(no subject)
May. 10th, 2026 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarlingonei haven't seen the orthopedic surgeon yet. i was on the bus to the appointment when i had a massive attack of dizziness, nausea, tachycardia, and shortness of breath (i did manage not to actually throw up on the bus, thankfully). helpfully, the appointment was at a hospital complex, so i simply went to the emergency room instead and asked them to check if i was having a heart attack.
i was not having a heart attack. i was having what i have now learned is called euglycemic ketoacidosis, wherein my type 2 diabetes has been untreated for too long and my pancreas has said "fuck this shit, you can't have any more insulin until I get a damn break", and then when i started my new diabetes med a week ago it didn't get the memo that there was no insulin to be had and instead of putting my blood sugar into my cells where it belongs, it started just breaking the sugar down into ketones and then leaving them around in my bloodstream. so my blood sugar was actually significantly lower than it's been for a while but that wasn't a good thing because it was making my blood unhelpfully acidic instead.
(in the course of putting me through a CT scan to make sure i wasn't in fact having a heart attack, they have also found a nodule in my tiddy that they want me to get mammogrammed when i can. i've had cysts there before so i think i will wait until i get my back looked at because they make you stand up for the mammogram.)
anyway so they put me on an insulin drip and a dextrose drip and a potassium drip (because the insulin lets potassium as well as sugar into your cells, and if it runs out of potassium to put there, you come down with refeeding syndrome and can die) and a saline drip to help dilute the blood acid, and stuck me in the ICU for four days while my blood acid ratio very very slowly came down.
(it would have been faster but my veins are absurd little prima donnas and the insulin IV decided to become subcutaneous against orders, causing the dextrose drip to make my ketones spike again.)
i am very very very underslept, because not knowing that i was packing for a hospital stay, i didn't bring my own bipap machine, and the loaner one from the hospital doesn't like how i breathe and keeps making an incongruously cheerful beep and flashing a light when i start to drift off and my airway tries to close up, which is what the bipap is supposed to fix. i also didn't bring my phone charger which means i keep having to hand off my phone to the nurses to get it charged at their station desk, which is irritating when i have nothing else to entertain myself with except the inside of my head (which does contain a fair amount but is hard to search when i'm this sleepy).
now i am out of the icu and have had most of my tubes removed, and am basically waiting for it to be monday so the hospital endocrinologist will come back and look at my numbers and hopefully send me home with a prescription for insulin. which will be a whole other adventure because paying attention to numbers about what i eat tends to trigger my anorexia, but it is kind of necessary for me to count carbs when on insulin in order to live. i'm not allowed to start dying of erratic blood sugar every other tuesday, that's leia's job. :P
leia has linked me a book that apparently collates the nutrition facts for every food you could possibly want to know about, which will at least be much healthier for my meal planning than trying to use an app, because the apps are always trying to deliberately give you an eating disorder for business purposes or some shit. i have also bought a kitchen scale for doing my own carb math, which leia finds puzzling because she has the dyscalculia and i am the math gay in our relationship. unfortunately both of those are scheduled to arrive to my house today when i am not there, but hopefully one of my housemates will put them on the table by the front door as is usual with other people's mail.
in the process of buying the book i was of course on the amazons as where else can one buy a book these days, and since i very seldom shop there amazon went "hey would you like a month of free prime", and as i do i said yes and then immediately put a calendar appointment for to cancel it before they charge me next month. which means i now have a free month of, among other things, prime video, which has on it among other things batman the animated series. i own the dcau superman and justice league on dvd (although i might need a new dvd player at some point because my ten-year-old hand-me-down fromtigerkat24 objects to marathoning entire seasons of justice league at once) but i've never bought any of the batmans because there are so many and they are so long. it's a very good show though. kevin conroy was truly one of the greats and mark hamill is the best joker ever. so i've been meaning to watch it and now i have access to as much as i can get through in a month.
(i genuinely do not know if i've seen the whole show before. my family had an oddly specific split of superhero blorbos, once we began to be aware of superheroes when i was about twenty: one sister was the batman fan, the other was the superman fan, our mother was an obsessive spider-man fan, and i eventually became very attached to wolverine, who then turned into a headmate and actually wound up getting me out of there by telling me things i needed to hear but wouldn't let myself acknowledge as coming from me. anyway. logan aside. batman sister has a real ear for impressions and does an absolutely uncanny hamill!joker. which means it is entirely possible there are episodes of b:tas i've only encountered as quotes from her. i am curious to find out.)
