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Hypo vomit?

catapillar

Well-Known Member
Messages
3,390
Location
UK
Type of diabetes
Type 1
Treatment type
Insulin
So I didn't have an especially wild New Year's Eve. I didn't drink any alcohol. I ate dinner at about 8pm and went to bed at about 10pm. I was low-ish going to bed, but I'd had a cup of tea and some clotted cream just before going to bed and assumed that would keep me bumped up through the night (rock n roll). I woke up at about 3am. My dexcom was alarming, and saying I was low (under 2.2) but I'm not very good at waking up to the alarms. I had woken up because I had touched something damp in my bed, when I turned the lamp on there was a very copious amount of my partially digested dinner vomitted up over my bed. I do not remember being sick, I did not feel like I had been sick - no burnt throat, no horrible taste - but it was definitely my dinner (gross). I'm not sure if I was sick while I was asleep? I feel like that would have woken a sleeping person up. Or if I was sick while hypo unconcious, I didn't test in the night when I woke up because there was a lot of vomit around my bedside table and I was awake and able to walk around, find bin bags & antibacterial wipes, so I figured I was fine. I gave up trying to clean the vomit carnage - I had a washing machine full of clean washing and it was 3:30am - and went to sleep on the sofa, when I tested at 7:20am it just said low which is under 1 on the omnipod. So I think I probably was fully unconcious and that's why I didn't notice being sick. I naturally sleep in the recovery position, self preservation is important, but I feel like vomiting while unconcious is really quite a significant escalation of the risk scale. I don't really want to die by choking on my own vom while unconcious. I'm not really sure why I was sick, it wasn't a sick inducing meal, it wasn't seafood or anything exotic. I have had hypos with a really helpful severe nausea symptom, but even when I've had that as a hypo symptom I've never had a hypo that actually made me throw up.

TLDR: Will low blood sugar make you spontaneously vom?

I'm totally fine, I've had breakfast, I've not had a bolus. I'm 5.1. I'm really not looking forward to attempting to complete the clean up - it wasn't a large dinner, but apparently partially digesting it really significantly increases the volume. So I go from feeling totally fine and not sick to having to clean up the mysteriously appearing vom and then I feel grossed out sick! Eww.
 
@catapillar . Bloody hell.....that's not how you're supposed to see the New Year in .
So sorry it happened especially on the start to the new year, but you being you everything is back in control it would appear.
Have only vomited twice whilst having a hypo from what I can recall.
1st time having eaten a copious amount of bananas to get me out of a hypo, I managed to keep them down for maybe half hour.
2nd time I spent 12 hrs + being sick after having a bad hypo whilst on holiday. Had a hypo, wife gave me usual hypo treatment but I just couldn't stop throwing up for the rest of the day.

It sounds like your hypo was a good'un and your body reacted accordingly. Everything goes into survival mode and I suppose it could be down to your stomach saying we need to survive, I can't digest this food anymore we need to survive. Hence the reaction to off load. I'm no expert just the thoughts of a fellow, sympathetic Type1..

Hope the rest of the day picks up and you get all the bed clothes laundered.

Happy New Year.......again.
 
Hi @catapillar ,

That sounds worrying. Hope you're OK/ish now..?

Sending you best wishes.!
 
therower said:
Everything goes into survival mode and I suppose it could be down to your stomach saying we need to survive, I can't digest this food anymore we need to survive. Hence the reaction to off load.
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Yeah that makes sense, I think. I'm not convinced that "oh she's unconscious, let's make her vomit" is the best survival tactic. But yeah, blood sugar too low to be doing anything non-essential and digesting this meal no longer essential so it gets ejected makes sense.

@Jaylee im totally fine thanks, if slightly puzzled about how to dismantle my bed to complete cleaning!
 
I always make sure that I eat enough carb to use up any IOB if my bg levels are below my ideal target. Tea with clotted cream probably wasn't enough carb and it would definately give me bad heartburn. Not surprised that you went low and was sick.
 
iHs said:
I always make sure that I eat enough carb to use up any IOB if my bg levels are below my ideal target. Tea with clotted cream probably wasn't enough carb and it would definately give me bad heartburn. Not surprised that you went low and was sick.
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Well that's helpful thanks. You get 3 gold stars for the good carb eating. I'm really glad to hear you do it all perfectly. Well done you. Does your lack of suprise come from an understanding as to any reason why I was sick? Do you think it was just the low blood sugar? ... or any tips on how to get vomit out of a mattress?
 
iHs said:
I always make sure that I eat enough carb to use up any IOB if my bg levels are below my ideal target. Tea with clotted cream probably wasn't enough carb and it would definately give me bad heartburn. Not surprised that you went low and was sick.
Click to expand...

To be fair @iHs , the IOB was probably for the 8pm meal, which unbeknownst probably wasn't digesting properly anyway?

catapillar said:
@Jaylee im totally fine thanks, if slightly puzzled about how to dismantle my bed to complete cleaning!
Click to expand...

Slowly & methodically, keeping the soiled layers topmost as you remove..
Oddly, I used to throw up in bed as a kid on the old porcine insulin.
But don't recollect any hypo symptoms.. I was awake at the time. (They where clear & brutal back then.)
 
