I Thought I Was Going To Die

Diabetes. If you can prevent yourself from getting it, do. It’s not a nice thing and not always easy to manage.

After being diagnosed in 1999, I managed my diabetes with oral medications then later, when I had no insurance, I watched what I ate and exercised. It wasn’t under control but for  someone with no insurance and no financial resources to see a doctor for medication, it was “not bad.” Then last Christmas I turned 61 and all hell let loose. I started getting symptoms, which when combined, I knew it meant my diabetes was no longer going to let me take care of it on my own. It reared it’s ugly head and asked for professionals. I was able to find a free clinic that approved me and was immediately put on oral medication. My HA1c test (a test that tells the doctors the amount of sugar in my blood for the past three months) came in at 14.4. It should be 7 for diabetics and 5 for non diabetics. Mine was obviously whacked! After two weeks on oral medication, I was no better so they determined that my body had stopped producing any insulin at all, which means that the oral medications had nothing to work with, and I needed insulin.

Thus began this journey. About a week later, I was approved for the Oregon Health Plan (state medical insurance for low/no income). I got in to see a doctor right away because the insulin needed to be adjusted as the free clinic had started me on the lowest dose of long acting insulin. So the new doctor doubled the dose and added meal time fast-acting insulin injections that I take just before eating. They help maintain my sugar level low so it never gets super high in any 24 hour period. It’s still not as it should be but it’s getting there. (A fasting of 175 is much better than what I had before insulin, which was in the 590s.)

So I am learning to deal with the fast-acting meal time insulin. It has been just under a week and in that time I’ve had three “low episodes.” A low episode is when you don’t have enough sugar in your blood. And it will kill you. Quickly. I was able to handle the first two which were both in the 70s. Then today, I got to where I could only see blotches of color and I was sweating so much my clothes were soaked, like dripping wet, within about two minutes. How low was it? 59. What do you do for it? Eat Life Savers or other kind of sugar source, eat sugar right out of the bowl, drink juice, put icing from tube icing inside your cheek. There are also sugar pills but I didn’t have any. So I used Life Savers and fruit juice. It almost didn’t budge. I repeated the juice and candy and it was still only at 64 a full forty minutes later. I ended up eating a whole personal size watermelon. Finally, I got it to 90 and I knew I was out of the woods. But that was a scary hour. I thought I was going to die…from low blood sugar.

I need to talk to the doctor and show her my numbers. I need to know the cutoff number. When I take my blood sugar before insulin, what number should tell me “don’t take any insulin?” So until I figure that out, I’ll be a little scared of injecting myself again.

So yeah, don’t get diabetes.