http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/ask-dmine-night-terrors-thanks-to-diabetes/
Hey, All -- if you"ve got questions about life with diabetes, then you"ve come to the right place! That would be our weekly diabetes advice column, Ask D"Mine, hosted by veteran type 1, diabetes author and clinical specialist Wil Dubois.
Fluctuating blood sugars are never fun and can be difficult to manage. But those deep lows overnight while we"re sleeping... yikes! A "type awesome" wife has some fears about this, so she"s calling on Wil for reassurance.
Got your own questions? Email us at AskDMine@diabetesmine.com
Francine, type 3 from South Africa, writes: My husband has been diabetic since he was 11 years of age, and the other night something very weird and confusing happened. Sometimes he starts shaking while sleeping, and this normally stops when I hold him. But at 3 o’clock in the morning last night I wake up because of him shaking again, and as I stretched my arm out to hold him, I feel that his side of the bed is completely wet, and I know that when that happens it means that his sugar is very low. Then I usually wake him up and make him a sandwich with peanut butter and syrup, although this time was different… I tried waking him up but got no reaction out of him, he started shaking worse almost like he is having a fit, and as I’m trying to wake him up it sounds like he is starting to laugh at me, (which I did not think is funny at all!!) and then all of a sudden all his muscles go stiff, he starts yelling (almost like he is in excruciating pain), his face is about two times smaller than usual, his eyes sink in and his lips go blue grey, his nose starts bleeding right after and there is bloody foam (only a little bit) coming out of his mouth and then he stopped breathing. PLEASE HELP ME!!! What do I do in a case like this? What are the right steps to follow? When he stopped breathing I hit him about two or three times before he started breathing again. We also have a six-year-old daughter who absolutely adores her daddy, if they are alone I need to know that she would do the right thing in case something like this ever happens to daddy again. The next day he complained about dizziness, back ache and was first yellow in his face then after a few hours got pale. I gave him something to eat and after that I tested his sugar which was 2.2, before all of that all the machine said was ERROR. I desperately need advice. He refuses to go to a doctor. I cannot lose this guy; he is the best thing that ever happened to me.
Wil@Ask D’Mine answers: Holy crap. I’ll tell you what to do, but only if you promise to get yourself evaluated for PTSD later. While it’s impossible to diagnose over the Internet, it sure sounds like a textbook case of an extraordinarily low blood sugar event with a full-blown seizure. Of course, not all seizures come from lows, but the fact that the next day his sugar was only up to 2.2 (40 mg/dL for us Yanks), once his sugar was high enough for the stupid meter to even read it backs up my conclusion.
You cannot lose this guy? You just came a lot closer than you can ever imagine. If the Grim Reaper hadn’t stubbed his toe crossing the threshold and dropped his scythe, you’d be a widow right now.
Still, don’t beat up on yourself. You did good, because he’s still here. And I’m a happy to give you some guidance on what you can do in the future to help things go more smoothly, God forbid this happens again. We’ll cover those in a bit, along with the role your daughter can play, but first, your guy needs both a therapy adjustment and an attitude adjustment.
Let’s talk attitude first.
Men who are daddies to six-year-old daughters who absolutely adore them cannot refuse to go to a doctor. Period. End of discussion. Oh, ‘F that. Let’s talk about it some more: He’s being a selfish butt-head, and being a parent with diabetes has no room for that. I guess being any kind of parent has no room for that, but those of us who dance with the Grim Reaper on a regular basis need to go the extra mile to ensure that we are doing all that we can do to protect our loved ones by taking care of ourselves. Let’s not pull punches here. Type 1 diabetes is dangerous. It demands respect. It must be attended to properly, or it can and will kill us.
Refusing to go to a doctor when things are going this poorly with your diabetes is nothing short of child abuse. And you should not be afraid to say that to him.
Now, I also said he needs a therapy adjustment. What makes me think that? Not the one bad low. Any number of things can trigger a bad low. He might have taken the wrong insulin by mistake. He might have taken the right insulin twice by mistake. He might have misjudged his carbs, or been more active than usual during the day, or drunk more alcohol than usual that night. All of those things, and a hundred more I didn’t list can a trigger bad low at night. 
What makes me think he needs a therapy adjustment are the more common night shakes you talked about, which could well be milder hypos, and the fact that you have a get-up-from-bed-and-make-a-sandwich routine to deal with these nocturnal lows.
Lows happen. It’s a fact of insulin. Even the best of us (and that certainly wouldn’t be me) with the best of gear, still have lows. Lows are an unavoidable fact of diabetes treated with insulin—which still beats certain death without insulin for us type 1s. But anyone who has frequent lows has a maladjusted therapy.
If you have lows often, even mild ones, your therapy is ill-suited to your diabetes and your lifestyle and there’s no excuse for that. Bottom line, your man needs the help of his medical team to sort this out, and get his therapy back on track. Just because he’s had this bitch of a disease since he was a kid doesn’t mean he doesn’t still need professional help. The lows speak for themselves. His body is crying out for help and he needs to get over himself and do the right thing by his daughter, by you, and by himself as well.
Now, on to you and your daughter. Although your heart is in the right place, a peanut butter sandwich is poor medicine for a low blood sugar of any kind, especially a severe one. Sandwiches are too slow. He needs something faster to bring up his sugar. You should get glucose liquid for him to drink when the shakes hit, and you can also get a paste that you can rub on his gums if he can’t swallow.
But most importantly, you must get a Glucagon Emergency Kit. Today. There are two on the market, one made by Novo Nordisk and one made by Eli Lilly. These kits (and you only need one or the other, not both) consist of a powder and a syringe of sterile water. If he has a low that he doesn’t respond to, like the one last night, you open the kit, inject the water into the vial of powder, mix it, draw the mixture back into the syringe, then inject into his leg. It sounds complicated, but it takes less than a minute. I trained my son to use one when he turned five, so your daughter is old enough to learn, too. The glucagon will cause your husband’s liver to release sugar and will bring him back. Then a follow-up sandwich is OK.
I’m glad your night terror didn’t end in a tragedy. Sometimes they do. You, your husband, and your daughter have been given a second chance.
Don’t let him waste it.
This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.
Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.
Disclaimer
This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn"t adhere to Healthline"s editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline"s partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.
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