• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

What to do?

M

Mileana

Well-Known Member
Messages
553
Location
Denmark
BS 15-25 range.
Urine ketones medium/large.
Fever.
Nausea, some vomiting.
Thirsty, hungry sort of - need 'energy' but too darned tired to eat, feel weak, on-off confused - drink loads, pee all the time.
Called NHS Direct (other country, same difference) - reply: Stop testing, you'll just upset yourself. No diabetic, even on insulin should test more than 2 times a day. Nope, you should definately not up your insulin, you'll just hypo. Just go to bed.
Cannot turn up at a&e in this country without having been given the yes from a doc at... the out of hours service who know nowt about diabetes.

I should theoretically have some insulin of my own, but clearly not enough at the moment, and my dose does not do the trick. Have upped it to about double on my novorapid today.

I'm furious. Am I expected to just wait for a coma?

What the heck does one do?
 
Hi. Sorry to hear of your problem. All you can do in the very short term is reduce your carb intake to try to bring the sugars down, bearing in mind the risk of a hypo if the insulin balance isn't right. You can just turn up at A&E without any 'authorisation'. Do you have a local 'Darzi' walk-in centre that you could use? The advice to stop testing is, of course, nonsense. Hope you can resolve the problem by getting some help from somewhere in the NHS.
 
i would give 2 units of insulin hourly and test hourly your blood sugar......when it gets to 10 and your feeling sick try sipping flat coke and again give insulin as a correction dose......don.t use diet coke as you are dehydrated!!!!!! aim for 60 mls an hour this is what i would do for my daughter when she had ketones......
 
Mileana,
I would try to contact my diabetes doctor/nurse if I didn't know what to do.
If you have ketones you will need more insulin than normal to deal with the high glucose + ketones.
I have a protocol which is almost identical to this one from DAFNE
http://www.diabetes-support.org.uk/info/?page_id=141
Obviously you will have to be careful as to the amount of insulin to take since you take very little. n the first place
Drinking fluids ie water is important.

As you are vomiting, it is also possible that insulin will lower your BG levelsbut not the ketones. If this happens it is important to continue insulin but to take something to keep up the glucose levels (flat coca cola is sometimes tolerated better than other things)
Keep us posted.
 
I'm the same as Fraddy, not being an insulin user I can't offer any pearls of wisdom, but I just wanted to wish you well and hope you're fighting fit again real soon. Joanna x
 
hi mileana i had high blood sugars ,ketones ,vomiting and confusion a few months ago i was really poorly. i didnt bother ringing nhs direct or doctor or dsn ! my son rang for an ambulance . they put me straight on fluids in the ambulance once in a+e i was put on sliding scale . consultant said i was an hour off dead !!!! please dont take any chances just ring for an ambulance . hope you feel better soon xx
 
Mileana you really need to get to see a Doc. I see you aren't in England but whatever you need to do to get emergency treatment, do it. So if you turn up at A and E poorly, are you saying they send you away?

Hope you get sorted.

Ali
 
Hi Mileana

I haven't had keytones for many years but when I did, increasing insulin and drinking plenty of water to flush the keytones out through urine got me ok again. The sickness that you are experiencing will go once your bg levels start to drop. Have you increased your basal insulin at all? I would do that if I were you. Also, just in case there is something wrong with the insulin, get out a fresh cartridge and use that to be sure. Not sure why you are experiencing high bg levels but if you have not got an infection or bug brewing, then your status as a type 1.5 is changing and your pancreas is giving up...........

If you dont feel any better with more insulin, then certainly phone for an ambulance and get admitted to hospital. I'm shocked to hear that even in Denmark, insulin dependant people are being instructed to just test bg levels twice per day. This does take some believing and really does question the safety of insulin.......

Hope tomorrow you feel better and can tolerate eating some food again......
 
Remembered I have some anti-sickness meds that I rarely use - have it for my migraines. So far a couple hours without vomiting - loads of water in small mountfuls, raisins for the potassium and sugar, and another big dose of NovoRapid. Blood sugar down to 9 ish now. Fever only some 38.4 now, definately better.

I am stunned too. 'There's a train coming at me' 'Don't worry, just close your eyes and you won't notice' '***'

Have a mate who works very late - gave him my spare key earlier, he'll check on me on way home in 3 hours time.

I don't think I need an ambulance - I breathe normally and now the numbers are finally reacting, and I'm getting some fluids on board at least.

That doc will hear more from me though - what if I were an old lady, or someone with a small child... Shocking. I've never heard anything like it. Normally, they're daft, but not stupid.
 
Hopefully you'll be on the mend with more insulin and will start to feel that you can tolerate eating something without spewing. Remember that bolus insulin doesn't last for too long so until you can get to the bottom of what is causing your bg levels to rise like they are, I would increase the basal up a bit....
 
Far better today. Still shivering and tired and all that flu stuff but deffo not as carpy as last night.

I was never given any information about sick day rules or anything like that, so must admit I was pretty confused and upset about it. I hate when I don't know what's going on or what to do and all I get from them are rubbish answers.

I must say I wasn't aware of the need for glucose - now I know. It felt a bit counter-intuitive at first but makes sense when you think about it. Just feels like maddening amounts of insulin - was afraid suddenly something would change and I'd have overdosed.

Being LADA isn't always easy, heh. Doc last night was pretty convinced this type of diabetes didn't even exist, so it gets hard to trust her advice on anything really. She even had time to explain to me that there was no need for me to reduce insulin dose pre-exercise, I should just not test and eat more apples on the go. Still fuming.

I just know that I 'just about manage' with my bit of insulin normally, but when I have surgery, am ill or whatever, I go pretty much type1 - my insulin and injections just don't keep up. It seems very hard for everyone including me probably, to understand that this isn't a stable thing - one day I get by on 12 units of insulin for my 'big boned' self, other times I can triple that and I'm still short, and sometimes my 8 units basal will see me hypo if I don't reduce pre-exercise. Joy sometimes.

Thanks all for the help, ideas and reassurance. I still sometimes freak out when it does things I don't expect and can't seem to control....
 
Hi mileana

Glad you're feeling better today, sounds like a horrible situation but also sounds like you managed it well.

How very frustrating .

Hope you continue to feel better

Mary x
 
Back
Top