A trip to the ER

So, during the course of a marriage, you expect at some time or another you'll be taking one of your kids to the hospital, maybe for a broken leg or something. However, most people wouldn't expect to take their wife to the hospital during the first three weeks of marriage. This is the story of why Matthew took me to the ER at 11 pm Wednesday night.

For the past couple days I hadn't been using my insulin pump - I didn't have a certain piece of equipment with me (I left it in MN) that lets me easily insert the tubing under my skin (without it, it doesn't go in properly, and I end up not getting any insulin). So I had been taking shots instead. Now when I take shots, I usually use two kinds of insulin. The first is called Lantus - It's a slow acting kind that lasts over a whole day. I take one shot of about 28 units one time a day, and it just keeps my body going, keeps me alive. The second is called Novolog, its a very rapid acting kind, and this kind I only take when I eat food, it compensates for what I eat.

So Wednesday night its about time for me to take the daily dose of Lantus. So I draw up about 14 units (I do the injection in two parts), shoot it into me, and about 30 seconds later realize that instead of putting Lantus in me, I had accidentally drawn up 14 units of Novolog. I'm all like gasp! nooooooo! and Matthew comes out and is like what's wrong? and then gets a look of shock on his face.

See, I usually wouldn't use 14 units of Novolog in an entire day, for an entire day's worth of food. 14 units of Novolog would cover 14 slices of bread, 14 cups of juice, 7 bowls of ice cream. It's a huge amount of insulin. If I don't eat enough food for the amount of insulin I take, then my blood sugar will go low, and in this case extremely low. Scarily low. Insulin shock low. Low as in you should be passed out, on the floor. Not good.

Matthew says right away we should go to the hospital, or doctor. I say I don't like going to the doctor, and maybe if I drink enough juice I'll be ok. So we try. I start drinking a glass of OJ, and then another one, and during the second glass, I start getting woozy. Shaky. Weak. Feeling a little confused. These are all signs of low blood sugar. At this point, Matthew doesn't even ask. He just goes and grabs his shoes and stuff, gets my shoes, and takes me out to the car. I didn't resist much at this point. Actually I was ok with going to the ER. Matthew even ran a few red lights - it was late at night, and he felt like this qualified as a good reason to just keep going. I was super duper shaky by then.

So, we get there, and they make us sit in the waiting room for like 10 minutes. By the way, insulin overdose and extreme low blood sugars are medical emergencies. Not things you make people wait 10 minutes for. Thankfully, though, I never passed out. My blood sugar did get pretty low, just from how I was feeling (we forgot to bring my blood checker with us, so we didn't get a reading of how low it did get). They put me in a room, took some blood, hooked me up to an IV and gave me some fluids.

It's pretty much amazing I didn't go unconscious. That much insulin in me could've been really bad. One possible explanation is that sometimes, when you go really low and there's an extreme excess of insulin in the system, the liver, which stores a form of carbohydrate, will "dump" out a lot in an effort to raise blood sugars.

One thing that absolutely flabbergasted me about the nursing staff - I had two nurses who, when I told them what had happened, that I had taken an overdose of Novolog, a fast acting insulin, looked at me and where kinda like, "whats the big deal? That is an "emergency" kind of insulin, it'll bring your blood sugar down for a little bit, and then your blood sugar will just pop right back up." Seriously. Seriously?! That is absolutely not how insulin works. It doesn't just pop right back up unless you compensate for it somehow. Emergency insulin my eye.

Matthew was great. He was pretty concerned (and pretty freaked out inside), but he took good care of me.

Suffice it to say, though, things turned out just fine, we came home and drank more juice and ate some bread and nutella, and I was all right. But I think it was still a good thing we went to the ER, because things could have been very different. It was a rather tense few hours, but everything turned out ok.