Mark

[mark marcia]

:confused: flip, my friend Marcia is diabetic ( type 1),
when her levels are low (about 2 ish )
she becomes contentious i have to force her to drink coke
or suck on sweets, she refuses and a fight insues,
generally this consists of me prying her jaw open to get sugar in, but then she looks horrified by my efforts , then she starts hitting me, or giving me the doe eye look, it kills me, eventually i have to restrain her and ,and just start spilling coke on her face and eventually i get the coke in her mouth
its a messy affair, is this standard practise ?
please help gulp.
Mark:confused: :confused:

[dbc]

Many diabetics become argumentative/belligerent/illogical during a hypo, so at one level, yes, you could say this is "standard practise".

All/most T1 diabetics have hypos ocassionally, and we have to learn to recognise the symptoms and take corrective action before the hypo becomes acute. It sounds as though your friend does not recognise what's happening when the hypo comes on - that's problem number one, and thus she is not doing the right stuff timeously -problem number two.

How seriously does she take the diabetes? Is she usually in control of her blood glucose levels? how often does she have hypos down at the 2-3 level? It's a definite bad idea to allow too many extra low hypos to happen.

[IrishJoe]

yes there are probably other factors, but when sugars are low one can become argumentative

[AngelKitty]

Hi Mark,
She's very lucky to have such a good and caring friend like you. Unfortunately low blood sugars do affect peoples moods - usually in a negative way: angry, irritable, cranky, stroppy, confused.
My husband tells me that when I hypo I can't follow instructions and act really confused, a bit vague and sometimes a little irritable.
Please understand that we really can't help the way we feel when these physiological changes are taking place and we don't do it to deliberately hurt or scare our loved ones - we just need a little more unsertanding and sometimes help than non-diabetics mates do.

[xMenace]

Yes, but don't physically force her. Use forceful commands and repeat until she does it. "Eat This! You're low.", "Drink This! You're low.", "Eat This! You're low.", "Drink This! You're low.". Don't argue and be calm. She will generally recover fine from these episodes, even without your help. It's probably more important you make sure she doesn't go off and do some activity like turn on a BBQ or drive a car..