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Please help....hyperglycemia and aches and pains

C

CherylG

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3
I have recently been in and out of hospital (going for the record 3 admissions in 2 weeks!!) with increased BM's the highest hitting 29, but luckily not going down the DKA route. Although everytime my venous blood is taken it averages out at about 21! I have had some ketones (+2 at the most) but not enough for the drs to be worried about. They found some infection (UTI but only through a dip and some raised white cells in blood test!) but no one can tell me why my blood sugar's are so deranged. When I spoke to my diabetes nurse and told her about this odd 'pain' where my whole body 'HURT' she said it was something to do with too much glucose floating around the muscles and causing discomfort and when my sugars get back to 'normal' it will go away. Now I have been sent home from hospital and told to rest... my bm's are coming down a bit BUT are still massively all over the place! Nothing I am doing is helping them to come down, but this odd 'pain' in the joints and muscles at the moment is worse then any of the other symptoms i am having from having high blood sugars. Is this something anyone else has ever had? I feel like I am going a bit mad and im loosing a battle with something I seem to have absolutely no control over at all.

Thanks

Cheryl
 
I'm sorry to hear about your current problems. Welcome to the forum
I'm no expert on T1 but I'm sure some other community members will have a whole raft of ideas and suggestions for you soon.
It might help us to know what type/regimen of Insulin you are on and whether this has been changed?
Of course high levels of Glucose will cause pain in the nerves, blood capillaries, muscles and joints and mustn't be left high for long, I hope your treatment will bring them down soon.
Have you had any illness or life-style changes recently and what is your typical diet and exercise routine? They could all be the cause or hold the cure for your current condition.
I am sure you'll be able to get this sorted and back to stable low readings and know some useful information is probably on its way right now.
Take care...
 
Hi Witan, thanks for the reply. I am currently on a regime of levemir and novorapid. Before this started I was taking 74 units of levemir (37 am & pm) and using novorapid at meal times taking anything between 3-10 units with meals. My diet isnt fantastic due to having a bowel condition (which seems to be behaving at the moment just have deranged blood sugars!!) but I do walk every where and I am fairly active and carry some extra weight (which I realise I should do something about... am working on this one slowley but surely!)

My HBA1C was regularly around 8 but has been creeping up lately the last one taken last week came back at 10.6! The diabetic nurses have changed my regime and I am now taking 120 units of levemir (in 2x 60 unit doses) which seems like a massive amount of insulin and my need for novorapid has increased and some days I have been using as much as 70 units to try and get some control. When i discussed this with my GP she said wow by rights with that amount of insulin you should be hypo...

I was chatting to the pharmacist when getting yet another repeat prescription, about the amount of insulin I have increased and although my BM's are showing a little bit of improvment (only a little bit!) but not much, He wondered if I maybe resisting the insulin and my body maybe a bit too used to the regime I was on. I seem to be ok taking insulin as long as I dont eat or drink anything other then water, but as you can imagine there is a massive flaw in this plan
 
I suspect that you must have quite a high carb intake to need that amount of insulin, and still have high BG. Obviously if you decrease the carbs you'll be risking serious hypos so it would be a matter of a little of each (carbs/insulin) at a time with regular measurements.

If you don't have a copy find out about Dr Bernstein's book and 'the beauty of small numbers', this should enable you to get and keep good control, there are lots of references on the forum - check out the Low Carb section too.

I'm sure you'll soon be back to near normal levels.

I'm not sure about insulin resistance in T1 but know that for T2 exercise is the usual way to reduce it, although it can be stuborn, so I'm wondering why you've been told to rest when light exercise might help - I can't recommend anything so await some more experienced comments...
 
Hello again, to be honest I have hardly eaten much at all in the last 3 weeks, so cant even put it down to too many carbs (which of course makes absolutely perfect sense). I have been being VERY careful with what I have been eating because I have felt so yuk. Will be speaking to diabetes nurse again tomorrow and am willing to do ANYTHING I am told to get things back under control and enable me to feel better. Though I will definately have a look at that book and try and get my HBA1C down so I NEVER have to go through this again. Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate the time you took to reply.

Cheryl
 
Hi Cheryl
Just a suggestion, but it sounds like the insulin you're on is not working for you, perhaps you could suggest to your doc that you change your insulin.
Many people, including me , have had problems on analogue insulins, and suffered the kind of things you describe; aches & pains, apparent insulin resistance, etc;. However If you were on any other medication and it was failing to work, your doc would change you to another, unfortunately most doctors just think insulin is insulin, but can assure you it is not.
Definately worth contacting the IDDT for further info, here's a link to their website http://www.iddt.org/ Don't know where I'd be today without them
Hope you get things sorted very soon
Jus x
 
Hi,
Got to agree with janabelle that it's worth trying different insulins. They seem to behave very differently in different people even though that doesn't seem logical. If you have a general insulin resistance, which is very possible with T1, especially if you've been on a high dose, maybe the doctor could try you on something like metformin? They gave it to me when they thought I was insulin resistant (I wasn't, I was just secretly eating a lot of sweets...).
Exercise might not necessarily help much at the moment. If your blood sugar is high, exercise can actually make it higher. Worth checking your sugar before and after to see what effect it has. But keep hassling your doctors until they sort you out
Hope you feel better soon.
 
hi janette here i cant get my bs level at all i have been diabetic 1 since march 09.i also have pre diabetes neuropathy quit bad.and kidney problems but urine samples have come back ok sick telling the doctors that kidneys are realy sore.but no help at all.now i dont feel like eating when i have taken my insulin is this bad.would like some info if you can help thanks janette.
 
I was having a lot of aches and pains in muscles joints ect all over felt pain with the slightest touch .after years of complaining to my general dr he told me to see a rheumatologist. He gave me a blood test and said everything was fine. I looked at results when I got back home and my ck levels were slightly elevated.I called him and he said that may be normal for me to me if out of range then its not normal. I asked him could it be my cholesterol meds simvastin and blood pressure losartan be giving me overall pain.He said yes so I stopped for 3months going to retake blood test soon to see if levels also went down, but maybe pain is nOT from insulin I don't know if your on other meds I'm a type 1 also.
 
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