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Bad Hypo

kirstiemarie91

Well-Known Member
Messages
59
Type of diabetes
Family member
Treatment type
Insulin
My husband has just had a bad hypo he had his breakfast at number 10:00 ish and was fine, we then went shopping and when walking home, he said to me he couldn't see right, like there was a delay on his vision when he turned his head. He checked his sugar and it was 3.0 so he had some glucotabs.

We were still five minutes from home when he said his legs were going. He lent on me and I managed to get him home but it was so so so scary

Would have waiting for the glucotabs to kick in have helped before carrying on walking?

Scary
 
well!!!! he wasn't driving, so that's o/k. with 45 yrs experience,get him to sit down,wait for 5mins, retest. half or a whole bounty bar. wait 10mins retest.as it gets to 4.5/5.0. his level will still be rising. so he should be ok to walk home.. frank
 
Fab
Thanks very much, I appreciate it, Kirstie
 
Kirstie, it takes 15 mins for arterial blood to get out to the tiny capillaries that we test from, so altho we may feel better within ten minutes, *add on 15 mins to that* before you expect to see a change.

There's absolutely no point testing every five minutes.
 
Hi Kirstie, it's a good idea to wait for a few minutes, as it does take time to recover. The bad news is, often someone having a hypo won't agree with this. In the past, I have been extremely frustrated when my wife made me sit down on a bench for 10 minutes after eating glucose tablets. I thought it was entirely unnecessary. Once my blood sugars rose and I could think clearly, I understood that it really was the best thing to do. Sometimes you have to be firm, as mental capacity is often impaired during a hypo. I'm not sure why, but the worse it is, the more certain a lot of us are that we are fine.
 
I tend to leave 10 to 20 minutes for glucose tabs to hit my system if I have a bad low.

Sitting down and doing as little as possible is a good plan until you definitely start to feel batter.

At least you had something with you. The worst I managed to inflict on my poor dear wife was a 2 point something while wandering down 5th Avenue in New York and I had nothing on me. We had only just arrived and she had to leave me sitting on the floor while she ran off to try and find something.
 
Good on you. Just try to carry dextrosols or something similar with you always. I keep Dextros in my bag, my jacket pocket, by the bed, all that stuff. One Dextro = 3g carb. For a slow or not bad hypo, 2 may be enough. For worse, 5? They should have taken effect within ten minutes, tho as before, it won't show up in fingersticks for another 15 mins or so.
 
As I get more experienced with T1 I have found a massive difference between doing cardio exercise such as running and cycling which will raise my BG in the short term, as it's high intensity. I have found that walking around, such as shopping, will lower my BG quite a bit, whilst higher intensity exercise will raise my BG. Getting to know your own body is key I think, make sure the experience is logged for future reference,
 
Hi
I'm a type 2 insulin dependent diabetic and when I'm low I take 1 sprit can of full fat Coke, and then wait 15 minutes and normally this brings me up to 5.4 ish then I consume a small carb snack
Hope this helps
 
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