On 2nd June 2014 the day had finally come for me to receive my Insulin Pump from the NHS. This had been a long time coming and I had been jumping through hoops for many years with numerous visits to my local Diabetes Centre at The Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth, my home town. I’m sure you guys have experienced the same sort of thing as I have when it comes to technology and your diabetes. There doesn’t seem to be much knowledge in the UK unlike our friends over the water in the USA where it seems the norm for them to be using tech like the Dexcom, t:Slim; Omnipod etc to treat their diabetes. Over here it seems to be the forbidden talk and should not be mentioned whilst visiting anyone that works for the NHS.
Well finally the day had come and I was incredibly excited about receiving my Insulin pump. I had already done a course called JIGSAW (Juggling Insulin for Goal Success and Well-being) to gain a greater understanding towards my diabetes and getting a insulin pump seemed to be the next step. So it was a bright early sunny Monday morning and I was bushy tailed and raring to go. We started the day with a introduction to others that would also be receiving their insulin pump and we sat quietly in the diabetes centre meeting room awaiting our new toys to arrive. The doctors and nurses arrived and it was like a scene from a christmas morning, it was time to open our presents! Each individual person was to receive a insulin pump that the doctors felt would best suit their needs and I had been given the Accu-Chek Spirit Combo. I had already been using the Accu-Chek Aviva Combo for testing my blood sugar so this seemed the right product for me.
We had a brief introduction to the pumps and then a step by step guide to how to change the cannula. This is where the rest of the daze becomes a bit of a haze for me and I struggle to remember what else we did that morning. Unfortunately this wasn’t down to the excitement taking over and blurring my memories, but it was simply down to the events that unfolded after leaving the Diabetes Centre. The next part of the story is from my wife Ami’s recollection of events from roughly 12 o’clock onwards. Straight after leaving the centre I phoned Ami and apparently I was like a excited kid and wouldn’t stop talking about this amazing new pump I had received. I then headed home to have some lunch before returning to work, which at the time I was working for a local estate agent, photographing their properties. For lunch I had roughly 160 grams of carbohydrates which I asked my pump to inject my usual 16 units of Insulin, as my ratio hadn’t changed and still stood at 1 unit of insulin per 10 grams of carbohydrates. Everything seemed fine and I headed to work, I proceeded to photograph the property and headed back to my car.
This is where things really took a turn for the worse and my blood sugar rapidly dropped and I feel into a hypo, slumped over my steering wheel. Unfortunately I had parked the car around the corner from where I was working, but luckily had been spotted by a local neighbour at roughly 2 o’clock, but unfortunately they thought I was just having a nap. Two hours past and the neighbour had noticed I was still there and called a ambulance. Also by this time Ami and my mum had become worried about where I was and had started to track me on “Find My iPhone” and were on their way to my location. By this point a ambulance had arrived and I was in the care of paramedics and on my way back to QA Hospital, but this time in the back of ambulance with the blue lights flashing. I then spent the next four hours in a diabetic coma and in intensive care whilst the doctors helped me. Unfortunately by this point thou, due to starving my brain of sugar, my memory of the events had become very vague and I was unable to even know who my wife and family were. I can only imagine how this must of been for them, but can only thank them from the bottom of my heart for standing by mysids and supporting me through the times ahead.
In total I think I spent about 5 days in hospital and I can only describe the weeks that followed as utter hell. Due to recently signing a contract with the estate agent for their property photography, unfortunately this was my main income and it was crucial that I kept up the work and completed all the bookings I had in the diary. Unfortunately the main problem was the fact that I couldn’t remember anything about the properties after 10 minutes of leaving them. This was proving incredibly frustrating as I was also doing 3D floor plans and needed to match rooms with images etc. Unfortunately Ami had to quit her job to become my carer and we would try to attempt to work through my job load together as a team. Bless her heart she put up with a lot from me as my temper would become so short due to the frustration and pain I was still in from being so ill. Its fair to say that Ami is my rock and I owe so much to her.
The weeks that followed that just became a living hell and we had very little help from the NHS at all, who hadn’t even sent the Insulin Pump back to Accu-Chek for testing and still to this day we don’t have a clear understating as to what actually happened. Was it me? Was it how much I injected?? or was it down to the pump and a malfunction?? Who knows!
I guess we will never find out what actually happened but all I know is my memory to this day is half of what it use to be
