I remember my amazing endocrinologist coming to visit me. I remember waking up in the ICU with a doctor telling me I was lucky to be alive. I remember the doctor saying, had we waited 30 minutes more, I would be in a coma. I remember the nurse telling my husband to go to the chapel. I remember someone gasping and saying my blood had the acidity of a battery. I remember being told the drug they were administering was reserved typically for cardiac arrest patients. I recall hearing my husband being told that I could be in the hospital for months. Triage led to taking some blood work…and taking some blood work led to an influx of frazzled nurses and frantic doctors surrounding me. Thankfully, I vomited shortly after entering, which prompted the care team to triage me in advance of the full waiting room. Clutching a stainless steel mixing bowl, with a wet towel wrapped around my neck and an oversized t-shirt, I collapsed to the floor in the ER. The series of events that follow, I recall like an out of body experience. My blood sugar often goes high when sick, and as I’d never (in my 15 years of being diabetic) ever faced so much as trace amounts of ketones, the concept that my blood was effectively poisoning me was foreign. I knew somewhere in my consciousness that I should be checking for ketones, but I kept telling myself “next time I get up to the bathroom, I will”…and making mental reminders to yourself when you are as sick as I was is all but a lost cause. I work for Medtronic, for crying out loud, and I forgot about my diabetes!? You see, in this moment, and in the 14 hours that followed, I did the one thing I never (ever) thought I, of all people, would do: I stopped thinking about my diabetes. Feeling terrible, and expending all of my energy and focus on controlling my vomiting, it didn’t dawn on me the havoc my dangerously elevated sugars and dehydration from vomiting were ravaging on my body. Tired, and at this point with a terrible stomachache, I attempted to down some water and find a comfy place to lay down. I corrective bolused the crap out of my 500+ reading and even did an additional manual injection. While out of the ordinary, it certainly has happened to me before – I changed my infusion set, and opened a new bottle of insulin just to cover my bases. Testing my blood revealed a 500+ reading. Later that evening, the revenge of food poisoning ensued. I ordered a turkey burger without the bun with a side of veggies and a baked potato and bolused accordingly. Before eating, I was sitting at a pretty 101. It was a warm summer night and my husband and I walked up to a local restaurant. The series of events that led up to my stay in the ICU began innocently enough. But I had never prepped him on diabetic ketoacidosis and the symptoms (because DKA was for those other diabetics.) Upon finding me in our living room with a bowl of blood and bile by my side (no, I am not exaggerating), he got me into the car and took me to emergency care. In hindsight, I was lucky, my husband knew that I had food poisoning because I began vomiting after our meal. In my instance, this was brought on by the combination of excessive vomiting and dehydration caused by food poisoning and the diabetic ketoacidosis that followed after my body had gone through so much. You will likely smell and look like death. Time flies and goes in slow motion simultaneously. Allow me to pause today to share with you the down and dirty of what it feels like to have something that is not the slightest bit humorous: diabetic ketoacidosis.You are hot. Humor is, after all, the best (and cheapest) therapy. Throughout this past year, I’ve had the honor of sharing with you, the amazing LOOP community, my personal journey and the often humorous sequence of events that is my life with T1. Thanks Katie for your openness and allowing us to share your scary story so that the LOOP community can learn from it. When she first told me her story about food poisoning and Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA), I knew others could benefit from hearing it as well. Some of the things are likely placeholders, like climbing equipment since it didn't actually add anything that I could see.Today, we’re excited to share with you another guest blog from Katie Janowiak, who works for the Medtronic Foundation, our company’s philanthropic arm. CT (12.1 KiB) Downloaded 4081 times Green Hell v1.0.1.CT (9.28 KiB) Downloaded 584 times Green Hell v1.0.CT (8.39 KiB) Downloaded 274 times
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