Emergency admission to hospital

[LionChild]

@LionChild it is possible you were losing weight due to your high BG rather than the keffir that you were eating.
You mention you were being treated by the district nurse but now being passed back to your GP. I would strongly recommend insisting on being seen by a dedicated diabetes team as most people with type 1 do.
A dedicated diabetes team is likely to move you off fixed insulin doses. These may have been popular 20 years ago but for the last 15 years, at least, the "basal-bolus" regime has been usual for people with type 1 diabetes as this allows you to adjust your insulin dose according to what you eat rather than having to eat to maintain your BG.
This will mean more injections (every time you eat plus one more) but the flexibility and control is much much better.

Good luck in your continued diabetes journey. There are many of us around (not as many as there is with type 2 but still plenty to assist) to ask questions.

Yes, the losing weight because of the high BS makes sense doesn't it? maybe it had nothing to do with the kefir, although that is a claim with kefir...hence the confusion. I am muddle about the significance of the Ac1 test and the BG levels. I know the Ac1 refers to the amount of haemoglobin sticking to cells over a 3 month period average...but I keep missing on the understanding of how the two tests relate..?

 

[LionChild]

Well, you know you were on too much insulin to atart with because of the hypos and it is perfectly possible that you may need to reduce it further, if hypos continue to occur. Do your consultant and nurses realise that you have been used to eating a low carb diet ? This in itself will reduce the amount of insulin that your body requires. It can only help if you can start to note exactly what you are eating including the carbs and when, a food diary to put it another way. You can show this to whoever is giving you advice about the amount of insulin to take and it should help them to arrive at a better understanding of how much insulin to suggest. Insulin requirements also vary massively from one individual to another unfortunately, with some trial and error necessary to arrive at a correct number of units for any of us.

All of this must be both frustrating and difficult for you, but at least you are still here. Being days on a drip does suggest you were in real danger when you were admitted to hospital. Are you able to send your blood test results to anyone to review and offer further advice on hypos and adjusting your insulin ? GP surgeries are unlikely to be helpful with this sort of thing. It's outside their area of expertise so it's not just yours being awkward. I agree that getting levels more stable is your first priority. Carb counting would help with this.

Yes, I have been making quite a bit of effort to document what i am eating and when the hypos fit into that pattern etc, so hopefully the GP and consulant and Diabetic Team will take that properly into account when adjusting insulin. The hypos have lessened now in frequency, but have not gone away. I am now on 20 units twice a day, and originally when discharge on Monday 15 april, I was on 30 twice a day... The district nurses are now thinning out their visits and phone calls, and seem themselves to have only a very basic knowledge from experience of DT1 patients. There is a doctor who seems to be something of an expert on Diabetes in my surgery who I have seen twice since discharge from hospital, but it is a very hard learning curve that I suppose I have to do largely by myself...

 

[Resurgam]

If you are being given a mixed insulin then you don't have the option of adjustment for what you eat - I don't use insulin, I am just nosy about how these things work.
Perhaps in a while you will have the separate insulins, but until then you need to eat enough carbs to cover the effect of the fast acting insulin which is coming along with the slower one.

 

[LionChild]

If you are being given a mixed insulin then you don't have the option of adjustment for what you eat - I don't use insulin, I am just nosy about how these things work.
Perhaps in a while you will have the separate insulins, but until then you need to eat enough carbs to cover the effect of the fast acting insulin which is coming along with the slower one.

Ok, thank you. That is very helpful Resurgam. Perhaps when I go for my appointment at the diabetic centre, they will tell me about that as an option....I perhaps need to emphasize the low carb diet I had been on and want to continue - partly related to what I had been taught to do re. my so called Diabetes 2 diagnosis previously..! I had worked so very hard on exercise and diet to lose weigh and be more healthy, started on kefir, got cold, bronchitis, and then whoosh! 3+ ketones in urine, 119 HBA1c and straight into CDU and on drips for potassium, sodium and....Insulin! What a rollercoaster! in a matter of a few days..my life has been literally turned upside down & at death's Door!

 

[Deleted Account]

Yes, the losing weight because of the high BS makes sense doesn't it? maybe it had nothing to do with the kefir, although that is a claim with kefir...hence the confusion. I am muddle about the significance of the Ac1 test and the BG levels. I know the Ac1 refers to the amount of haemoglobin sticking to cells over a 3 month period average...but I keep missing on the understanding of how the two tests relate..?

Take a look at this page: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/what-is-hba1c.html
Also, if you are on the website, go to www.diabetes.co.uk - there is a lot of information there to digest.

 

[becca59]

@LionChild it is possible you were losing weight due to your high BG rather than the keffir that you were eating.
You mention you were being treated by the district nurse but now being passed back to your GP. I would strongly recommend insisting on being seen by a dedicated diabetes team as most people with type 1 do.
A dedicated diabetes team is likely to move you off fixed insulin doses. These may have been popular 20 years ago but for the last 15 years, at least, the "basal-bolus" regime has been usual for people with type 1 diabetes as this allows you to adjust your insulin dose according to what you eat rather than having to eat to maintain your BG.
This will mean more injections (every time you eat plus one more) but the flexibility and control is much much better.

Good luck in your continued diabetes journey. There are many of us around (not as many as there is with type 2 but still plenty to assist) to ask questions.

You got in before me. I too would suggest that the onset of Type I diabetes was the cause of the weight loss and not the Keffir
For the first time ever I read the criteria yesterday for type 1 management in the UK. You should have access to a medical team and preferably be put on a basal bolus regime and shown how to carb count. Unless there is an underlying reason why you cannot be. I would say this is the biggest problem here. Way too much insulin for too few carbs.

 

[littlemolly]

I’m sorry if I’m repeating that someone else has mentioned, (I haven’t read the whole thread) but it IS possible to have DKA even when constantly testing and administering insulin! I know as it happened to me! I had a meal at a taverna on a very small Greek island and ended up with food poisoning. I was vomiting for hours and hours and couldn’t even keep water down. My blood sugars rocketed and even though I doubled my basal and took oodles of insulin nothing helped. The reason for this was that I had become completely dehydrated due to the vomiting and so the insulin was not able to work. I was taken to Athens by ferry and was hospitalised for 4 days, I was told that I was very lucky to have survived. The Greek hospital was amazingly good and even had a diabetes consultant waiting for me in A & E.

 

[ert]

I'm sorry you've been through quite an ordeal and are still unsure what your outcomes are. You need an urgent referral to a diabetes specialist, which should have been immediate if they suspected you were T1DM. I got my appointment the next day after seeing the diabetes team in the hospital. They still appear to be treating you as T2DM and insulin resistance with your high dose of long-acting, and sending you home to be under the care of your GP. Please contact your GP straight away, ask for an emergency appointment and get some answers and reassurance. You've certainly are having a tough time.