iron Woode]

I know this is a month old, but just an observation. Interesting that your doc put you on a sulfonylurea, rather than any number of other drug classes. Unless you happen to be MODY, there are many many better options. Although as you're outside of the US, maybe there are cost issues that I don't understand.

It was cheaper than Januvia.

 

[Iron Woode]

Interesting that you all mentioned having hard candy, or something to "spike" your blood sugar when it's low. I told my mother that I wanted to get some cookies or something sweet to have around the house, just in case I need to raise my blood sugar, and she was like, "your doctor told you NO white sugar, NO white flour, NO white potatoes, etc.".

She's so dogmatic, she's caught up in things, without being able to think things through rationally. I DONT "pig out" on sweets. (She does.) I could have a tray of cookies on my desk for a month without finishing them.

some people don't understand that during a glucose crash, a diabetic needs sugar to boost the glucose back up. Fruit juice is much faster than candy.

 

[whm1974]

some people don't understand that during a glucose crash, a diabetic needs sugar to boost the glucose back up. Fruit juice is much faster than candy.

My lowest blood sugar was 54 and the case manager on staff at the time wouldn't let me go home without consuming some peanut butter and jelly.

 

[Iron Woode]

My lowest blood sugar was 54 and the case manager on staff at the time wouldn't let me go home without consuming some peanut butter and jelly.

seems your glucose measurements are different than mine.

my lowest was 4.3 on my meter.

is there a different test or measure you are using?

 

[lxskllr]

Interesting that you all mentioned having hard candy, or something to "spike" your blood sugar when it's low. I told my mother that I wanted to get some cookies or something sweet to have around the house, just in case I need to raise my blood sugar, and she was like, "your doctor told you NO white sugar, NO white flour, NO white potatoes, etc.".

She's so dogmatic, she's caught up in things, without being able to think things through rationally. I DONT "pig out" on sweets. (She does.) I could have a tray of cookies on my desk for a month without finishing them.

Stash a squeeze tube of icing in your drawer, or my preference would be one of those little honey bottles. Works quick, and keeps well over long periods of time.

 

[whm1974]

seems your glucose measurements are different than mine.

my lowest was 4.3 on my meter.

is there a different test or measure you are using?

Sound like the later, I live in the US if that matters.

 

[paperfist]

I don’t think you want hard candy. At least from the classes I took you want something liquid that will get into your blood stream right away if you have to boost your low glucose levels.

 

[Iron Woode]

I don’t think you want hard candy. At least from the classes I took you want something liquid that will get into your blood stream right away if you have to boost your low glucose levels.

it would really depend how low it is and how fast you want it back up.

 

[paperfist]

it would really depend how low it is and how fast you want it back up.

How would you know though? I haven't had a low sugar 'attack' yet, but I imagine I'd be in a panic and want to down some sugar instead of passing out and not try to mess around and monitor my levels. So I'm just going on what they said in the classes, drink a coke if you feel like you're going to pass out because that's what'll get in your bloodstream the fastest.

Did you see that new Freestyle meter? I never seen something like that before. It attaches to your elbow and monitors your glucose for 24 hours for 15 days.

 

[ArchAngel777]

I don’t think you want hard candy. At least from the classes I took you want something liquid that will get into your blood stream right away if you have to boost your low glucose levels.

Smarties or Glucose tablets would be faster at raising blood glucose levels than a coke. Though, practically speaking, both would work just fine.

 

[WelshBloke]

Jelly babies!

 

[ArchAngel777]

some people don't understand that during a glucose crash, a diabetic needs sugar to boost the glucose back up. Fruit juice is much faster than candy.

This is too broad and therefore, not very accurate. Any dextrose based hard candy will produce better results than a fruit juice. But, again, both could work. Much of fruit juice is comprised of fructose that must be metabolized by the liver. So most of that sugar is NOT fast acting, only the glucose portion can enter the blood stream fast. So 20g of fruit sugar (say at 75:25 fruc/gluc) only yields 5g of fast acting sugar to enter your blood stream. The rest is slooooow....

Downing a whole can of Coke, which provides roughly 44g of HFCS in a 55/45 (most common form) split works (if you drink the whole can) because 19.8g of the suggested 15-20g are via glucose! the other 24.2 grams are metabolized very slowly.

If you were dangerously low, 15-20g of dextrose is your best friend. Dextrose tablets, Smarties (1 Roll), Sweet Tarts, etc would be much faster than trying to down an entire can of coke, or a 12oz glass of fruit juice.

 

[FeuerFrei]

FYI, those Venom® energy drinks use Glucose as a sweetener. Probably why they taste so good.

My body seems to tolerate them better than the average soft drink ... e.g. Crush, Mug rootbeer, etc

 

[killster1]

metformin is not healthy, and of course you added a extra pill so bottom out. What kinda test was 4.3? AIC? because glucose test ranges are 20-1000 (below 60 and above 300 usually have some side effects dizzy etc) 4.3 sounds like you would be in a coma, maybe it was 43 with a caution to 50 and below.

• 4.3 mmol/L = 77.48 mg/dL i see now we have a different setting we use here.