The other day I had a low blood sugar event (also known as a hypo) and I didn’t know I was having it despite using a glucose sensor.
I’ve thought long about whether or not to share this because I really don’t need to hear suggestions on what I should have done. I already know what I should’ve done and I will most definitely make every effort to do what I should have done in the future, unless of course my judgement is affected again.
It was a normal quarantine morning: had breakfast, went for a walk, showered and did some housework. I sat at my lap and opened up my emails with a cup of coffee in hand. My glucose sensor alarm went off alerting me that my glucose was 4.0 which I figured the coffee would take care of. Some time later, I’ve no idea how long but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes, my alarm went off again this time for urgent low 3.1mmols. My sensor was 19 days old, barely hanging onto my arm and I had meant to change it the day before because it lost signal a couple of times but it got too late in the day for the warm up. So, when I saw the 3.1 mmols, my first thought was that the sensor was inaccurate. BUT, I don’t know if it was the effects of my hypo causing a lapse in my judgement or if it was actually rational thinking that because I didn’t feel any symptoms of a hypo the sensor was giving me a false low. When he alarm went off again for a 2.3 mmols and I still wasn’t feeling any symptoms at all I was SO sure my sensor was off.
I should also add at this point that I’m using an automatic insulin delivery system which shuts off my insulin when I’m low and my levels on my perceived faulty sensor came back in range an hour later.
By this time I had a THUMPING headache. One of those headaches that when you move around it feels like your brain is a couple of seconds behind you. It was now lunchtime and I took a finger stick glucose check on my meter which I compared to my CGM. Huh, why is my sensor so accurate??
The realisation was beginning to dawn on me that maybe this was an actual hypo after all, along with lots more questions I was asking myself, like,
Why didn’t I just do a finger stick to rule out low?
Why did I ignore so many alarms?
Why didn’t I feel symptoms?
How do I prevent this from happening again?
I shared what happened with my husband and he gave me a small scolding which is unusual because he usually knows when I’ve already learned my lesson and so holds back the “I told you so” just like I do but I suppose I have a freebie “told you so” now.
My headache persisted the entire day also with the thoughts of how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. My fear is that the one symptom that I may have had was the loss of rational thinking and so both myself and my husband have agreed that he should have just one alarm for an “Urgent Low” set up on his CGM follow app. I will endeavour to act on all low alarms in the future regardless of whether or not I think my sensor's accuracy is off. I will promise myself not to be complacent because I’m “only” sitting around and will behave as if my alarm is alarming while driving my car and stop whatever I’m doing to finger stick.
This experience has taught me that no matter how long I live with diabetes and no matter how well I know my diabetes, I can never be complacent in managing it. I can never relax. Living with diabetes is a complicated, never ending challenge.