Sunday, July 21, 2013
Humalog overdose
Now we're playing the same old (not fun) game: K accidentally took 20 units of Humalog (fast acting insulin) instead of Lantus (slow acting insulin), just before 2am. Just as my head was finally hitting the pillow, she said "Oh, God..." Not good. 20 units will drive her blood glucose (BG) down about 1400 points. If it gets below 50, things get very serious quickly. Unfortunately, her BG was just about perfect (126) at the time, instead of being really high, which is not uncommon, and would have helped a lot. Now she's got to eat 300 grams of carbohydrates (7 bottles of apple juice or cans of Coke, or 15 slices of bread, etc) in a short period, to avoid having a low glucose crash, and possible ER visit. She's eaten 216 grams of apple juice, glucose gel, and ice cream, so far. Now we're staying awake and waiting to see if her BG plummets, or if we've caught it in time. Heavy sigh. When it first happened, I was so frustrated, I just told her to get dressed, so I could take her to the ER and get her setup for IV glucose, because I was sure she couldn't eat that much. But she disagreed, and attempted to distract me, by having me make several (wasted!) calls to health care advice numbers. Those people are required by HIPAA regulations to ask the most stupid questions possible, and to refuse to talk to me, practically forcing me to call 911 instead. Idiots! The one person I did finally talk to, who was very helpful, was the doctor on call at her Endocrinologist's office. He got me calmed down by focusing on the current BG which was still OK, and pointing out that this was an opportunity for K to eat all the sugary junk she's supposed to avoid, like candy bars and ice cream. Anyway, it looks like it's going to work out, after all.
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