Also, at other times when I have had a fright or a shock I have gone into hypo... What makes your BG go one way or the other? Thanks for any insight you can give.
There's a book on kindle, Sugar Surfing, by Stephen Ponder, which is worth a read. He's T1 and an endo, so has dealt with it both personally and professionally.
The book is about how to use cgm, but there's a bit about what he calls "hollow highs" - spikes caused by adrenalin rushes.
He reckons it's ok to correct them with a few units if it's going to high, but he calls them "hollow" because they're not being pushed by food behind them, so the correction will generally be more modest than with a food high.
It's a bit of a mystery why frights sometimes cause highs and sometimes lows. I suppose it's possible with the loes that we've maybe overbolused for the previous meal and would have had a low anyway.
I've read that in people who've been dx'd for a long time, the alpha cell response, which should release glucagon to tell the liver to release glycogen as glucose to raise bg, becomes blunted due to past hypos. It's part of hypo unawareness.
One of the blokes who drinks in my local is a fireman. He says that he's been in a few incidents where bg is tested in non-Ts and he's seen some crazy lows and highs