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Permalink Reply by Eric on August 2, 2011 at 3:12am

LOVE "A day passed" Great Stuff

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Permalink Reply by Eric on August 2, 2011 at 3:19am

Yeah, I had a reaction that got me in my sleep...first time in 30 years...and caused some brain damage, so now I have a hard time remebering stuff easily ( I go through ALOT of note paper). Luckily, my brother found me asleep and said I just didn't look right to him so he called paramedics. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for family...
Eric

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Permalink Reply by rubidoux on August 9, 2011 at 7:13pm

I'm sorry this happened to you, Eric. Must have been scary! Thank goodness for your brother!

I'm really curious about this phenomenon of *dangerous* sleep lows. In my experience, lows during sleep are met with what appears to be a VAST amount of sugar liberated, I'm guessing, from my liver. Often, if I've had a low in the night, I know it because I wake up with a blood sugar of around 435. But I have heard stories other stories like yours, and worse, and I'm wondering what went wrong? Why didn't your liver come to the rescue? How does one know if they can rely on their liver?

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Permalink Reply by Natalie ._c- on August 9, 2011 at 7:34pm

The reason the liver didn't come to the rescue is because in many if not most long-term Type 1's the glucagon response is also impaired or absent. Glucagon is the hormone that raises the BG fast (which is why they isolated it and made it available). Of course, there are other hormones that raise BG, but they're a lot slower, so if the person is going down fast, there is nothing to bring them up for a long time.

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Permalink Reply by rubidoux on August 9, 2011 at 8:00pm

Wow! I didn't know that. :( That's crappy. I wonder if there's a way to know how your glucagon response is doing -- like a low-blood-sugar-tolerance-test or something. And I wonder if there's any way to support your glucagon response.

I wonder what the mechanism for this is? I wonder if it's over-use. Or maybe it's one of those things that goes downhill for everyone as they age, but only missed by those of us injecting insulin.

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Permalink Reply by jbowler on August 9, 2011 at 8:03pm

I guess I'm lucky, being a long term diabetic with a good glucagon response, though I admit I haven't needed it for about 5 years now: I'm even luckier because over the last few years if my BG goes low in the night (50) I wake up, test and eat. I think it happens if I go high too, but that's a lot more difficult to detect. I'm also lucky because the people I've lived with (slept with) rapidly developed a similar sensitivity; if I start sweating excessively in bed they know what is happening and react. That's actually what protected me most of my life; I got orange juice poured into me before the glucagon response kicked in.

One thing I do know though is that a lot of alcohol kills the glucagon response. The only time I can (can't) recall suffering brain damage happened in 1978 after I had drunk quite a lot of beer at the Reading rock festival. When I woke up on Monday the last thing I could remember was getting off the train on Friday; it was really weird, for a few hours I couldn't even work out that I'd just lost 2.5 days. Beer has enormous carbohydrate - for me it is a blood sugar boost - but I figure I probably danced rather a lot too and that cancelled out the carbs.

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Permalink Reply by rubidoux on August 9, 2011 at 9:28pm

I guess that must be why drinking is so dangerous for type I's. I had always thought it was because it made you more likely to sleep through a low, but obviously, if your glucagon response is working properly, you would be fine.

I'm also wondering how you guys know that you have brain damage. Is it the symptoms, or are there tests they do to see what has happened to your brain?

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Permalink Reply by jbowler on August 9, 2011 at 11:14pm

Forgetting 2.5 days is brain damage. I actually recovered some amount of that - the word "forgetting" is, I think, misleading; our memories can be scrambled, and that makes retrieval difficult, but things sort themselves out, so some extent, after a while.

It's easy to ascribe too much significance to this. Memory loss is distressing, but the fear can be more debilitating than the actuality.

Drinking is *not* dangerous for type 1's. Low blood sugar with no gluagon response and no partner nearby is dangerous, but that happens in many circumstances. Many diabetics deal with this all the time. Being aware of the issue is what counts.

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Permalink Reply by rubidoux on August 9, 2011 at 11:39pm

Well, I mostly don't drink, so I don't have a lot of experience with it. I wasn't dx'd until I was 23 and I had a good few years of heavy drinking under my belt already, thank goodness, because it was fun. But I think at this point in my life it might be dangerous for me because I don't really have any idea how my body would respond. And I'm fine with one margarita about once every two years. lol

And true, I suppose forgetting 2.5 days is brain damage. I suppose I was asking because I am wondering if there is a way for doctors to dx brain damage and how much they can tell about what specific damage has been done to one's brain, especially from low blood sugars. It sound like both you and Eric had acute episodes where you did damage to your brains in one fell swoop, and the symptoms are obvious to you. But I wonder whether there's brain damage that we wouldn't really be able to detect ourselves and if doctors can assess that very well. And also whether some or all of us are suffering various levels of brain damage from years of low blood sugars, and whether that might be much harder for us to pinpoint in terms of symptoms and whether there's any way to ever know. Maybe we're better off not knowing...

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Permalink Reply by Natalie ._c- on August 10, 2011 at 12:32am

I'm not sure I would call losing 2.5 days as brain damage. It seems more like a period in which your brain wasn't functioning to form memories, but if you remember everything else, I don't think it's brain damage.

When I had my coma last year, I had blackouts and hallucinations for a couple of weeks before, and a couple weeks after -- I have definite spots where I know I was awake, but have no memory of. Like the time I found my slippers neatly arranged by the couch, when I always keep them in my bedroom. So I thought the cats had done it, LOL!! And I never HAVE met a cat who could do that. So, logically, I must have done it myself, but have no memory of it.

My friends also tell me that when they discovered me almost comatose, my house looked like a tornado had hit it, I had burned popcorn in the microwave, and shattered the tray, pulled over a bookcase, and left my bedding in the kitchen. I remember none of that, nor do I remember anything after hearing their voices outside calling me. They tell me that they found me unsuccessfully trying to put on my slippers, got me to the couch, decided what to do, walked me to the car, and got me to the ER. I guess I was awake enough to walk, but I absolutely don't remember it.

But I DON'T think it's brain damage, because I have recovered completely. It's just that a brain running on maple syrup instead of blood really doesn't function very well, and it doesn't function very well when deprived of an energy source, either.

Permalink Reply by Eric on August 10, 2011 at 10:29am

WOW Jbowler, You are the only diabetic I've ever heard of that's had it longer than me! I actually became diabetic the same year you were at that festival, 1978....
Eric

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Permalink Reply by Eric on August 10, 2011 at 10:23am

I'm not quite sure...usually from what I understand the liver will raise bg levels in normal people in times of stress as a boost to energy, but in a diabetic I'm pretty sure the additional insulin will override that reflex.
Eric

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