Tuesday 8 October 2013

The Consequences Of A "Rage Bolus".

The Diabetes Terms of Endearment e-book (real thing, compiled by Kerri Sparling who blogs at sixuntilme.com) defines a "rage bolus" as "the act of suffering from a high blood sugar for an extended period of time or for an unknown reason and the retaliatory insulin dose. Oftentimes results in a low blood sugar." 

It started last weekend at our local pub (I wanted to get the Big Collection post up before this one!) I ate dinner before we went out and dosed accordingly with my standard 1:7 ratio that my body seems to need around dinner time. Okay, so I was drinking beer, but I accounted for this with my dinner time insulin. It got to about 10pm and I checked my blood sugar, as it was about two hours after eating.

5...4...3...2...1...

18.0 mmol/l!

What the eff?!

That was not a number I was expecting to appear on my meter. After double-checking, I took a correction dose, checked for ketones (negative), and sent a quick text to my housemate to inform her of the situation, just in case.

An hour later, I did another test to make sure I my levels were coming down.

Nope. 

19.7 mmol/l.

Cue rage bolus. I knew that it would likely result in a hypo, but I was beginning to feel the effects of that 19.3. The dry mouth, the constant need to pee, the heavy tiredness that came over me. I checked for ketones again. Still negative, thankfully!

Once home, all I wanted to do was sleep. I checked my blood again to make sure I was coming down, and I was at 16 mmol/l. I set an alarm for 4am as I knew I'd rage bolused the hell out of that 19!

Image taken from Google Images.
4am came round far too quickly for my liking. And with it came the hypo I'd anticipated. A full-blown 2.3 hypo too. I sat up in that all too familiar hypo state - shaking, sweating and struggling to get my brain to work to make eating the Skittles on my bedside table actually happen.

Eventually, the hypo symptoms began to wear off, and I finally drifted back to sleep, regretting a little the decision to rage bolus with Brownie church parade the next morning followed by my DUK Big Collection shift

Note to self: consider next day's activities before administering a rage bolus. That swing from high to low doesn't leave you feeling all too great the next day!  

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