need immediate diabetic help

i've just tried to plow through google and there's too much... i have a waitress at my house who got herself drunk and is injection-style diabetic. her last test was 121, as opposed to 187 earlier. what do i feed her, if anything? does this number mean her sugar is high or low? she's apparently never been drunk before, and she can't tell me what to do for her right now.
i know it's retarded, but advice please. quickly. i don't want to call 911 if it's not emergency-level yet.

Call doctors, get real help.

Seriously, what are you doing asking us?

Call the local hospital and talk to a nurse in the emergency room. They'll tell you if its serious or not.

okay, 911 just blew me off. ferreal. they said that the numbers i quoted weren't a comatose dangerous situation, and i should call a family member who is "familiar with her history" for advice on sleeping/eating schedule. yeah, and her family is (apparently) jehovah's witnesses who i think won't take kindly to this. problem with 911 opinion is i'm in bumfuck egypt, do i go with this statement or ignore the operator and load her up for the er myself? or does this sound appropriate? btw she is now sleeping with steady breathing, but i haven't been able to get food down her throat so i'm very uncomfortable with this. no new blood testing since last post. she has not eaten since 9:45. she has had tequila and somthing called a "passionate screw." bartenders, how much sugar is in this?

that's the problem. i'm not getting good help on the phone and my webmd searches aren't yielding answers good enough to work with. i guess i'm asking if any injection-diabetics on the site can tell me if we're okay here like 911 says or if they're super-dumb and more attention is needed.

Just take her to the hospital. Better safe than sorry.

okay, ambulance on the way. thanks for everyone's help. if curious i will list details in the journal tomorrow (probably, unless tonight gets hairier...). again, thanks for supporting my panic. wow.

You did the right thing. Better for her to wake up in the ER embarassed than to risk the alternative. I'd like to hear what happens, post about it tomorrow!

For the rest of us, here's the recipe for a passionate screw:

Passionate screw
--------------------------
1 oz vodka
1 oz Myer's® dark rum
1 oz Chambord® raspberry liqueur
fill with 1/2 orange juice
fill with 1/2 pineapple juice
1 splash grenadine syrup

Sounds yummy.

393 calories.

[Edited on Jan 26, 2006 by bluetrust]

Im diabetic, and I have to say that although the sugar levels you posted were at first moderatley hi, they dropped to a near normal level, which is what can happen after drinking alcohol, as it can lower the blood sugar after several hours, despite the initial rush of sugars in a particular drink. In all likelihood the combination of alcohol, sugar and insulin contributed to her passing out.Since it was her first time drinking and was not able to care for herself you have to call an ambulance in that situation, so you did the right thing, although I cant imagine why you would look here for medical advice!

In all likelihood, she would sleep it off, and even if she missed an insulin injection,
she would only have hi blood sugar (hyperglycemia) for a short time, which is much less of an immediate danger than severe hypoglycemia and the potential for insulin shock. The last thing you'd want to do is try administering insulin to someone, that could bevery dangerous; doctors will typically advise you to eat some food during any illness to avoid the potential for low blood sugar, a much more immediate danger.

I hope this helps, and remind her not to drink alcohol! I wish I could follow that advice myself!

Yeah, 121 is probably nothing to be concerned about. But best to get someone more knowledgeable involved, in person.

[Edited because I just noticed you called an ambulance. Good job.]

[Edited on Jan 26, 2006 by jonasgrumby]

She's faking it!

Good job, dude. You did the right thing and you got a story you can tell if you're ever hanging out with her in the future and she is telling embarassing anecdotes about you.

until the bgl reaches 250 , there is no danger...to decrease bgl reading , drinking water flushes the system of sugar...to increase bgl = eat fruit and crackers + a diet soda...187 is marginally high...100-105 is normal...121 is not a worry

[Edited on Jan 27, 2006 by razorbladesonata]

He did say that he tried calling 911. Also, if I had seen this earlier, I would have talked to my wife, who would have had some good advice.

So, when 911 fails, it's not a bad idea to check where you can.

and now for the wrap-up... after she bottomed out at 37!!! emt's got us through giving her juice and retesting, although we couldn't do the food because she was throwing up. i just woke her up, got food in her, and got her home, so it all turned out fine. to restate, i had called 911 and they were really unhelpfull, not telling me what to do or anything, they just said take her in to the ER. she doesn't have health insurance and at this point we were around 120 so i didn't want to take her without more info, and all my frantic googling turned up nothing, so i hoped someone on the site was diabetic and could explain what to do. not so much a "strangers on the internet" thing , more of a last-ditch effort to find out if i could handle the situation on my own. thanks to everyone for the help, i was kinda panicking.

You say you were looking for someone here who has diabetes to tell you what to do, but why couldn't the girl with diabetes tell you what to do?

This isn't medical advice.

a low would be under 5. Low blood sugar is worrying because of the risk of coma, but you'd give her some sugar (like a can of coke, or a glucose tablet) and then some food and she'd be okay, or in a really bad situation you'd get ehr to a doctor and they'd use some kind of "hypostop" thing.

the numbers you quoted are higher than they should be. This isn't a short term risk, but high blood sugar does pose long term problems such as blindness, neuropathy etc.

Now you've had a scare I hope you can talk to her about the illness and find out some stuff to do. Diabetes isn't really that scary once you get to know about it.

I'm not diabetic (but my pa died of "diabetic foot") so if I've got anything wrong I hope that people will correct me.

she was seriously drunk. as explained in the initial post, she doesn't usually drink, got herself smashed, and was incoherent. that's why i was flipping. i found her in the bar adjacent to the restaurant i work in when i got off shift, took her to my house because i didn't know where she lived, and things degenerated from there.

Sounds like a typical Saturday night.

Sounds like a movie starring Jon Favreau, Daniel Stern, and Christian Slater.

We're in the US. A reading of five would mean I was dead. For us, 100-180 is good for diabetics who don't have an insulin pump.

[Edited on Jan 27, 2006 by L_aerophile]

i think dobermann was kidding, but in case not, she totally wasn't. i had to do the test strip thingy myself one time, saw the number. but maybe she was pumping it up because she was embarrassed that she'd gotten herself drunk? she is hyper-religious, after all. i dunno, it was scary enough for me to ask for the ambulance.

But it plays one on TV ...

sorry.