20080831 - Blood Sugar

This week I had a pretty dramatic blood sugar low. Eleven weeks ago I started Weight Watchers. At the time I knew I was going to have to modify my insulin (yes, I am a diabetic) and I started right away changing my humalog (the insulin I take with meals to correspond to the amount of carbs in the meal). When my blood sugar was still dipping too low I also lowered my Lantus (the slow acting insulin I take to at night to manage my general level of sugar). Everything seemed to be doing OK, my blood sugar was a little too low as opposed to a little too high but that seemed better and my Doc was OK with it.

Until yesterday, yesterday afternoon I felt a little low so I ate a nectarine. When that did not help I ate some of my left over chocolate (the ones the nicer hotels leave on your pillow). Just before dinner I was a little out of it (couldn’t follow the television, the program did not make sense). My before dinner blood sugar was 48. During dinner I couldn’t make sense of my point counter and kept telling Rich that I was confused. After dinner I was still confused and now so was Rich. If it was blood sugar why didn’t the meal resolve it. So he was thinking stroke and I couldn’t track anything at all. He kept asking me if I needed 911 and of course I did not know. Finally, after a couple of hours, things started to make sense to me again. My before bed blood sugar was 248 - I had been too worried about the low to take a dinner humalog.

Now I am trying to prevent another episode by looking at what I did wrong in this one. First, I should have eaten something high-fast not low-slow. Most of the sugars we have in the house are low-slow (better for me normally). I have a couple of boxes of 15 carb apple juice. I'm thinking thtey should be high-fast sugar. I will drink 1 of those, wait 15 minutes, test my blood sugar, and if the blood sugar is still too low, drink another. Somewhere I have a sheet of instructions for low blood sugar. I need to find it and put it where Rich can find it. I also have some instructions for lay testing for possible stroke. I need to find them also and post for Rich. Any other ideas? Please comment.