Story time: why I haven’t posted lately. I have type 1 diabetes, as previously mentioned. I am 36 years old and never once in my life been in DKA, even when I probably should have been. But this past weekend I was admitted to ICU in DKA for the first time, and I didn’t even deserve it. I have been taking such great care of myself. I’ve been running a straight line on my Dexcom in the 80s-90s, and my A1C (they ran it in the hospital) was 5.7. Saturday afternoon I started vomiting out of nowhere; I couldn’t keep anything at all down, and my blood sugar was still perfect (I also checked blood ketones and they were fine). After throwing up for an hour or so, then my blood sugar started rising in response to that stress and wasn’t responding to my corrections. From there, all the DKA symptoms started like a snowball quickly picking up more snow. It was scary how fast it happened. I started getting sick about noon and by 4pm my chest was tight and I was short of breath. That’s when I called it and told my husband we had to go to the hospital because I knew what it was. I could barely walk to the car by then, though. They ran these labs in the ER and quickly admitted me to ICU and put me on an insulin drip and gave me IV bicarb (which was the weirdest feeling!). My potassium level actually got up to 6.2, I don’t think I posted that one. Once I was stable I had to take control back with my insulin pump because they put me on a sliding scale for insulin dosage, which is complete garbage and ruined the progress we had made. I went from 105 back up to 373 and I was livid. I told them they weren’t allowed to touch my insulin again at that point, I could only trust them to get me out of DKA 🤦🏻‍♀️ Needless to say, it was a traumatic couple of days. But I’m ok. It’s just disheartening that I can do everything right and it can still happen. All I can figure is it started with some kind of stomach virus/infection (check out those white blood cells!) #t1d #dka

Posted by bethany.aaron at 2023-01-19 15:28:35 UTC