After this hypo happened last February I wrote it down how I was feeling as a way to cope with the aftermath. It really shook me up and felt like a hellish experience. It really shook me up and felt like a hellish experience. I found it today when I was looking for some inspiration for this weeks blog post and the feelings I felt then are still with me six months later. So here is the Hypo Hell and other afterlife terrors.
3 February 2018
I could feel the full force of this hypo by the time I was in the kitchen making my breakfast. This one actually snook up on me: I haven’t had a hypo this bad in a number of weeks maybe even months because I wear a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and it usually gives me a “heads up” so I can ward it off. But this time there was no warning.
The dilemma for me when a hypo presents just before a meal is if I can wait until I’m going to eat anyway instead of having to gobble a couple of glucose tabs (i.e. extra calories) I don’t need. But this one was not going to allow that so I reached for two glucose tablets (6 grams of fast acting carb) to at least take the edge off.
About 5 minutes later, I was trying to eat my toast slowly so as not to slow down the fast acting glucose. I did feel that I wasn’t dropping any lower but I did need the sweat to stop dripping from my forehead and my brain to defog. So I sat trying not to use said brain for 15 minutes.
What happened in the next couple of hours was really what left me feeling wretched - the rebound high. I had taken my usual breakfast insulin dose because I figured that the glucose tablets were enough to correct the low. What I didn’t factor in was the steroids I had on board that have made me very insulin resistant and needing to up my mealtime insulin by quite a lot to keep me in range.
As I started to feel nauseous while grocery shopping I found a place to do a finger check and I was 22 mmols (396 mg):-O I took some more insulin and this time I was more “generous”.
After an hour I could see my cgm arrow point ➡️ and I was reassured. The next hour the arrow pointed down and I was thankfully coming back into range to have lunch. But the rest of the day was very much about being a bit of a couch potato with a sore head.
I really don’t understand how people can think that managing diabetes with insulin is easy! If it’s so easy you can have mine. Seriously!