Thank you so much for this explanation of DKA and how it's lethal. My wife was an 83-year-old insulin-controlled (not controlled well) diabetic. She broke her hip, spent 6 months bedridden in long-term care, developed MRSA that got into her ankle, and she went into palliative hospice care. I found out about 4 days after the fact that they had stopped her insulin, which made some sense. But they also apparently stopped checking her glucose and when I saw her she was doing Kussmaul breathing, which apparently the nursing staff at the care home did not recognize. (I recognized it because she had gone into DKA once before and her breathing was now identical to then.) I tried to get the hospice people to go to the nursing home to check on her but the care home's evening nurse told them she had given her morphine which eased her breathing. I have been unable to find any information that morphine eases Kussmaul breathing, but I accepted that at the time. She died about 13 hours later. 😪
Welcome back to the quick pathophysiology series! What other diseases would you like to see reviewed?
Thank you so much for this explanation of DKA and how it's lethal. My wife was an 83-year-old insulin-controlled (not controlled well) diabetic. She broke her hip, spent 6 months bedridden in long-term care, developed MRSA that got into her ankle, and she went into palliative hospice care. I found out about 4 days after the fact that they had stopped her insulin, which made some sense. But they also apparently stopped checking her glucose and when I saw her she was doing Kussmaul breathing, which apparently the nursing staff at the care home did not recognize. (I recognized it because she had gone into DKA once before and her breathing was now identical to then.) I tried to get the hospice people to go to the nursing home to check on her but the care home's evening nurse told them she had given her morphine which eased her breathing. I have been unable to find any information that morphine eases Kussmaul breathing, but I accepted that at the time. She died about 13 hours later. 😪