Reminds me of the Therac-25 incident..
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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A story from a type 1 diabetic:
I had what we will call "an incident" where I took pretty close to this scale of extra insulin. I'm a much heavier insulin user but it varies greatly between people and the kind of person who is dosing fractions of a unit like 0.15 turning into 15 would be a massive problem. It took about an hour for me to get to the hospital and I seemed just fine at that point. I don't know why because usually the type of insulin I use hits it's peak within an hour for me. My only guess is that my body was overwhelmed and somehow delayed my reaction to it, which I've never seen before.
I got into the ER and they were very casual about it. From my past experience in medicine I'm guessing they weren't sure if it really happened and wanted to see how it played out. My blood sugar was somewhere around 100 when they first tested me. 5 minutes later it was in the 40s. At that point the nurse said "oh fuck!" and sprinted to grab D50 (basically a sugar infusion) from where they keep their meds. I have been a paramedic (not just an EMT) and I can count the number of times I've seen a nurse run on my fingers.
They started an IV in both arms and were pumping sugar in to keep me alive. My memory gets kinda hazy after that. They kept checking my blood for potassium levels because burning through that much insulin + glucose uses it up and can stop your heart. Eventually they had to start a central line (like an IV but straight into your heart) in my neck to deliver insulin because they were worried all the sugar they were giving in both arms would burn my arm veins. I remember the feeling when they started it and used a probe to see if it was in the right place the "tickling" feeling literally in my heart. I ended up in the ICU on 1-to-1 with a nurse because they had to monitor me so closely. If I had been later to the ER by 10-15 minutes I wouldn't be telling you this story. I also had the benefit of knowing what happened ahead of time, which you would not if your pump magically multiplied your dose by 100 and you didn't notice.
All this to say, this is pretty fucking serious.
Am a medic. Had a similar call, but dude ended up having a rare tumor on his pancreas called and insulinoma. They produce and hold a bunch of insulin and can occasionally rupture and flood your system with insulin. Ofcourse we didn't Know he had one at the time.
We had a non Diabetic PT that we found with a glucose that just read low. So 30< with our glucometers. Dumped 100 of d20 into him with absolutely no changes. Ended up infusing 4 more bags of d20 into him during transport. Got him up to like 80 and then watched him become unresponsive again 5 min later. Checked again and found it to be back to 40. He was in a room a few min later. Normally Im glad we don't cary d50 anymore that shit was like using a sledge hammer to hammer in a tack nail. But this was the one time d20 wasn't cutting it.
Anyways, glad you are alive. Shit can be scary.