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First seizure, type 1

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claremcdon

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Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
Hi everyone I'm looking for a little advice. I've been type 1 for nearly 14 years and thankfully have always seemed to manage ok. I was 26 when I was diagnosed so was a bit older than most so that probably helped. But I had a seizure last night and it's really frightened me. I took 6 units of Novorapid with dinner and few hours later felt the usual low symptoms. Didn't bother testing as didn't feel any different to a usual hypo, got some juice and went upstairs. Next thing I remember is my husband lifting me from the bathroom floor. He had heard banging and me groaning and knew something wasn't right. By the time he did my Bs I was 2.2. I still don't think I overshot on my dosage. But Since then, all of today I can't seem to bring my blood sugars down, they've been hovering around 10 all day which is high for me. I've done some corrections but nothing is working, don't want to take too much incase I end up like last night. I wasn't even sure who to ring today as local hospital diabetic services I'm assuming are unavailable.
Sorry for long winded message, I suppose I'm hoping someone Else out there might identify with what I'm describing or have any advice for me. I'm also possibly wondering if u could be pregnant although did not experience this with my ast 2 pregnancies
Thanks for taking the time to read this xx
 
basically when this happened to me there was a NHS nurse here for my partner, it was just like i was shutting down and didn't realise that my BG levels were too low.

as for the your sugars now been too high, i spoke to a nurse about this and there is something called rebound, hopefully your BG should come back to normal but do keep a tight control on monitoring, any concerns then do seek advice.
 
Thanks so much for getting back to me, I really appreciate it. I did some more reading last night and read a bit about how the body releases glucagon and cortisol in an attempt to save. Itself so maybe that's the rebound thing. Thanks again, will check out
 
Sorry to hear about your experience @claremcdon

Must have been very frightening for you. Yes I suspect your liver is feeling a bit shaken up and is dumping a little extra glucose.

Certainly wise not to correct too much, if at all, and wait for it to settle down.

It can be quite frightening when you have an experience like this, so be kind to yourself for a few days. It’s unnerving when your diabetes behaves differently like this. Do you generally have many lows in a week?
 
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When you say ‘usual low symptoms’, did you mean the symptoms you usually get? Or that you usually have a hypo after your evening meal?
 
Welcome to the forum @claremcdon , but sorry to hear of your frightening experience.
I suspect you will have to allow your body to recover before starting to do corrections.

Can you tell us a bit more about how you manage your diabetes?
Are you injecting or pumping? What insulins are you using?
 
Yes Mike, that definitely makes sense about the liver producing more glucose. I meant the symptoms I would normally feel if I am having a hypo, rarely would have one at that time of an evening.
I'm on injections, novarapid and lantus.
I've woken this morning to back to normal bs levels. I think I'll have to recalculate my carb to Insulin ratio just to be sure. Thanks for the replies, it's nice knowing I'm not the only one out there experiencing these things!
 
claremcdon said:
Yes Mike, that definitely makes sense about the liver producing more glucose. I meant the symptoms I would normally feel if I am having a hypo, rarely would have one at that time of an evening.
I'm on injections, novarapid and lantus.
I've woken this morning to back to normal bs levels. I think I'll have to recalculate my carb to Insulin ratio just to be sure. Thanks for the replies, it's nice knowing I'm not the only one out there experiencing these things!
Click to expand...

Someone was once given a suggestion by a DSN, which made sense to me, relating to these sudden unexpected drops. I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of insulin (eg a correction dose) not seeming to work as expected and appearing to ‘go missing’. But the suggestion was that sometimes insulin gets trapped in scar tissue under the skin and doesn’t absorb as expected - and then weeks, or perhaps months later it can find its way out of its ‘pocket’ and becomes available. Obviously is insulin is trapped under the skin at body temperature for a long time, it is likely to degrade and become less effective... but you only need a very small amount of insulin to make a big difference.

Hopefully you won’t have another of these nasty lows for a good few years. 🙂
 
That makes so much sense Mike! It could've been something like that. I definitely will be varying my sites more in the hope that it was that, it all helps!
 
Just wanted to say this happened to me too, having always maintained quite steady levels. It was very scary and I never worked out what went wrong so also put it down to something like Mike has suggested. Glad your levels have got back to normal now. I'm pleased to say, my experience has not repeated itself again yet and was just under a year ago.
 
I’ve had grand mal epileptic fits with very low BG. First time was bit worrying, because I banged my head on the edge of Tesco’s bacon chiller. Apart from another in the local Spar, the rest happened at home. Didn’t bother Mrs B, her best friend at school (and now) had epilepsy.

I don’t know if you drive, but that particular episode led to a withdrawn driving licence for a while. The thing is, you didn’t see it coming. Nobody does. That’s why if this happens to anyone on the forum, you need to report it to the DVLA. It’s illegal not to.
 
I don't actually regard one deep hypo as a reportable seizure, though.

Clare with each and every hypo, once you've got back out of it and are stable again (so your brain is firing on all cylinders again), is to identify exactly WHY the hypo occurred. Then - you have to do your best to not replicate whatever caused it. In other words, learn by the mistakes we make!
 
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