James Foote
Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Steroid Induced Diabetes
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hello to all,
First an apology I suffer from dyslexia so rely on auto correct and boy has that landed me in hot water a few times.
I think this post is more for me than others reading it, it all started when I was 12 years old and not I am 58 on the 17th September so we will start with day one, joking honest just joking.
Diabetes runs in my family on my mother’s side, it killed her and it will kill my sister. All mums side of the family had it and most abused it with terrible outcomes because of this and knowing I was at risk I had always taken my blood sugar reading over the years, one in the morning just before food and two hours after. I would do this for a few months then leave it for 6 then start again. According to my GP I had never even had a spike don’t get me wrong there is a fat bugger behind this key board and have always been large all my life I part to me eating food that did not hurt my ulcerative Colitis and kept thing flowing at the right consistency though at the time I did not know I had UC because I was 44 before I got my diagnosis.
12th March 2006 is a day that even writing it down has brought a tear to my eye, it was the day my wife of 14 years died of a brain hemorrhage I was 39 years old and the stress of all this caused my colitis to start a new chapter many starting with OMG, ow and far to may expletives for this polite company.
Over the years my life moved on and I re married to the amazing Diane and life was good. On the 18th September 2010 I had my colitis confirmed and because I had constipation as well as diarrhea it was very complicated to keep me on a level but I managed it and kept things on a level and life was good again.
November 2018 took a turn though when I woke feeling very very cold being sick and diarrhea, nothing to do with the colitis, I got up not wanting to wake my wife and went down stairs to ring 111, thank god I did because he pushed me into saying it was heart related even though I did not think it was that. An ambulance arrived very quickly and they seemed a little put out because I had needed am ambulance a few weeks before because I have a very bad neck and take some very serious drugs for it even though I had a very long wait and they though I had pulled a fast one even though it was 111 who called them. Very quickly they realized I was quite unwell just as my poor wife walked in asking what is going on, “sepsis” was the reply I was feeling quite drunk but I was so lucky. I walked to the ambulance but on the way I went into septic shock and collapsed. A two year recover started but the main thing for this story was the colitis had caused it with a new area of the gut being the problem.
Sorry War and Peace length story and I have not even said diabetic yet,
Six months after the sepsis I had a terrible colitis flare with severe consternation. Unfortunately the way colitis is treated is with steroids and steroids causes massive spikes in blood sugars. I was treated 8 days in hospital them 3 months of steroids at home after this I was left with pre diabetes so for the next few years I kept taking blood sugar reading and every visit to the doctor showed them the figures and the response was always very good or nothing scary.
Then February 2024 happened I was feeling quite off my neck was very bad I was at the highest morphine dose and just waiting for my spine injections. I had been up several times over the night to go to the loo. It was dark so no checking until the morning when I checked what was going on and it was just blood OMG so much blood so I rang my colitis nurse but no answer but instructions to call 111 which o did and sent them the photos, ow yes there are photos, at this time the pain was to much and they wanted me to go to A&E I did point out pooing myself in there was just not fair so the nurse did what she needed to do and told me off “ this is a medical emergency but I will make an appointment for you.” Within the hour I was in a bed in the hallway but I was being treated. I told them I was a pre diabetic from my last flare but the treatment for my worst flare ever was steroids and lot off them 250mil per day I just did not stand a chance. 8 days of 250mil and then 40mg reducing at home for 3 months.
I knew something was very very wrong so I took my blood sugar reading follows by NO no no no no 23 no no. Now in my doctors there are leaflets that say go to the best area for help and I was well past ringing for an appointment with the GP for I rang diabetes.org the lady was amazing. James you need to get off this phone and ring your doctors tell them it is an emergency, ow flip, ok I did not say flip and I am not proud of it because there was a lady on the other end of the phone line but in my defence this was a shocker.
Turned out my HbA1c thing was 66 not good. I was put on two 500mg of Metformin and one 5mg Dapagliflozin. My last HbA1c was 39 by the way and I have lost weight.nearly 3 stone.
The biggest problem I had was my neck I can sleep all night all day and all night with the fatigue I have morphine and Diazepam in my pain management. After the injections into my spine I stop all pain meds, assuming I don’t trip or bang my neck, and have stayed on the same dose for many many years. As you can imagine waking up at 3 am with the worst headache and neck pain taking these type of medication and going to bed is not good for keeping an eye on your blood sugar. My wife works from home 2 days a week and so far she had woken my up to test and find my blood sugar was under 4 but this was becoming quite scary. I follows the advice from this site to get a Libre 2 unit but my doctors keeps passing me piller to post. As you can tell I am not very good at writing but my wife is and she sent a letter asking for them to change there mind on the unit but I received no reply apparently if they don’t reply we did not read it.
My doctors , who are fantastic by the way, operate triage system where you can fill your details out online so that’s what I did meaning they’d have to beat it and I added I needed help and I needed this device for my own safety or something very serious could happen I then received my Abbotts Libre 2 unit and boy was this a game changer to my safety. I have learned don’t react to the Libre right away check with a monitor. The worst alarm was 2.2 and I felt terrible struggled to swallow the glucose gel the doctors prescribed I did get in there and though it didn’t get me over four it did push me up to about 3.4 which enabled us to walk back to get to a café a lesson learnt and we now carry more than one item just in case I go low because of my neck, I struggle to walk on any ground as hard and in fact, I’m talking 5 or 6 steps before getting a jolt on the neck but when I’m on grass, I can walk quite a long way. I’m that is what causes a problem with the 2.2 I’m still learning but after the things that have happened I am grateful to be alive so dealing with things like blood sugars slip in the neck and colitis is not that bad
Honest.
I would like to recommend to the forum they add a sleepy go by by section and add this post there.
