The Danger of a Wrong Order
I went out to dinner a few months back with some friends at a pretty typical chain restaurant.
Me: “I’ll have a diet coke please.” Waitress: “Oh, we only have pepsi, is that ok?” Me: “Sure. A diet pepsi would be fine.”
I have my soda and a few refills over the course of dinner and start feeling really, really bad.
Right about here is where I should mention that I’m a type 1 diabetic and (since I always just drink diet coke) don’t know the difference in taste between diet and regular pepsi.
I checked my blood sugar, which had been perfectly on target before the meal, and my meter just read HIGH, meaning that the value was so high that the meter actually couldn’t process it.
What I had eaten for dinner couldn’t possibly have put me there (and I’d dosed with an appropriate amount of insulin to cover for it) so we flagged down the waitress and I asked “This isn’t diet pepsi, is it?” She responded by telling me that it wasn’t, that the diet pepsi fountain was out of syrup and she didn’t think I’d mind, and besides, I’m plenty skinny and don’t need to drink the diet stuff.
I started cursing, pulled out my insulin syringes to dose for the 4 full sugar sodas that I drank, and told her exactly what I was doing.
I then told the manager what had happened, and that I wasn’t planning on paying for the meal but would instead put the money toward the ER bill that I was about to incur.
Went to the hospital where the lab determined that my blood sugar was still in the 700s even after I dosed, and I ended up staying overnight because my glucose level stubbornly refused to come back into range.