Well I've had diabetes since I'm 26 or so (39 now). For the longest time I controlled it through diet and exercise to the point where my doctors told me I didn't need to use pills anymore. When I moved out to California in 2012, I started drinking again. (I'm an alcoholic that was sober for years). Anyway, I stopped eating healthy, stopped exercising, basically went from 200lbs to 260 over the last 3 years. I know 200lbs still is more than I should be but I was 395lbs when I was 19 and I've worked it off over the years. I also never paid attention to my sugar levels during this time. I quit drinking again and I'm just over 6 months sober.
So I drove out to Colorado for christmas and when I got there, I felt dizzy. I then spent the next 24 hours throwing up. I had my brother take me to an emergency room and they admitted me telling my my a1c was 11.5 and I was having Diabetes Ketoacidosis. They treated me there for 3-4 days then let me out where I went back and rested at my brothers house for another week or so. Because they gave me an EKG in the hospital, I never thought anything of it. My feet and legs started to swell, I couldn't sleep lying down etc. I decided to drive back to California so I could get things rolling with my doctors back here. It's crazy to think that my heart failure happened in Colorado and I drove 18-20 hours myself with it.
Anyway, after driving two days, I got out of my Jeep and made it about 1 flight of stairs up to my 3rd floor apartment before I couldn't breathe. It was new years eve, I decided to just try and sleep so I could come to the doctors to get checked out the next day. So, the next day I drove to my doctors, they were closed so I ended up going up the road to the emergency room. While there they told me my body was filling up with water and I was having a heart attack. I was in the hospital a week with them trying to get water out and to get my kidney's decent enough to survive an operation. They drained about 35 pounds of water out of me. Then they told me all 3 major arteries going into my heart were blocked at 70% and 80%. My heart was so weak, it couldn't keep up with pumping that pushes the water out.
I had a quad bypass surgery on January 11th. (Went into the hospital on January 1st). People are usually out 4-5 days after but they had trouble getting me to stop bleeding during the surgery. After I woke up, the next two days I was out of it because the guy in charge didn't want to do another blood transfusion if we didn't need to. Eventually they gave it to me and it helped me get over that hurdle. My kidney's also have been hit so hard with this, all of the medicines they were giving me etc that they have been iffy. I'm still being closely monitored in that area. I got home last night but will have nurses coming out to do lab work etc.
It's been rough. I really thought I was dying. Not being able to breathe, or even sleep because if I layed down It made it impossible to breathe was terrible. I slept sitting up in a chair for about 2-3 weeks. I think the next hurdle for me now is my feet/legs are still swollen. I'm hoping that starts to come down and doesn't turn into something more severe where I'm going to have to go back into a hospital. 3-3.5 weeks was enough for me.
Anyway, It's going to be a long recovery for me. Wanted to post this here because lying in the hospital I was able to log into rerolled and get some quality reading in between passing out from the meds. You guys are an awesome community.