Poor you catapillar! Horrid! Worrying!
It's only happened to me once - ice cream and bananas. I was pregnant but it was definitely hypo- induced. I was once told that one of the first lines of hypo-defence is increased adrenaline as it instigates glycogen release, hence hypo irritability. In extremes it also make you get rid of all the ballast so you'll be lighter and therefore run faster to get away from the sabre tooth tiger. Hence vomiting? How lucky that you regained consciousness, even if it was to a less-than-perfect start to 2018.
May the rest of the year be a good one for you.
Not sure how you clean the mattress. Wet and dry carpet cleaner? Hire a carpet shampooer? Get a new one in the endless sales? Use a waterproof mattress protector once it's done in case of future hypos (hope never another vomit-inducing one)?
 
Carpet cleaner hire from a local DIY like B&Q..? They have upholstery attachments..!

I used one on the carpet when the heater matrix leaked coolant in my old van.? That stuff was hard to remove. (Almost greasy.)
Due to its nature & composition it wouldn't evaporate..
Got the rugs done in my house too..

(Just seen @Fairygodmother 's post. Needless to say I second the carpet cleaner.)
 

That's interesting. I'm completely hypo unaware, so I don't get an adrenaline response to hypos and no adrenaline created hypo symptoms. But I suppose I must have had some sort of alpha response to the hypo last night to wake up, so maybe that instigated some adrenaline/inflammation response?

I think I'm going to have to see if Argos can offer me a new mattress. Although my house does smell nice now - I found vanilla fabreeze and apple antibacterial wipes. And I managed to take the slats out of my bed (for them to be apple antibacterial wiped) and put it back together.
 
I in no way have perfect bg levels all day long, that's for sure but before pumping, I had some hypos from hell and would have been dead in bed if it wasn't for my partner getting glucose gel and lucozade into me.

Hasn't your Omnipod got the IOB feature to it. If you went to bed 2hrs after eating a meal and was low, then unless the meal had a lot of fat in it, there would be at least 2 more hours for the bolus to still be working and rather than take a chance by drinking tea with clotted cream, I would have eaten some carb and done a bg test in the night or looked at Dexcom to see what the state of play was.

As to why you were sick, I'm not sure......best to ask with your hospital doctors.
 
May this be the worst day of 2018 for you, that will give you 364 wonderful days to come!
I feel for you. Waking up in vomit is not very unusual on new years day, but it sure is a bit silly without the partying that usually preceeds it. On the up-side: the cleaning up is slightly less horrific without the hangover from hell that tends to accompany waking up in vomit. (fyi: I've only vomited in my bed once, when I was about 9 years old and could let my mother deal with the mess)
But in earnest, I'm very happy you're alright now, exept for the mattress bit, and I hope this was a one-off!
 
 
Poor you. Not a good start to the year! The thought of a cup of tea and clotted cream makes me feel quite sick anyway but the only time I've vomited with a hypo was when I was out at a restaurant for lunch with friends and had a hell of a hypo, just couldn't get my levels back up and was stuffing myself with meringue, sugar sachets etc etc thinking I was about to pass out. The friends were getting panicky and phoned for the medics, at which point I threw up copiously all over the floor. Thankfully it was a washable floor and the staff were very kind although they must have hated me. The dishiest medic in the world turned up, by which time I was up to 3.0 and getting over it but I've never felt so embarassed in my life. A new mattress sounds like the best option unless you want nightly reminders of what happened!
 
In fairness to @iHs and from my own personal frequent bouts of nausea and sometimes sickness... Fat will exasperate my problems badly.

I know you you do not have such stomach or colon pribs that I do but on a sickness scale I can definitely say that fat is not the best for me to cope with vomiting.

I think thats why in cases of vomitting that people are encouraged to eat a but of dry toast..... or at least thats my reasoning. If I wanted to be safe during a nausea or vomit attack then it woukd be 1/2 a ginger nut that I would reach for.. not clotted cream.

Normally I can not eat ginger nuts but 1/2 of one can settle my nausea feelings and as bread is a complete no, no for me tgey do actually help for vomitting too. But I do only have 1/2 a biscuit.
 
I'm sorry you had such a bad time, I can't imagine how frightening it must have been. I am glad to hear you are doing better now. When I was first diagnosed my DSN warned me that if I was ever given a shot of glucagon to have a bucket nearby because it would make you throw up. Maybe the glucagon from your liver had the same effect?
 
There was no nausea, I wasn't nauseous when I ate 2-3 teaspoons of clotted cream. I didnt choose to eat clotted cream in any attemp to settle my stomach or cope with nausea or vomitting because there was no nausea, my stomach was perfectly settled. The only point at which I have felt nauseated has been in the course of cleaning up the large amounts of vomit. I don't recall feeling or being sick at any point. I'm fairly convinced aliens were just interested in what I had had for tea and just magically extracted it "ah yes spinach good to know" and carried on on their travels. Because I don't remember being sick and I don't at all feel like I have been sick.

Could it have been the clotted cream that made me sick? I don't often eat cream... I'd feel a bit better if it was the cream that made me sick rather than the low. Because I can quite easily not eat it again, while I can try not to go low again I feel I may be less successful in achieving that.

@Neoncat ive had glucagon shots and they do make me feel a bit sick, but they've never made me vomit and I'm not sure whether it's the glucagon or the hyper caused by it that makes me feel urg. I'm not convinced there was any especially great endogenous glucagon release last night because I was still under 1 when I tested in the morning. And I'm pretty sure there lots of glucose in my liver after Christmas indulgences so if there'd been enough glucagon to make me sick then I'd have thought that would have released enough glucose to raise me, at least a little bit. But then, I did wake up. So perhaps it raised me enough so that I woke up, after having been sick, and then it dropped down again?
 
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