Now this one’s a doozy:
It was early. Very early. Still in the four o’clock hour early. And I had to go the bathroom. And it felt like the Sahara desert had taken up residence in my mouth.
Oh, this can’t be good.
Switched on the light. Coerced my body into leaving the bed and tottered to the desk where my meter sat.
Strip.
Prick.
Wait.
547 mg/dl.
Am I seeing things? Rub eyes. Nope, still says 547 mg/dl. The burning sensation in my legs and the boulder in my stomach tell me it’s probably the truth and not worth wasting a strip to see if it’s a mistake.
547 mg/dl? Really? Now, I realize I did not have the most diabetic-friendly of dinners last night (slice of Sbarro’s pizza and a salad, followed by a McFlurry), but I was not about to go traipsing around Midtown looking for a quick place to eat when these two places are directly across from Penn Station.
But my blood sugar was 97 mg/dl at dinner (approximately 8:30 p.m.) and my blood sugar was 128 mg/dl when I went to bed (at approximately 11:15 p.m.). And I did bolus for 90 carbs. Sure, maybe I missed 10 or 20 carbs. But still.
That’s one hell of a jump.
First order of business was to bolus. Scrolled up… and up and up… to 547 mg/dl, hit the blue ACT button a couple times and voila.
As I stepped into the bathroom and pulled down my PJ bottoms, I noticed some amiss.
My tubing was missing! Well, not so much missing as just not connected to my set in my stomach.
Oh!My!G-d! No wonder I’m in the five hundreds! I haven’t been getting any insulin. How long have I been without?
My mind replayed the days events:
I had gone to Soho. I had gone shopping. I had gone to Anne Taylor’s to try on pants. I had disconnected because I find it easier to try on clothes when I’m not worried about unclipping, clipping, re-clipping, unclipping again and again.
Oh no!
Did I not reconnect after trying on pants?!
Uh, Allison, my imaginary diabetic friend, who is vastly more intelligent than I, interrupts, you left Anne’s at five o’clock in the evening. It’s now five o’clock in the morning. If you had actually gone that long without any insulin, you and I would not be having this conversation.
Good point.
But then I remembered something else about Anne’s. When I was putting my jeans back on and reconnecting my insulin pump, I noticed something strange. The tubing it did not make the click sound when I connected it to the set. It slid in just fine, but now click noise. In fact, if I pulled on the tubing, it actually disconnected itself, even though I wasn’t holding down on the clamps.
Very interesting, I thought, I should probably do something about that.
Ha. Guess who didn’t. Obviously the reason my blood sugar had skyrocketed past the stratosphere and was nearing the moon was because it had disconnected itself while I was sleeping.
So, after finishing the bolus, I put in a new infusion set and tubing to make sure we didn’t repeat this little adventure anytime soon. I grabbed a bottle of diet Coke and attempted to fall back asleep, though it’s rather difficult to get comfy when you’re ketotic and ready to vomit.
Moral of the story: If you don’t hear the click it, better get home and fix it.
