I felt like the reverse of a mastercard commercial the past couple days.
Stomach Flu: Sucks
Diabetes: Not so much fun
Stomach Flu as a Diabetic: Less fun than getting kicked in the groin by a mule!
On Monday my blood sugars were really screwed up. I had most of my normal meals but was just low and felt very lethargic. It seemed no matter what I ate before I went to the gym just wouldn't get my blood sugars above 150 - a full gatoarde, a clif bar, accel gels; the food just refused to increase my blood sugar. I assumed this was just a by product of the extra workouts in the previous week, but I was wrong. After cutting my run a bit short I met a friend out for some drinks; when I got home my bs was 130. I felt like hell but thought a bacon cheeseburger during the Giants game would cheer me up.
An hour or two after I ate the burger I started to feel really warm, clammy and slightly disoriented. I checked my bs and was at 109 - I thought that was too low for having eaten a pretty big meal so recently so I pounded some gatorade. Before I could check my bs again I was praying to the porcelain goddess. No matter what food I had after that my blood sugar refused to go above 90 - it felt like someone had a vice grip on my stomach and just wasn't going to let the food digest or enter my system.
Thankfully I received a phone call at 1am from my ex. I had texted her letting her know I felt like complete garbage - she demanded I test right away and I was down to 62. As forcibly as she could she made me leave my apartment and go get some sodas/ juice. I was totally out of it so at that point if she told me to chase purple elephants I probably would have thought that was a great idea. Thankfully the Dominican Chicken place was still open and I grabbed 3 pepsis and 1 ginger ale.
Once I climbed my stairs again I felt the butterflies trying to get out and began to empty my stomach into my toilet again. I drank my ginger ale after that and it only brought my bs up to 80 - yikes. I drank a 1/2 a pepsi and got my bs up to 140 so I finally thought it was safe to go to sleep. Just to make sure I turned my pump down to 50% - I woke up a few hours later, had a bs of 180, reset my pump to 70% and slept till 10 am.
Last night I was finally able to eat something besides toast again! But man having the stomach flu and this disease really really sucks! I couldn't figure out how to bolus, and finally decided it would be better to run high for a couple days than run low. Hopefully this will be the only stomach flu I have for a while - my head is still spinning from it.
7 comments:
I'm sorry to hear you were so sick. It sounds like your body is forcing you to slow down, take stock, reach out, reassess. I know it sucks, but maybe there is a silver lining there.
I usually run higher when sick and have never experienced what you described with the stomach flu-just goes to show you how different each case of t1 diabetes really is.
I pray you recover fully soon.
You know, I wonder if when you're sick, it's hard to tell if you're really sick or it's just diabetes... and I guess those things will always be intertwined from now on?
I do not know these mastercard commercials, so that reference was lost on me.
And glad to see that you would have done whatever I said when you were low... this opens up a whole new bag of fun for potential practical jokes! (kidding).
puking up a bacon cheeseburger is entirely unfortunate.
Those stomach flus are horrible for the average person. I've always been thankful that I don't have diabetes on top of it. And then I think of how PWD's can't be sick and just sleep the day away because they have to monitor their BS's.
You did a really good job of keeping your bs's up. Awesome.
I dread when Brendon goes through those episodes. We had to bring him to the ER once just to get a glucose drip because we couldn't keep him high enough and ketones were building. It was such a catch 22.
P.S. Get a meter to test your ketones. It's important to track those too...unfortunately.
sorry to hear of your miserable experience. *having* to eat when you are throwing up is the worst possible punishment. It sounds like you took the right course of action, though. Taking any sort of bolus when you can't keep anything down is risky. It happened to me once (when I was taking Symlin) and I had to go to the ER for the d-50 (dextrose) injection. I couldn't get my BG above 50 for a couple hours even though I was eating constantly. I had thrown up after bolusing for a huge bowl of oatmeal. Anyway, that has only happened to me one time in 19 years of having diabetes.
Oh man. I hate whenever you're feeling sick to your stomach and your blood sugar's low and you have to bring it up and then you end up getting sick a few minutes later. It's so frusterating. I hope you're feeling a bit better now though. Sounds like you handled it like a pro. :)
Welcome to the world of sick and diabetes. It does suck. But I think you are right about the running high versus running low. Especially if you live alone. I hope you are feeling much better.
My 5 year old just got the stomach flu last Friday, I have bolused him twice in 3 days since he stopped throwing up and both times have been complete disasters.. I've had his pump turned down to 75% just to keep him in range and he finally stopped spilling ketones yesterday. I've always been told that sick diabetics need MORE insulin, and with his ketones being large for 5 days I was panicking. Glad you wrote this, it makes me feel a little better.
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