Hypo versus Heart Monitor in the wee small hours!

Starting to ignore some more minor heart flip-flops through the day as I don't want to run out of diary or look like a hypochondriac if this this turns out to be "normal" arrhythmia I'll just need to put up with!

Documenting most of them, though.

Boy, these attached electrodes are pretty heavy duty! Woke at 3.45am bathed in sweat, rigid, jerky, disorientated. My PJs were visibly saturated with hypoglycemic fight-or-flight sweat. I'd already had a little sugar and carbohydrate to raise a borderline 3.9 BG before bed to stay safe. It was then up to 8.8 so not entirely happy it did one of it's periodic plummets just a few hours later. A BG test winked an alarming 1.5 in the dead of the night. Not so alarming to me, after all these decades. I imagine professionals would have me whipped into hospital or at least have paramedics at hand if they saw the same, going by the book.

I had more jelly babies (instant sugar fix kept handy wherever I am.) Then crawled down for a couple of plain digestives (20g carb). I was so wet from hypo sweating I was totally amazed the heart monitor electrodes were still attached so firmly and not washed away in the drenching! By then I had gone from sweating to shivering, sore and even more trembly and jerky. That's when I'm "normal" with M.E.! I remember being most concerned not to let the heart monitor drop when trying to manage the emergency drill. I suppose that's why the NHS is right to put faith and funds into a piece of equipment which can cost £1,900 according to this site: BMA Medical supplies LifeCard CF Holter Monitor !

Slept a little, exhausted, by dawn and now feel like death minimally warmed up. I do think it's perhaps the best thing that could have happened, though, on sober reflection, as my heart flip-flops its way through the morning. These palpitation symptoms, along with the accompanying odd, faint, nauseous feelings at times, were relatively unnoticed apart from maybe imperceptible racing during the worst of the hypo. My chest only resumed giving its little flops and "electric" tickles in the aftermath.

At least with the Holter monitor in place, it may actually be possible to get to the bottom of these problems.
It goes back tomorrow to the local Cardio department, so need to rest up properly after all that lonely early hours drama. Need to save up some energy "spoons" to be able to get through that plus a diabetic eye screening tomorrow afternoon. One return bus journey only for the both, so still think that's another fortunate turn.

Maybe at the end of all this, we'll actually have a Cardio/Diabetic/ M.E. understanding vibe going on. Or maybe the light-headedness has made me even more stupidly optimistic than usual!

Know when enough's enough!

I'm so sorry I'm not really up to blogging much on this today but I really want to share this excellent M.E. article from Margaret Williams which you can read here:

Margaret Williams's article "Professor Wessely over a Barrel?"

The article says it all, really.


Sorry I'm struggling to process info today. Last night I lost two hours of my life from my memory when I had the worst hypo I have had in 27 years of Type 1 Diabetes. Believe me, I've had many many hypos over the years, with little or no warning symptoms from the start.

I had just eaten part of a substantial amount of carbs in an Indian meal, with some poppadom, naan bread, onion bhaji and prawn korma with my mum who is with me as usual for the weekend. Normally, a meal like that would mean high blood sugars, without extra insulin. My sugar was 5.8 before tea. Perfect. I had the normal amount of Novorapid for the carbs I could count, but aware of the fat content which might alter the absorbtion rate, I was prepared to test my blood glucose shortly after tea to see if I needed to adjust anything to maintain good control. Usual stuff.

After tea, I felt exhausted. Singing a little meant I had to close my eyes to concentrate to remember the words and co-ordinate. My chest and throat soon made me stop. Usual M.E. frustrations. A little later, very unsteady and drained/pained, but putting it  down to M.E., I remember beginning to show my Mum a favourite music video on my laptop. I don't remember it ending.

I do recall the last thing I wanted to say, but couldn't quite manage without giggling (typical of me, hypo or not!) about something one of the band was wearing. I leaned against my mum several times, helpless with laughter, to say the joke in her ear. She ended up letting me lay down on the settee while she moved to a nearby chair. She left the room to go upstairs. I apparently had got up (I don't remember) meanwhile, and passed her crawling up the stairs on my way to lie on the bed. Not unusual with M.E. I'd need to rest after various little things achieved in the day anyway, and to digest even that modest meal.

Of the next two hours I have hardly any recall. This was about 8pm. I spoke to reassure my Mum apparently, but don't remember any of this. The next two hours were spent in locked agony for me. Sweating, in pain, disorientated. Everything like a weird waking dream. Things in the room unfamiliar and nightmarish.

My Mum let me rest (neither of us had any reason to suspect a hypo straight after a carb heavy meal like that which I've eaten before with rather the opposite effect of high blood sugars!) until 9pm. When she came to check on me, I was sitting awkwardly on the edge of the bed, with a nail file in my hand and my left contact lens on the end of my middle finger. How I took it out without losing it is one of the mysteries and things to be thankful for about this episode!

My Mum could get no sense out of me (no change there then, some would say!) but she could guess by then from my floppy incoherence that I must be hypo. As I was conscious, she attempted to get some nearby Jelly Babies (I always keep boxes of them close at hand wherever I am) into me. I apparently knocked the unfortunate Jelly Baby out of her hand and tried to punch her hand away.

Many diabetics will recognise this resistance to taking sugar when the brain is shutting down onto automatic pilot. Believe us, it's not a "silly" choice or stubbornness, just an inevitable side-effect of low blood sugar. We have no choice. I don't even remember. I kept lurching the contact lens at her, unable to form words, but groaning out quite aggressively. (One of the few times you'll see any fighting talk from me towards others, no doubt!) Lucky my Mum is so wise and understanding!

She scooped my legs back into bed, making me chew several of the soft, easily digested sweets that have so often rescued me. I became amenable enough though still remember nothing but my own inner nightmare vision of all this! She prized the file out of my hand (I have no idea why I needed it, at all!) and managed to get my lens safely into its case.

When she returned at ten, I was slowly coming back to reality. I had begun to make sense of the shapes in the bedroom, and the slow realisation that this was real, not a feverish dream. I pulled at my soaked hair and realised it was indeed attached to my head. But why was my Blood Glucose Tester upstairs when I had left it downstairs, surely? Why was my contact lens case on the bedside chair and why was I all but blind in one eye?

I had no idea what day it was, or what time.

When my mum came in, she explained, and helped me ascertain which lens was still in, so I could take it safely out and put my glasses on so I could see again. I tested my blood and it was still 2.0, after all the sugar, but I was coming back from the brink. I can register a blood sugar of 1.9 with no obvious symptoms at other times, contrary to all the official line on warning signs. I wonder if one day, what I once read about M.E. contributing to unexplained sudden hypoglycaemic attacks will finally make sense of all this?

I am crashed today, but my sugars are now at last down from double figures, where they soared due to much needed sugary compensation. You'll not question again why I choose not to drive!

My Mum has helped me to put back together my fragmentary, nightmarish memories of those lost two hours, and as usual, we can laugh about it now. But this one goes down in my diabetic history as a biggy. Still never bothered a paramedic, though. I hope I never will!