Making a Sick-Day Plan

Prepare a plan for sick days in advance. Work with your doctor, or a diabetes educator. The plan will include when to call your doctor, how often to measure blood glucose and urine ketones, what medications to take, and how to eat.

Also, attach to your plan a list of phone numbers for your doctor, diabetes educator, and dietitian. Make sure you also know how to reach them at night and on weekends and holidays. Then when illness strikes, you will be ready.

When to call your doctor

You do not need to call your doctor every time you have a sniffle. But you will probably want to call if certain things happen.

For example:

• you’ve been sick or have had a fever for a couple of days and aren’t getting better
• you’ve been vomiting or having diarrhea for more than 6 hours
• you have moderate to large amounts of ketones in your urine
• your glucose levels are higher than 240 even though you’ve taken the extra insulin your sick-day plan calls for
• you take pills for your diabetes and your blood glucose level climbs to more than 240 before meals and stays there for more than 24 hours
• you have symptoms that might signal ketoacidosis or dehydration or some other serious condition (for example, your chest hurts, you are having trouble breathing, your breath smells fruity, or your lips or tongue are dry and cracked)
• you aren’t certain what to do to take care of yourself

Be ready to tell what medications you’ve taken and how much, how long you’ve been sick, whether you can eat and keep food down, whether you’ve lost weight, and what your temperature, blood glucose level, and urine ketone level are. To be prepared, keep written records of all these things as soon as you become sick.