Hypo horror
Last night was a bit of a scary one. The main bit I remember was screaming in sheer terror at my pump. It was alarming to tell me I was low but I couldn’t work out what it was. By my reaction you’d have thought it was a killer snake preparing to attack.
Once the husband had worked out that we weren’t being burgled (his initial thought due to all the noise), he kindly sorted out sugar for his dripping wet, hysterical wife.
That was the worst hypo I’ve had in years. I have never been so scared and it took me an hour to warm up to the point where I wasn’t shivering.
The scariest bit of all though is I don’t know what caused it. Usually with the wonder of hindsight I can spot some miscalculation of carbs or general idiocy on my part but there’s nothing. When I look at the CGMS I literally fell off a cliff at around 3.30am, with no insulin on board.
By the time the husband had calmed down the banshee he was sharing a bed with and got some sugar into me, I was 1.9. I remember that quite clearly. I dread to think what I was when the performance started.
Ever lasting gratitude to the husband for sorting that one out. Although, he does loose Brownie points for saying “well that’ll give you something to blog about tomorrow!” Plus big thanks to the CGMS which despite my screams of terror as it wailed to let me know I was low did actually wake me up and save the day. Here’s hoping tonight is a little quieter!
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Blimey! That sounds like it wasn’t a great deal of fun…
I really hate extreme highs or lows which don’t seem to have any proper explanation – it’s that randomness which is really worrying.
Alison – know what you mean – although no CGMS – I get this from time to time – not frequently but certainly unaccountably as far as I am concerned. Lucky for me though is that it tends to happen late afternoon when I am awake rather than asleep. I kept a record of this last time and pointed it out to my consultant who was also stumped. (Though tried to suggest that it was my gentle lunch time stroll [s'funny - I ALWAYS take a gentle lunch time stroll!]). I dropped from a finger stick 8.3mmol/l at 15:50hrs to 2.4mmol/l in 1 hour 12 minutes.
I generally find that HCPs go through an unwritten guide to HCPs checklist in these circumstances: “Probably the exercise at….”, “Were you stressed that day?”, “Ahhh – not all carbs are absorbed at the same rate y’know”, “Could have been the fact that you were driving on an unfamiliar/busy road”….. and other variants!
Bad night time lows are horrible though aren’t they? I was hoping that with a pump and CGMS they would become a distant memory. I am currently using a Medtronics 522 and have tried out CGMS – looking at self-funding in the likely event that my PCT will reject my request for funding. (but rather scared of the expense!).
Alan
Unfortunately I’ve been suffering from one of these unexplained hypos every fortnight or so recently but have no pump/cgms to wake me up (altho have booked an appt with the hosp to try and convince them I need one), on my most recent one it wasn’t until I fell face first out of bed (onto laminate flooring) that any one realised. Parents gave me a shot of glucagon which done nothing so a call to 999 and I come round with an EMT feeding me lucozade.
Grr… was at 1.4 when they arrived and 6.8 when they left and spent the next 8 hours fighting my BS down from the 25.0 it was when I tested about an hour later.
@Alex What a nightmare Alex, I’m pleased to have avoided glugagon for about 10 years, it’s effective but evil stuff! I think you’re right to ask about CGMS – just a week’s trial on it would hopefully give you a better insight into what’s going on.
@ Alan – I love your unwritten check list and I have to confess I have my own mental version that normally comes up with something – stress, hormones, drugs, food, alcohol, exercise, stupidity, full moon etc but this time I’ve drawn a blank. I must study the alignment of the stars and see if that generates any pearls of wisdom
Ouch. No fun. Glad all is well now. Lows can be so scary.
Fortunately Katie (who sleeps so lightly she’s woken up by a mouse quietly scuttling at the bottom of the garden) usually wakes up the minute I have night hypos and leaps to my aid. Who needs CGMS when you have an insomniac wife?
Alison, it definitely must be something with the stars!
I also had a “fell off a cliff” hypo last week, and though I might blame stress somewhat for that, then I’m not convinced that is the entire explanation for that one. Sure, I have had a very busy schedule the past month, typically working 9-12 h in the lab every day + a bit at the computer at home, and then last week actually had the possibility to leave early to do some work at home. Still, to drop from a save 10.0 mmol/l to 1.8 mmol/l in just about 1 h seems a bit drastic to me! Also, it was almost 3 h after lunch (usually I see the largest effect on my BG around 1-1½ h after a bolus) and my basal rates at that time of day are the lowest of them all. I left the lab around 14:30 to walk the 4 km to the flat, but only got about 2.5 km before I tripped and fell. I tried to get up and every time lost my balance landing me against a light post several times – severely damaging my laptop, I later found out
– and finally sitting in a puddle of water (of course it had started raining again!) with my legs kicking to a degree that the helpful passers-by first thought I was suffering from an epileptic seizure! I can remember trying to communicate with them, oh so intelligible, to let me go once they’d gotten me back up on my feet, but luckily they didn’t. I spent the next 30-40 min (I actually don’t really have any feeling about how long it took) with an EMT, shovelling in glucose tabs – an entire packet of Dextrosol tabs – bread, fruit, chocolate, you name it, only seeing the BG increase ever so slightly.
I hate those “out-of-the-blue” hypos, especially when they are that severe. I’ve had numerous of those in the past, but like you, since going on the pump, they have been far between. I also have CGMS, but to add insult to injury, the sensor didn’t bother to send off a low alarm until I had already spent quite some time in the company of the EMT. I hadn’t checked the trends during my walk before I tripped, because it usually isn’t necessary, and I had easily been able to feel my hypos at just below 4.0 for weeks up until. Maybe that was my mistake, but still a drop of more than 8 mmol/l in such a short time should not happen without me having an idea of the fact that the BG was moving!
Anyway, glad that your husband was able to help you, and you are back to your normal self again
@Heidi I now feel lucky that I was in bed rather than sitting in a puddle on the street! That huge drop in levels so quickly is scary.