On Thursday, Ocotber 13th, I drove my sister back to univeristy in St. Catherines, a two hour drive each way. During the drive I didn’t feel so well, and didn’t bother stopping in at a fast food place as usual. Thursday night I woke up sweating and feeling like I was going to throw up. I took a couple of Gravol and Tylenol Cold and Fever pills and fell back to sleep.
On Friday morning I felt better but told my mom (I live at home) what had happened during the night. Ususally, she’d send me to a doctor before letting me go back to bed, but I convinced her I would go when I woke up. I woke up that afternoon with the sweats again, and feeling really dizzy. I got scared, called my mom asking for advice (she has worked as a receptionist in a medical setting for the past 15 years). She told me my dad would be home soon.
I must have fallen back to sleep before he got home.
Saturday morning at about 4am, my mom happened to wake up to go to the washroom. She looked into my bedroom and saw that I had kicked the sheets of the bed and was lying on my back with my arms and legs spread open. As she moved closer to tuck me in, she noticed that my eyes were open. She touched my skin and felt that I was freezing. At that point, she actually thought I was dead. She rushed to get my dad, who has taken first aid and CPR courses, who then discovered that I still had a pulse. My mom called 911, and the fire dept. arrived first, as usual. The firemen gave me a shot of something, when the paramedics arrived and took over. They started an IV and began checking my bood surgar and blood pressure. I had a blood sugar level of two, where five to eight is normal.
I started to violently seizuring and stopped breathing. I was given oxygen and began breathing again. Due to the lack of sugar in my blood, I had most a few of my senses, I was blind and had no sense of touch. I became aware that I wasn’t dreaming at this point. One of the paramedics asked if I knew who she was. Going on the female voice, I said “mom.”
As they took me outside my eyesight came back, althought it was if what I was seeing wasn’t making to my brain right. I saw the flowers outside our front door, only the colours were wrong. I began to whimper out the colours I did see, to see if anyone agreed if they were right.
Once in the ambulance, I realized this was real, that it was night a nightmare. The paramedic asked me to remember lines like “Tuesday is blue.” Then she would ask me to repeat the line, which I could. When she asked what colour Tuesday was, I had no idea.
I the emergency/ambulance entraced we waited. I could see my mom and dad, and that my mom was crying. My dad asked if I could read a sign beside me. I couldn’t.
I was removed from the paramedics IV and a nurse hooked my up to another. I was freezing and my feet hurt. I was giving tea with surgar to arm me up. I was placed in Continuing Care at 8am and I slepted until 6pm. At six I felt better, although I was freezing and felt very weak. Nurses came in and out of the room checking my blood pressure and surgar level, plus my pulse and temperature.
My parents talked to a doctor, and endocronologist, and then they explained to me what had happened.
Prior to this incident a doctor had put my on a thyroid horomone so control my whacked put thyroid. It was an overactive thyroid which had given me a motabalism of a rabbit, but left my exhausted in the mornings. After the perscription had run out, I hadn’t refilled it, just out of laziness. It had been the lack of the pill, and the lacked of surgar, food and engery they had caused the episode. They weighed my at the hospital and discovered I wieghed 110 pounds, a BMI of about 16. They were happy to learn that I hadn’t lost the weight intentionally, however, and a dietician put my on a high calorie, high protien diet of six meals a day.
I was released from the hospital this morning, the day before my 24th birthday. I feel tired, weak and have a hard time reading andw writing.
If I stick with my new pills, praticed reading and writing, and make sure I eat, I will weigh about 140 in mid January, and my reading and writing comprehension will be back to normal.
Thought I’d share my experience.