Back from the Valley of the Shadow of Death

[chrishansenhome]

One of the joys that long-term diabetics have to look forward to is intestinal trouble. This can be due to one of three things: an infection, a reaction to metformin (one of the drugs that diabetis often take), or autonomic neuropathy. What's that when it's at home? Your innards are, of course, run from nerves. Neuropathy is when the nerves die. The autonomic nervous system is what keeps your stomach, small and large intestines, and probably God only knows what else going.



On Sunday morning I awoke at 4 am needing to use the loo. I had a case of diarrhea. Sometimes this happens to everyone, of course, so I washed, and dressed (at 9 am) and went to church. I did tell HWMBO that I would probably not stay but would be back after setting up when my assistant sacristan arrived.

That was the last time I left the house for four days.

I have had the most excruciating diarrhea for the past four days. I have been unable to sleep more than an hour at a time (and that was sometimes a luxury). I had to sleep downstairs in the easy chair because I could not guarantee that I would get out of bed in time to get to the upstairs loo. I have had to race to the loo more times than I can count; I have been cleaning up the mess and generally being very miserable. By this morning I just wanted to die. I had no ambition to do anything except sit in the chair and listen to the radio or watch TV.



I finally called my GP this morning and we discussed my "diagnosis" of autonomic neuropathy. She prescribed something called Lomotil and it seems to (in conjunction with my observation that the symptoms were diminishing) have relieved the diarrhea. I am leaning to the conclusion that the exenatide, which delays emptying of the stomach, might have something to do with this. I shall be getting one more pen but will ask for an urgent appointment at the diabetic clinic when I get back from the US ande ask that they stop the exenatide and start me on insulin. No point in delaying the inevitable now, and since I've now gotten used to injecting myself, there's no difference in injecting lizard spit from injecting insulin.

I ate my first full meal since Sunday this evening. I also slept for 4 hours this afternoon in my bed.

Now to figure out what triggers the condition (it's not present all the time—there seem to be foods that might set it off) and stop eating it.

I've probably lost quite a bit of weight, on the bright side (I suppose there must always be a bright side).

(thanks to am0 for telling me about this a while back; I would never have figured it out on my own)

Comments

[chantacleer.livejournal.com]

why did you wait so long before consulting a doctor?

[chrishansenhome.livejournal.com]

My experience is that doctors don't take diarrhea (or diarrhoea, as they spell it here) seriously until you've had it for more than 3 days, unless you are an infant or an elderly person. So on the fourth day, I spoke to my doctor.

It seems to have cleared up naturally--I didn't take any of the medications yesterday at all. The last time I had something like this the doctor thought it was giardia, but a stool sample showed that it wasn't. She then thought a virus (I had just returned from a trip to India, so either food-borne or a virus was a possibility). Now I realise that it was probably the first bout of autonomic neuropathy. It was in 2005, so 4 years between bouts is OK.