Diabetes and the Flu, a Dangerous Duo!

Important: Before I begin explaining about the dilemma with flu and diabetes, I just want to say that it’s extremely important that if you begin to notice flu symptoms, or any vomiting whatsoever, you contact your doctor immediately. Tell him what you’re feeling, and stay in contact with him throughout, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you.

What was supposed to be a nice extended Columbus Day weekend, camping with my family, turned out to be somewhat of a nightmare.

When you have two little munchkins in school you get sent home just about every virus that comes down the pike. My son, who’s in first grade, had brought home a mean little stomach virus the week before. Being a diabetic with an already weak immune system simply from having diabetes, it latched itself on to me fairly easily and caused some havoc.

Stomach viruses or any flu symptoms pretty much scare the heck out of me since the fact that twice in the last year-and-a-half I’ve been sent, by ambulance, to the emergency room, nearly on my death bed as a matter of fact.

So why does Diabetes and Flu (or any stomach virus) pack such a Mike Tyson like punch?

Well, I can speak simply for myself and say that dehydration and Ketoacidosis has been the culprit.

What would have been a simple flu for most folks, who would get over it in a matter of a couple of days normally, became a huge problem for me. If you’re a diabetic, reading this could save you a lot of trouble, maybe a lot of money, and more importantly save your life.

It begins basically the same way as it does for anyone.

I feel run down, achy, and maybe even a touch of fever. However, what happens for me is that I begin to vomit, and that’s where the big trouble begins.

Vomiting begins the viscous cycle. The paramount reason being the onset of dehydration.

Blood sugar levels tend to rise during an infection of any kind. Add to that consistent vomiting which also elevates blood sugars, and you have yourself a difficult situation as a diabetic.

The body loses a lot of fluid due to vomiting, plus the fact that my kidneys attempt to dump excess glucose and ketones through producing large amounts of urine, which promotes dehydration. This in turn causes higher blood sugars, which keeps the situation escalating.

Therefore, through all of the elevated blood sugars and dehydration begins an affect of temporary insulin resistance. My body then becomes absent in insulin-supported glucose, which is normally carried to the body’s tissues (muscles, ligaments, etc.) to keep them alive.

Now then, to make up for this my body begins to use it’s own energy storage from stored fat. This substitutes the energy that it receive normally from sugar that you would digest from the food you eat.

However, along with my bodies stored fat comes toxic by products called ketones and ketoacids.

This hastens the cycle further. So now then my body is dehydrated, blood sugar is severely elevated over 350 or more usually, and now breathing becomes a bit of a struggle. These are the basic symptoms of Diabetic Ketoacidosis, or DKA.

On top of all this I usually cannot stop vomiting. I’m just a puker I guess.

So here comes the ambulance, sirens blasting and off I go miserably, but almost thankful, because it just gets to be too much.

The last time this happened, this past April, it was pretty terrible. I was so dehydrated that they had four IV’s stuck in me at once. I would have killed for a sip of water except not even a sip would stay down. I had to suck on ice cubes. Speaking of that, all of the vomiting basically shredded my esophagus, and I was now vomiting blood. Yuck, I know. That took a while to recover from. Ouch!

I don’t tell any of this so you feel sorry for me. I tell you this to make you very aware, now that flu season is beginning and children are going to school again, that you must take special care when experiencing the flu, or stomach viruses. This includes even diarrhea because this also promotes dehydration.

It’s extremely important as I stated in the beginning of this article to contact your doctor right off the bat, and stay in contact with him/her. Even if you feel like you’re an annoying nuisance don’t worry about it. They get paid good money to deal with annoying nuisances first of all, and second of all they will be glad you kept in touch with them. Besides, I’m no doctor but I’m fairly certain that dead diabetics aren’t all that great for business.

In part two, I’m going to go over some of the steps and precautions I took to avoid the emergency room visit over Columbus Day Weekend.

It wasn’t easy.

Also, I will reveal to you the one book on diabetes that I believe every diabetic should own. It’s pretty much become my Diabetes Bible and has gotten me through a few tough times in the short time that I’ve owned it.

Check back soon for Part 2.