Over the last 48 hours I have had some of the best blood sugars that I have had in a long time. It all started with an extreme high on Sunday night. My glucose meter was reading, “HI” we all know what that means. No, not, “Oh shit, what do I do now”. It means that my blood sugar was over 500. What do you do when you get in that situation? Or maybe if you are lucky enough, you haven’t been faced with this situation. I have unfortunately been faced with this situation several times. First and foremost, you can’t panic, it will come down if you treat it properly. Here are the 4 steps that I go through when I see a sugar that high.
Step 1 – Don’t Panic
This is a very important step. If you panic and freak out right away, then you are going to have a hard time bringing this high blood sugar down. Most of the time when you stress out and freak out this way, your blood sugar will go higher, but for some people it is different. Take a deep breathe and take care of what you need to in order to get that sugar down. I highly recommend that you have a plan together with your doctor for when something like this happens.
Step 2 – Inject Emergency Insulin
Emergency insulin to me comes in one of two forms. I try to keep an emergency insulin pen at my house or whenever I travel. If I doo have the insulin pen, I will just draw up the units and inject the insulin. If I don’t have a pen, then I will take a syringe and draw insulin directly into the syringe and inject it. Either way, I get insulin into my body in another form that from the pump. Why do you may ask? Have you ever seen how long it takes 25 units of insulin to get into your body compared to a pen or syringe? The insulin gets into my body 100 times faster and can get to work a lot quicker.
Step 3 – Change Site
There is a good chance that the reason my blood sugar is high is because I have a bad set. This isn’t always 100% the problem, but most of the time it is. Once I get that site taking out, I will insert a new site on the opposite of my stomach and then go for a walk if I can, or just lay down and relax
Step 4 – Don’t Drink Anything
I obviously become extremely thirsty when my sugar is that high, that is one of the reasons that I knew my sugar was so high to begin with. The more I pee, the more sugar that is going through my system, and I don’t want that. So the less I drink, the less I am going to urinate, the better. It is tough to try and not drink something, but you have to try hard, it is better for you.
These are my 4 steps on fixing my high blood sugar, but this is not going to be the best way for you, so don’t try what works for me. Find out what works for you.
Have a great day eveeryone.
I’ve always read that when blood sugars are high to drink as much water as possible to help flush out your system faster. Its worked for me especially when I have ketones. If I don’t drink, the sugars stay higher and ketones longer.
I’ve heard and read both as well. It works for me and the reason why I don’t drink anything is when I was diagnosed they wouldn’t give me anything to drink just ice chips because they didn’t want me drinking anything. Same thing when I went to hospital another time. Thanks for your comment and just like everything else your diabetes is different.
I was going to say the same thing. I drink more fluid when I have a high. I also try not to lay down as moving around in whatever capacity will help lower BS.
I had an endo (pediatric, I think) tell me once that when you’re High, you should only sip water and not down it as the latter might make you sick. I don’t recall the reasoning, but I do remember that this proved to be the case more than a handful of times when I was younger and saw High BGs. In more recent years, I do drink water and just drink it as slowly as possible – which isn’t always tht slow.