Ketoacidosis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketoacidosis

My late husband and I started dating in 1984…
He didn’t tell me he was diabetic or what his condition was for several years.
I only knew that he was very thirsty a lot when we were together and would down 2L bottles of coke like water!
Now we will rewind back to 1989-90 and into 1991.
I was in my last year(of 3 yrs) of college, and my late husband was in his first year of college. He had proposed marriage at Christmas time in 1989.  Of course my parents weren’t too thrilled,
as I still had schooling to finish. Long story short here, there was a great deal of stress added on top of going to school.
By the summer of 1990, my parents threw us an engagement party and we were married a year later in June 1991.   I actually graduated the same day as I got married. 🙂
So, there is a little bit of background history to set the stage.
My late husband discovered he has diabetes when he was 7 years old.  He started taking insulin and spent most of his school year in CHEO. He was using what was available at the time, 1970’s…. beef and pork insulin. He was boiling needles and using urine test strips as a “blood sugar meter”. I have to explain a little here … Urine is a by-product from the body breaking down food and liquid and is stored in the bladder until the person goes to the bathroom.  So, my late husband would test his sugar levels from urine
that had been stored in his bladder for hours.
How is that a problem you ask…. well, that urine would be a reading of sugar stored in his bladder. A delayed result.
A “false” high or “low” reading.  Based on that “delayed result” he would adjust how much insulin he had to give himself.
Compare this to the blood meters of today.
Diabetics poke their fingers to get a small amount of blood to collect on a strip. And less than a minute they know how much sugar is currently in their blood stream and then how much insulin to give themselves to compensate for a high, or that they would have to eat to bring their sugars up. ok … but having a delayed result, your body is not getting the proper amount of insulin or food to keep all your cells functioning at optimum levels. As a result, there is damage to
organs, blood vessels, capillaries and muscles leading to kidney failure, heart attacks, neuropathy, and so on.
Just living is not just a walk in the park anymore.
Being in our teenage years when we started dating, my late husband was in a bit of rebellious stage and wasn’t keeping close watch
on his sugar levels … at least as good as he could be. By the time we started dating the damage to his body had already begun to happen.
So when my late husband had proposed, it created a lot of turmoil for my parents… and then back onto us. My late husband took what my parents said very seriously and was set on proving himself to them. This parental stress was compounded by the fact that he was a type one diabetic.  Just being a diabetic isn’t cause
for discrimination.  But that was a huge factor on my parents part.
At one point, during our engagement, I was expected to call everything off. I met and spoke with my finance, trying to explain my parents position…didn’t go over very well and it set a brittle type one diabetic condition over the edge. He started suffering from abdominal cramping and diaherriah…. he lost so much weight in a very short amount of time.  He used to lift weights so he had build, which disappeared.  He had no energy and was throwing up. His body was in Ketoacidosis … it was basically breaking down fats and muscle to survive.  Because his sugar levels were very high for a long time ~ urine testing and the “rebellious” attitude he had towards being a diabetic ~ his condition was out of control.
When he finally decided to tell me what was going on he was basically a ticking time bomb.  There was no cure for the damage that had set in.
Ketoacidosis destroys your body and it’s ability to survive properly.
On our honeymoon he presented me with a letter. And in this letter he explained the brittle condition his health was in.  His doctor had said that it was a matter of time before his bodily systems would start to shut down.
1991, we were married and he still had a year of college left. That year was extremely hard for both of us.  I was working and had to leave before he did in the morning.
I would call on my breaks to see if he would answer the phone… checking to see if he had left for school.  This one time I had such a sick feeling leaving for work.  I didn’t think he looked very well…but I had to leave for work.  On my break instead of calling the apartment, I drove home.  I opened the door to our one bedroom appartment to find him face down on the floor in a pool of sweat.  He didn’t even make it to the bathroom that morning.  I called for the ambulance, because I couldn’t wake him up. That was one of so many times, I’ve lost count, that he went to low and passed out on me.
Ketoacidosis is not good! The body actually “eats” itself to survive.  This is the result of the cells not getting the proper amount of insulin to regulate energy within the body. Too much insulin floods the cells and the person goes low… not enough sugar to maintain conscience. And not enough insulin the body’s blood becomes saturated with sugar that is flushed out through peeing.  The person becomes extremely thirsty and could ultimately become unconscious.
So many times I saw his blood meter say “LOW” or “HIGH”… what a rollercoaster for us! When the body goes into ketoacidosis, the capillaries and vessels don’t carry the nourishment through the body. So the capillaries in your toes and fingers, back of your eyes and in your kidneys start to calcify.  Which mean they die off and turn hard. This causes neuropathy…. dying of nerves.

It's only a BAD DAY if you say it is