A diabetes all-nighter

I present you the disaster that was last night/early this morning and prompted me to return home and sleep for a solid hour

6pm: Dinner was a bit of disaster, so we had to go and get McDonalds. I calculated approximately 80 grams of carbs for my meal, taking a huge amount of insulin to cover it.

7pm: Blood sugar- 9.5. This was a little low considering the amount of carbs I'd just had. Due to my fear of the dreaded hypo, I decided that I should have a juice box- 30 grams of carbohydrate.
However I'm really clever and completely forgot the delayed effect McDonalds has on blood sugar, shooting it sky high a few hours after eating. Now I had anoher 30 grams on board, with no insulin to cover it.

9pm: Feeling pretty sick, but pass it off as being tired from the past few weeks of exams.

10pm: Blood sugar- 24.5 (normal range is 4-7). At this point I was pretty concerned, checking for Ketones (acidic substances that the body produces when there is no source of glucose, meaning that there is no energy source and the body turns on itself for fuel- effectively eating away muscle and any fat supplies). No ketones, but a long night was about to begin.

10.30 pm: I'll let the blood sugar meter do the talking....

  

So this caused mass panic. A reading of HI means the meter can't detect the blood sugar levels because they're too high (in the 30s range). I checked for ketones again, and still none to be found (yay!). I was lucky, ketones and a reading like that mean hospital runs late at night. I resolved to stay up, checking my blood sugar every half an hour to an hour, drinking loads of water and taking mass doses of insulin. Honestly? I felt dreadful and almost willing to take a trip to the hospital if it didn't go down. Major for me considering my hatred bordering on phobia of the place. Sick, shaking and terrified of DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis which arises from high levels and eventually causes coma) I waited.

11pm: 29.3- PROGRESS! At least the meter could read it now

11.30- 26.5. Still no ketones and slowly but surely it was going down, a massive sigh of relief as there were still no ketones.

From there I spent the rest of the night checking. By 3am it was down to 15. By morning, 7.

High levels are just as scary as low, and in a way my diabetes all-nighter helped to lift some of my hypo fears. I made a mistake, that's why this happened. I let my fear of going low get the better of me and swung me to the opposite extreme which is just as bad and lasts longer (plus you don't get nice food like when you're low :P). Diabetes can be scary when it does these things, a little reminder that events like this cause death, that years ago there was no hope for someone with blood sugar like that. Luckily for me I have an insulin pump and the supplies to monitor my sugars, and have learned a very valuable lesson in the process. It's a shame it took this to happen to work it out, but I suppose sometimes I'm not going to win every battle.