A Bad Bite and Real-Person Sick -- with Diabetes on Board

http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/a-bad-bite-and-real-person-sick-with-diabetes-on-board/

A key takeaway from the recent diabetes advocacy MasterLab was how we need to look out for No. 1. That sounds bad, but it really just means that we must first care of ourselves in order to be in a position to help the rest of the community.

As fate would have it, that could be why the days following MasterLab and the Friends For Life Conference played out the way they did...

On the day of traveling home from this big diabetes fest in Orlando, I found myself in the Emergency Room.

Yep, true story.

Don’t worry, it"s not as serious as it sounds... I"m actually a bit embarrassed that I even ended up in the ER.

On the extended July 4th holiday weekend, my wife Suzi and I spent a good chunk of time outdoors and... surprise!... I got a bug bite. I"m used to being a "mosquito magnet" thanks to my type 1, so at first I didn"t think much about it. But over the next few days, this particular bite got irritated, and by the time I was heading to Orlando on Tuesday it was a bit inflamed. We put some cortisone cream on it and covered it up with a bandaid, and off I went to Florida.

But wouldn"t you know it? Over the course of the next two days, this bug bite ballooned to the size of a golf ball. It was itching and painful, and I started getting worried – as I’ve never had this kind of reaction to a bug bite before.

On the final day, post-MasterLab when traveling home, I opted to wear khakis to be sure to be extra comfortable on the flight home. But as it turned out, that travel day brought the beginning signs that I was getting Real-Person Sick.

What the heck is "Real-Person Sick," may you ask? Well, it’s when you"re under the weather and it’s not because of high or low blood sugars or anything related to diabetes. Most of us PWDs take close note of that, because usually *everything* seems D-related. But then sometimes you’re just coming down with a common cold or flu – like a "real person" without diabetes.

The thought process goes:

((Yaaay, I"m normal in a weird wicked yucky kind of way...!))

((PS: Boooo! It"s gross being sick, and I am not a fan!))

Aside from drinking green herbal tea and eating chicken soup, loading up on Vitamin C and keeping tabs on the fever and all other aspects of the common cold, we also have to manage the frustration of fluctuating illness-related BGs.

This time I was hovering in the 200s and having difficulty getting my BGs down -- despite cranking my basal insulin up about 30% and loading up on Afrezza inhaled insulin. I was a bit worried about my incessant coughing potentially screwing with the inhaled insulin"s lung penetration. No clear picture there; I just assumed the Afrezza was hitting a wall thanks to my cold.

This is how my blood sugars compared, from the weeks before getting Real Person Sick and how they looked during those days when I was ill:

I"ve been Real-Person Sick before, and it"s not typically a big deal except that I do tend to whine like a baby when I"m ill and my Loving and Supporting Spouse rises to the occasion with award-deserving support during these times.

But this time was different -- thanks to the concerning bug bite issue.

That leg bite now in full-infection blast, and I began to worry that something else was going on. Was this boil actually bringing on the fever and feelings of illness? I worried that it might need immediate attention.

My flight home from Florida that night landed at 10:30pm, and as soon as Suzi got a look at my leg, she gasped... it was a bit gross. Right away we decided that we shouldn"t wait another night.

Since it was 11pm by this point, our nearby urgent care facilities were closed, so we opted for the Emergency Room.

We weren"t the only ones -- fellow ER visitors that night included a woman in a wheelchair who"d apparently fallen down the stairs and hurt her leg, a pregnant woman facing some issues, and then a mentally-disturbed man who appeared to be navigating both drugs/alcohol and a stab wound... (yikes!). Needless to say, I felt a little guilty about being there with a bug bite I was defining as a medical "emergency."

Overcoming my guilt and embarrassment at check-in with the registration nurse, I ended up in a room seeing a very nice and personable young doctor who put my mind at ease. She was equally baffled by my bug bite, but in describing everything and pointing to my growing Real-Person Sickness along with my longtime type 1, she reassured me that the ER visit was justified.

The good doctor drained my blistering bite (shudder), offered a medicated cream and antibiotics that I"d need to use for the next couple weeks, and bandaged it all up and sent us home.

The official documented reason for the ER: "blister."

Yeah, cue embarrassment once again.

We joked that the story we"d tell about is that I was accosted by a "Mutant Bug" that caused a ravaging fever... All in good fun, of course.

I"ve been babying this leg issue for the past couple weeks and it"s healing just fine, and after about 6 days this round of Real-Person Sick finally faded away, too.

So, I"m pretty much back in good health now -- that is, back to diabetes being the only medical issue I"m focused on at the moment.

As it turns out, my friend and "Mine editor AmyT went through some equally-crazy urgent health concerns during her yearly summer trip to Europe. She contracted an eye infection just days before leaving the country, that ballooned into a mess that needed to be surgically removed at a clinic in Germany (!) And on top of that, she ended up making a gash in her leg after a chance encounter with a sharp pocket knife that was mistakenly left open in the repair kit on the side of a bicycle she was riding. She tells me that her black-eye and leg stitches are healing well, and that she too is happy to have "nothing but diabetes" to worry about again.

We heartily agreed that Real-Person Sick is just a strange experience for those of us who spend 24 hours a day focused on a single chronic condition... what do you mean I need leg cream / eye drops / fever meds / stitches?! I"m already busy enough with my insulin issues! Not to mention how colds and infections can screw with our BG levels and just make diabetes management that much more impossible to master.

Like they say, the motto to live by with diabetes is: Plan for the worst, hope for the best. What a weird way to live.

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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