(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Jim MacDonald speaks about diabetes.

While high glucose levels can lead to unconsciousness and death (diabetic coma), what'll kill you fast is insulin shock. That's when a person has taken their normal insulin dose, but for some reason doesn't have their normal glucose levels in their blood. Forgetting breakfast, unusual exercise, a low-grade fever -- lots of things can cause that. The glucose level plummets, the nerves starve, the cells die, and it's light's out.

Fortunately for us EMS types, this is one treatment that's fast, easy, and magical. You give the person some sugar, they're better. You have your oral glucose -- 15 grams in a little plastic tube that you can squeeze into the person's mouth (provided they're conscious enough to be able to guard their airway). It gets absorbed right through the mucous membranes of the cheek and gums. Those little tubes are expensive, so lots of folks, in their personal kits, carry tubes of squeezable cake decoration frosting. It's pretty much the same stuff. In some EMS systems, if the patient can't guard his airway, you're allowed to give rectal glucose. Pop a hard candy right up there -- a mucous membrane is a mucous membrane. (Important safety tip: If you want the person to still be your friend afterward, don't use a Red Hot Fireball cinnamon candy.)

He brings this up in reference to a news story about a California woman who collapsed in diabetic shock with her children watching via webcam, from Norway and the Phillipines, who managed to call the California EMTs and get help.

Comments

[harald387.livejournal.com]

Some of the comments on that article are priceless:

But by the Middle Ages, of course, not only had much of the earlier medical knowledge been misfiled, burned, or eaten, uroscopy -- the technical name for "doing odd things with other folks' wee with vaguely medical intent" -- had become practically its own specialty, not to be confused with "urology," which can involve getting a live TV feed from inside your bladder. Technology is swell.

I'm not diabetic, but I am hypoglycemic - and the effects of a glass of orange juice with a few tablespoons of sugar in it are amazing.

It's equally amazing to see what happens if you walk to the front of a buffet line in Vegas and explain that you -really- need something with sugar in it to drink -now-.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

You know, I really like the Internet sometimes.

[norvelllouwho.livejournal.com]

Note to self... if someone goes into insulin shock at work tonight, instead of giving them the normal meds for that sort of thing, I need to put a Nerd Rope in their butt.