Click for the Diabetes Art - Saturday 5/18 Link List
This year Diabetes Art moves up from the Wildcard choices as we all channel our creativity with art in the broadest sense. Do some “traditional” art like drawing, painting, collage or any other craft you enjoy. Or look to the literary arts and perhaps write a d-poem or share and discuss a favorite quote. Groove to some musical arts by sharing a song that inspires you diabetes-wise, reworking some song lyrics with a d-twist, or even writing your own song. Don’t forget dramatic arts too, perhaps you can create a diabetes reality show or play. These are just a starting point today – there are no right or wrong ways to get creative!
Diabetes was here.
Diabetes is everywhere. It is a mostly invisible disease. Sometimes that makes it feel a little more lonely. Even with the people I know personally and the DOC. It is nice to have hints that others with diabetes are around and doing what then can to take care of themselves.
It's the best when you see evidence of another diabetic! It always makes me smile on the inside :)
ReplyDeleteI really liked this. :)
ReplyDeleteHow is diabud in medical school if she thinks spilling large urine ketones means you are in DKA? I was under the impression that DKA meant abnormal venous or arterial PH, abnormal HCO3-, and I am pretty sure also abnormal pCO2 (because of the compensation)
ReplyDeleteYou have to be intelligent to get into medical school in Canada. Like you would just know that off the top of your head probably from your high school sciences
Also, if a nurse was present I am pretty sure she would send the girl to the hospital if she suspected DKA.
I think you really need to set her straight on this issue
Anyways, I am only in grade 11 so I could be wrong
You are partially correct in that acidemia is when your arterial pH is below normal. However, diabetic ketoacidosis means that your body is producing ketones because of a deficiency in insulin and since ketones are an acidic product it puts you into a metabolic acidosis. While I do not know what my arterial pH was that day, if there were ketones in my urine they were coming from my blood and that meant that I was in metabolic acidosis.
DeleteThere are different compensations to acidosis, as you mentioned. Changing breathing to decrease pCO2 is one. Vomiting is another because you loose acid from stomach acid.
If the nurse had not known so much about diabetes, she might have sent me to the hospital. The nurse (who was in fact present) was on vacation from work in an emergency department and had also worked in other inpatient settings so she was very qualified, which is why she was with us.
The problem with just sending me to the hospital was that I would have had to hike for half an hour and had someone drive me at least an hour to the closest hospital. Either way I would have injected insulin and changed my infusion site before leaving for the hospital, the hike down would have been difficult and by the time we reached the hospital, there would have been little they could do for me except monitor my recovery by checking my blood sugar, urine ketones and making sure I was adequately hydrated.
This strategy might have been different if we did not know why I was in DKA, but because we could see my site had pulled out, it helped to make this an option. (DKA can be severe and very dangerous, how severe it gets is related to how long you are without insulin and how completely. If I did not have back up insulin with me on the mountain, this story could have gotten much worse quickly.)