Once again having a COPD exacerbation.  I did a week of oral steroids and antibiotics with no improvement at all.  Yesterday day I started on IV steroids twice a day.  I will do these myself at home so yippee for no hospital!!!!  I will do these for at least a week and then reevaluate to see if I need to continue or start to taper.

I finally got the remainder of my tests results back from endocrinology at Mayo.  For the seven days that I wore the monitor my blood glucose was only in the normal range about 50% of the time.  They are recommending that I wear one permanently.  I am ok with this as it really opened my eyes to how fast my levels were dropping without me having symptoms.  Now the big hurdle is to get insurance to pay based on diagnosis on severe hypoglycemia with adaptation to symptoms.  So that has been submitted to the company that provides the continuous glucose monitor and they will get with me in 5-7 days.

The other problem that I am having is that when I am taking steroids I am actually having very high blood glucose levels.  This is a problem because I take steroids a LOT.  So, I will now be getting a prescription for insulin as well to add to my arsenal of medications.

The irony of all of this is that I am NOT diabetic.  Therefore we have to jump through hoops to explain why I need all these supplies and medications that are typically for a diabetic patient.  Hopefully, we will at least get the insulin issue worked out this week and the continuous monitor in the next two weeks.  Until then I will just have to start checking my blood sugar a lot more frequently that I had been instructed to in the past.

I do have another option for controlling the severe hypoglycemia.  It would be to go on IV nutrition or have a j tube for feeding put back in.  I am not willing to do this at this point. I am finally maintaining my weight and keeping most of my labs in the low normal range.  I know that at some point I will probably need IV or tube feeding, but I want to avoid that for as long as possible.