Diagnosed at 880. (US scale)
Every one of my doctors has the “alert” value at 300. 2freaking99 and I’m supposed to tell the patient just to take their insulin and check their blood sugar in an hour. :eek:
And not a single diabetic patient of mine is on the “new” bolus system. They’re all on sliding scales, or am/pm without even a sliding scale! Makes me twitchy, it does.
If a patient were to ask me about it, I’d suggest asking the doctor for an insulin pen, just in case. Those don’t have to be refrigerated, and if your pump’s battery dies, well, it’s a pain in the ass, but you can give yourself insulin from a pen in a pinch!
I do first aid at camping festivals. You would not believe the number of brittle diabetics who think they can camp for two weeks, eat nothing but hotdogs and roasted marshmallows, dance around a bonfire all night, drink booze, and maintain their normal insulin schedule - and then they leave their insulin in a cooler with no ice inside a hot tent. :smack: I can’t carry insulin around, but I do carry half a dozen tubes of icing in my first aid bag.
Well my eldest is a type 1 and to be honest you would die. When we go camping we ensure we have two fridges/eskies that contain his dosages. He always ensures he has someone around who understands his condition.
Holy cow!
Any reason why you got so high? Mine was that I saw a crappy doctor at university that seemed convinced I was just trying to get out of the end of year exams. He diagnosed me as slightly anaemic and gave me iron tablets. A few weeks later I went back to my parents’ for summer and they were shocked at the weight loss, vision problems etc and begged me to see their doctor. I was very stubborn about it, insisting I was anaemic and had seen a doctor, but after a couple more weeks or so they pretty much dragged me to their chap and I was in hospital that night. IIRC I had lost 3.5 stone (49ish pounds, was down to 10.5 stone (147 pounds) as a 6’2" guy that had only just stopped playing rugby a year previously) and vision was so blurry I was borrowing my mum’s reading glasses to watch TV.
When parents pay close attention it often is easy to spot, the first thing I noticed was he was sluggish on the bball court and then he started to look gaunt. He lost about 10kgs in around 4 weeks! We took him to the doctors not thinking anything dramatic but bang your son is a diabetic!
Too many people are in DENIAL. A friend’s mother does not want to admit she’s Diabetic. She’s ended up in the hospital because of noncompliance.
When she was first diagnosed, her reaction was, “I can’t be Diabetic. Nobody in my family has Diabetes, this is just wrong.”
Her mother died in her fifties from complications of a stroke and successive heart attacks. I betcha she was Diabetic.
My friend tracks her mom’s food intake and administers her insulin. It’s the only way she KNOWS there’s no fudging.
~VOW
Um type 1 or 2?
They are very different diseases with one caused mainly be lifestyle factors and one not. :smack:
Type 1 will kill you pretty damn quick if not managed ASAP.
Friend’s mom was Type 2 and is now insulin dependent.
Definitions vary, but usually a Type 2 is always Type 2, even after becoming insulin dependent.
And Type 2 isn’t necessarily CAUSED by lifestyle factors. Lifestyle factors can be extremely influential in management. But it is believed that Type 2 is a leftover from the caveman days, when people endured cycles of plenty and famine.
~VOW
Not sure if I agree with you on this, type 2 in nearly every case is due to lifestyle issues. Obesity is thought to be the major causal factor in contracting type 2, although there is a genetic influence. Cave man stuff, never seen any evidence to support this.
Type 1 and 2 are very different.
Type 2 diabetics still produce insulin, the body in effect becomes “immune” to it.
Type 1 diabetes is an auto immune disease where insulin is not produced and is often called juvenile diabetes.
Lifestyle factors are important in both cases but in all Type 1 cases they are insulin dependent and only in some cases are type 2 insulin dependent.
It is IMO opinion a shame they are both called diabetes and definitions are not variable.
Shrug, it’s the same mindset (or lack thereof) which leads to unprotected sex, or to signing up for whitewater rafting and then suing the guide because you broke an arm. “It won’t happen to ME, I have everything under control.”
It can also be a control mechanism in other ways. My mother has been known to be “fine” for months and get sick on the one day when the plans were something she did not want to do, then she wonders “why don’t any of you want to take me on vacation?” The illnesses she gets in those days are directly linked to diet, and specifically to what she’s eaten in the last 24h or less.
You can’t determine that from heart disease alone. I have a lot of relatives who either dropped dead in their 40’s from heart attacks, or lived into their 70’s with multiple heart attacks and strokes, and none of them had diabetes (yes, they were all checked multiple times). Heck, I had a cousin who had a stoke in her 20’s. It was a genetic type of heart disease, not diabetes that got 'em.