(as far as dc blorbos... we all know i cannot resist a shapeshifter. something about the way they recontextualize the story when they turn out to have been somebody/something else all along. also with how they often have complicated relationships to society and gender and y'know all of that. last of their kind/man out of time stories are also top tier for me, especially after i left home, although i can't read a lot of captain america because few writers actually understand him and i get very very angry. and we know i love a bass with a distinctive voice. therefore it should come as no surprise to anyone that upon watching justice league for the first time i immediately added j'onn j'onzz to the blorbo list. especially since i also love when aliens have alien-sounding accents, and j'onn's dcau voice actor carl lumbly is minnesotan with jamaican parents, which makes for an accent my ear can't place anywhere on earth.)
anyway. not dead. somewhat bored. less covered in tubes than previously. hoping i get out of the hospital in time for my rescheduled orthopedist appointment monday, but knowing how long anything in a hospital takes, i suspect i may need to reschedule again.
i was not having a heart attack. i was having what i have now learned is called euglycemic ketoacidosis, wherein my type 2 diabetes has been untreated for too long and my pancreas has said "fuck this shit, you can't have any more insulin until I get a damn break", and then when i started my new diabetes med a week ago it didn't get the memo that there was no insulin to be had and instead of putting my blood sugar into my cells where it belongs, it started just breaking the sugar down into ketones and then leaving them around in my bloodstream. so my blood sugar was actually significantly lower than it's been for a while but that wasn't a good thing because it was making my blood unhelpfully acidic instead.
(in the course of putting me through a CT scan to make sure i wasn't in fact having a heart attack, they have also found a nodule in my tiddy that they want me to get mammogrammed when i can. i've had cysts there before so i think i will wait until i get my back looked at because they make you stand up for the mammogram.)
anyway so they put me on an insulin drip and a dextrose drip and a potassium drip (because the insulin lets potassium as well as sugar into your cells, and if it runs out of potassium to put there, you come down with refeeding syndrome and can die) and a saline drip to help dilute the blood acid, and stuck me in the ICU for four days while my blood acid ratio very very slowly came down.
(it would have been faster but my veins are absurd little prima donnas and the insulin IV decided to become subcutaneous against orders, causing the dextrose drip to make my ketones spike again.)
i am very very very underslept, because not knowing that i was packing for a hospital stay, i didn't bring my own bipap machine, and the loaner one from the hospital doesn't like how i breathe and keeps making an incongruously cheerful beep and flashing a light when i start to drift off and my airway tries to close up, which is what the bipap is supposed to fix. i also didn't bring my phone charger which means i keep having to hand off my phone to the nurses to get it charged at their station desk, which is irritating when i have nothing else to entertain myself with except the inside of my head (which does contain a fair amount but is hard to search when i'm this sleepy).
now i am out of the icu and have had most of my tubes removed, and am basically waiting for it to be monday so the hospital endocrinologist will come back and look at my numbers and hopefully send me home with a prescription for insulin. which will be a whole other adventure because paying attention to numbers about what i eat tends to trigger my anorexia, but it is kind of necessary for me to count carbs when on insulin in order to live. i'm not allowed to start dying of erratic blood sugar every other tuesday, that's leia's job. :P
leia has linked me a book that apparently collates the nutrition facts for every food you could possibly want to know about, which will at least be much healthier for my meal planning than trying to use an app, because the apps are always trying to deliberately give you an eating disorder for business purposes or some shit. i have also bought a kitchen scale for doing my own carb math, which leia finds puzzling because she has the dyscalculia and i am the math gay in our relationship. unfortunately both of those are scheduled to arrive to my house today when i am not there, but hopefully one of my housemates will put them on the table by the front door as is usual with other people's mail.
in the process of buying the book i was of course on the amazons as where else can one buy a book these days, and since i very seldom shop there amazon went "hey would you like a month of free prime", and as i do i said yes and then immediately put a calendar appointment for to cancel it before they charge me next month. which means i now have a free month of, among other things, prime video, which has on it among other things batman the animated series. i own the dcau superman and justice league on dvd (although i might need a new dvd player at some point because my ten-year-old hand-me-down from
tigerkat24 objects to marathoning entire seasons of justice league at once) but i've never bought any of the batmans because there are so many and they are so long. it's a very good show though. kevin conroy was truly one of the greats and mark hamill is the best joker ever. so i've been meaning to watch it and now i have access to as much as i can get through in a month.(i genuinely do not know if i've seen the whole show before. my family had an oddly specific split of superhero blorbos, once we began to be aware of superheroes when i was about twenty: one sister was the batman fan, the other was the superman fan, our mother was an obsessive spider-man fan, and i eventually became very attached to wolverine, who then turned into a headmate and actually wound up getting me out of there by telling me things i needed to hear but wouldn't let myself acknowledge as coming from me. anyway. logan aside. batman sister has a real ear for impressions and does an absolutely uncanny hamill!joker. which means it is entirely possible there are episodes of b:tas i've only encountered as quotes from her. i am curious to find out.)
(as far as dc blorbos... we all know i cannot resist a shapeshifter. something about the way they recontextualize the story when they turn out to have been somebody/something else all along. also with how they often have complicated relationships to society and gender and y'know all of that. last of their kind/man out of time stories are also top tier for me, especially after i left home, although i can't read a lot of captain america because few writers actually understand him and i get very very angry. and we know i love a bass with a distinctive voice. therefore it should come as no surprise to anyone that upon watching justice league for the first time i immediately added j'onn j'onzz to the blorbo list. especially since i also love when aliens have alien-sounding accents, and j'onn's dcau voice actor carl lumbly is minnesotan with jamaican parents, which makes for an accent my ear can't place anywhere on earth.)
anyway. not dead. somewhat bored. less covered in tubes than previously. hoping i get out of the hospital in time for my rescheduled orthopedist appointment monday, but knowing how long anything in a hospital takes, i suspect i may need to reschedule again.