James
First an apology I suffer from dyslexia so rely on auto correct and boy has that landed me in hot water a few times.
I think this post is more for me than others reading it, it all started when I was 12 years old and not I am 58 on the 17th September so we will start with day one, joking honest just joking.
Diabetes runs in my family on my mother’s side, it killed her and it will kill my sister. All mums side of the family had it and most abused it with terrible outcomes because of this and knowing I was at risk I had always taken my blood sugar reading over the years, one in the morning just before food and two hours after. I would do this for a few months then leave it for 6 then start again. According to my GP I had never even had a spike don’t get me wrong there is a fat bugger behind this key board and have always been large all my life I part to me eating food that did not hurt my ulcerative Colitis and kept thing flowing at the right consistency though at the time I did not know I had UC because I was 44 before I got my diagnosis.
12th March 2006 is a day that even writing it down has brought a tear to my eye, it was the day my wife of 14 years died of a brain hemorrhage I was 39 years old and the stress of all this caused my colitis to start a new chapter many starting with OMG, ow and far to may expletives for this polite company.
Over the years my life moved on and I re married to the amazing Diane and life was good. On the 18th September 2010 I had my colitis confirmed and because I had constipation as well as diarrhea it was very complicated to keep me on a level but I managed it and kept things on a level and life was good again.
November 2018 took a turn though when I woke feeling very very cold being sick and diarrhea, nothing to do with the colitis, I got up not wanting to wake my wife and went down stairs to ring 111, thank god I did because he pushed me into saying it was heart related even though I did not think it was that. An ambulance arrived very quickly and they seemed a little put out because I had needed am ambulance a few weeks before because I have a very bad neck and take some very serious drugs for it even though I had a very long wait and they though I had pulled a fast one even though it was 111 who called them. Very quickly they realized I was quite unwell just as my poor wife walked in asking what is going on, “sepsis” was the reply I was feeling quite drunk but I was so lucky. I walked to the ambulance but on the way I went into septic shock and collapsed. A two year recover started but the main thing for this story was the colitis had caused it with a new area of the gut being the problem.
Sorry War and Peace length story and I have not even said diabetic yet,
Six months after the sepsis I had a terrible colitis flare with severe consternation. Unfortunately the way colitis is treated is with steroids and steroids causes massive spikes in blood sugars. I was treated 8 days in hospital them 3 months of steroids at home after this I was left with pre diabetes so for the next few years I kept taking blood sugar reading and every visit to the doctor showed them the figures and the response was always very good or nothing scary.
Then February 2024 happened I was feeling quite off my neck was very bad I was at the highest morphine dose and just waiting for my spine injections. I had been up several times over the night to go to the loo. It was dark so no checking until the morning when I checked what was going on and it was just blood OMG so much blood so I rang my colitis nurse but no answer but instructions to call 111 which o did and sent them the photos, ow yes there are photos, at this time the pain was to much and they wanted me to go to A&E I did point out pooing myself in there was just not fair so the nurse did what she needed to do and told me off “ this is a medical emergency but I will make an appointment for you.” Within the hour I was in a bed in the hallway but I was being treated. I told them I was a pre diabetic from my last flare but the treatment for my worst flare ever was steroids and lot off them 250mil per day I just did not stand a chance. 8 days of 250mil and then 40mg reducing at home for 3 months.
I knew something was very very wrong so I took my blood sugar reading follows by NO no no no no 23 no no. Now in my doctors there are leaflets that say go to the best area for help and I was well past ringing for an appointment with the GP for I rang diabetes.org the lady was amazing. James you need to get off this phone and ring your doctors tell them it is an emergency, ow flip, ok I did not say flip and I am not proud of it because there was a lady on the other end of the phone line but in my defence this was a shocker.
Turned out my HbA1c thing was 66 not good. I was put on two 500mg of Metformin and one 5mg Dapagliflozin. My last HbA1c was 39 by the way and I have lost weight.nearly 3 stone.
The biggest problem I had was my neck I can sleep all night all day and all night with the fatigue I have morphine and Diazepam in my pain management. After the injections into my spine I stop all pain meds, assuming I don’t trip or bang my neck, and have stayed on the same dose for many many years. As you can imagine waking up at 3 am with the worst headache and neck pain taking these type of medication and going to bed is not good for keeping an eye on your blood sugar. My wife works from home 2 days a week and so far she had woken my up to test and find my blood sugar was under 4 but this was becoming quite scary. I follows the advice from this site to get a Libre 2 unit but my doctors keeps passing me piller to post. As you can tell I am not very good at writing but my wife is and she sent a letter asking for them to change there mind on the unit but I received no reply apparently if they don’t reply we did not read it.
My doctors , who are fantastic by the way, operate triage system where you can fill your details out online so that’s what I did meaning they’d have to beat it and I added I needed help and I needed this device for my own safety or something very serious could happen I then received my Abbotts Libre 2 unit and boy was this a game changer to my safety. I have learned don’t react to the Libre right away check with a monitor. The worst alarm was 2.2 and I felt terrible struggled to swallow the glucose gel the doctors prescribed I did get in there and though it didn’t get me over four it did push me up to about 3.4 which enabled us to walk back to get to a café a lesson learnt and we now carry more than one item just in case I go low because of my neck, I struggle to walk on any ground as hard and in fact, I’m talking 5 or 6 steps before getting a jolt on the neck but when I’m on grass, I can walk quite a long way. I’m that is what causes a problem with the 2.2 I’m still learning but after the things that have happened I am grateful to be alive so dealing with things like blood sugars slip in the neck and colitis is not that bad
Honest.
I would like to recommend to the forum they add a sleepy go by by section and add this post there.
James
- but we've both seen him easily gain over half a stone at the end of a course of the buggers.
