1700+ Blood Glucose Level, DKA Nightmare.

My daughter also had an unquenchable thirst, her neck was stiff, and she had a rash. I thought she had meningitis. I took her to multiple ER's. One actually refused to "waste their time with a rash" and told us to "go see her primary care doctor on Monday." This was Friday. I told my husband that I was going to take her to yet another hospital and he even questioned me. We got to the last one, man was it busy. They triaged her and said she was stable, put her out in the waiting room. Once it was her turn, we went back to a room and surprisingly the doctor walked right in. I can't decide if it was good timing or God's intervention. They did a complete blood work up. She started vomiting and the doctor came back in with a blood glucose monitor. (Needless to say I did not know what it was before this, but now we are all too aware.) We never really saw much of her nurse. Anyway, the monitor gave him an error code three times. The fourth time it told him it was too high to register, meaning it was over 700. (This is when I called my husband and told him to leave work and get up here.) The average blood glucose level is between 80 and 150, anything over 250 and there is a problem that needs to be addressed, anything over 400 and you need to focus completely on getting the blood sugar down, anything over 700 you are in serious danger. He called down to the lab and told them to rush her blood work. He came running into the room and told us that he was calling for a helicopter to transfer her to the children's hospital. She spent 3 days in ICU and 2 weeks on the diabetic floor. Thank God this doctor took it seriously, we were later told if I had just taken her home like we were told to do, she would have died in her sleep.

Catherine Hoffman
St Charles, MO