Many years ago when I was far less experienced, less informed and without a resource like this forum to refer to, I had a period when I had very little or no insulin over a period of about a week.
At the time I was on two injections a day, quick acting insulin in the morning and medium to long acting in the evening. Thinking back I wonder how this regime by itself ever gave me anything like good control and yet I was on it for a few years and I was quite confident about looking after my diabetes.
At one point I became ill and completely lost my appetite causing me to eat very little or nothing for a few days. The problem was that I had not be told, or at least it had not registered, that I still needed to take the longer acting insulin as a bolus dose. I thought both doses were just to deal with the food I was eating. I therefore cut both injections down to either the bare minimum or missed them altogether, depending on whether I had eaten a little or not.
The consequences? I slowly became more and more ill although this was before I was encouraged to take regular blood tests so it did not register immediately that my BG was rising so I put it down to the original illness. I had also recently changed location so I was unable to visit a local GP to ask why I was feeling so ill. Eventually I ended up in A&E with quite bad DKA and subsequently moved to the Intensive Care unit for, I think, three nights with another four nights on a ward. My recovery was quite swift but I realise now that I had essentially got very very lucky, first that I survived and second that I did not suffer any immediate complications nor, as far as I know, anything since that I can directly relate to this event. It did have the benefit of making me realise that I did not know enough about my diabetes and that I needed to pay more attention and respect to it. It would have been much better however had I learned this lesson without having to spend any time in Intensive Care.
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