What is the highest blood sugar you have seen in a walky talky patient?

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in ICU.

Had a guy come in to the ED yesterday who said that he had been to the doctor on Friday and that he had lab work done as he had been very fatigued lately. He stated that he went home after lab draw and went straight to bed where he slept until Sunday morning only getting up to urinate. Being asleep he missed the message left on his machine Friday afternoon by the office nurse to go straight to the ED as his blood sugar was very high. When he woke up on Sunday morning and checked his messages he got ready and DROVE HIMSELF to the ED. I pulled the lab work that the pt had done on Friday as we have access to our in house cards records. His sugar was 886 on Friday! When we did an accu check his sugar was too high for the machine to register so a serum glucose was drawn. Get this, it was 989! His Hgb A-1C was 14.5! I have never seen any one functioning with a sugar that high. He had no idea what diabetes was. Needless to say he bought an insulin drip and an ICU bed.

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Specializes in Cath Lab, OR, CPHN/SN, ER.

My fiance has seen one in the thousands (new onset type one).

We were talking about this one day at work, about the lowest they had seen. I think 5 was the lowest. Gave the guy sugar, he woke up! Nurse asked him "Do you know where you are?". She said he looked around and said "Looks like I'm at the hospital". She asked if he knew why he was there. "Probably because my sugar got too low". :rolleyes:

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I worked in a hospital lab before I became a nurse; one guy had a serum glucose level of 1100. He was found unresponsive in his home. However, even though they were able to bring it down, he died from a rare type of fungal pneumonia.

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1036; long

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1036; long time diabetic

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Specializes in Med-surg > LTC > HH >.

:p hi, i'm a new type 1 diabetic in the last year and a half . i take insuling 5 times a day. it is not unusual for my sugar to be in the upper 600's and i feel fine. i pee alot more sometimes sleep alot more and sometimes not. but i don't feel bad when it's high. on the other hand i have dropped to the low 30's more than once and it is one of the worse feelings i have ever had. it is a horribly panicky, confused, cold sweat feeling. no way to put it into words. if you havea pt. with low sugar, please know they are beyond miserable. i usually run low after during my sleep. it usually follows an illness or bad dream. any stressor will do it to me.

give me 100 days of a high bloodsugar (in the 600's) rather than one hypoglycemic (low) event. i just can't deal with them. it is so obvious that your close to death. i always seem to be alone or my husband is being a total jerk on that particular day. i know i have to get my shaky,confused, panicky feeling butt to the fridge, and can't seem to get there fast enough.:uhoh3:

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996...in my 7 year old son. He could walk and talk, but he wasn't looking too good. He could barely walk and kept falling asleep, but he was talking to me most of the time. I had decided that I was not going to leave the doctor till they told me what was wrong with my son (he'd been sick for most of his life, but for that year, he was sick all the time...he had had his sugar checked about fifteen times that year and each time it was normal). Anyway, they drew lab work and it was 996...and we were off to the hospital for a week.

He's now 16, on a pump since he was 8 and doing great. A1C was last 5.9.

Cassi

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The other day we had a patient with blood sugar over 1,000 (I think around 1,100). Apparently she thought it would be a good idea to eat a couple of bags of candy. Go figure, she came into the hospital the day after halloween. She has had diabetes for quite some time, but obviously hasn't been controlling it.

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Specializes in Neuro, Critical Care.

Ive seen in the mid 700's and I thought that was high!

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Specializes in IMCU/Telemetry.

The highest I saw was about 900, and the lowest 12. And this was the same pt. He could switch between 600 and 60 in a shift. A very sick and unstable pt. It took 3-4 weeks just to control his suger. THEN we had to deal with his heart.:uhoh21:

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Specializes in Telemetry, ICU, Resource Pool, Dialysis.

We've had several DKA pts come in with BS well over 1000. They weren't feeling very well, but were alert and functioning.

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I once had a long time diabetic come in at over 1200. She mentioned she had very thirsty lately and had been drinking 2 liter bottles of Coke.:rolleyes:

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