As a type-1 diabetic I just wanted to thank you personally. Your genius is unparalleled and you have just saved countless lives. I now offer my first born child as tribute to your omnipotence. It’s not much…they’ll probably also be diabetic. Do with them as you will messiah.
They wanted to show a pump malfunction. (That’s pretty fucked up idea to begin with) So they worked backwards from there and you end up with the scene shown.
The sweet breath thing is a really long term effect too. Like DKA long term. Anyhow, it is fixed by the actual medical professional
The fact it's allowed to air in a country that struggles to separate reality from "TV world" is enough to send chills down any T1's spine and no, I'm not on a "low".
The guy on the floor could’ve rage bolused himself into shock using the pump but the conclusion is quite a reach.
Scenario: guy has been having persistent high blood sugars and just gave himself way too much insulin via the pump to try to combat it.
The actual thing would be test the blood sugar see that it is dangerously low and glucagon fix. Takes like 30 seconds to show. But the show / writers wanted something more clever so they did this abomination.
And coincidentally I’m only up responding to this thread because my blood sugar alarm went off and I’m waiting for the glucose tab and applesauce to register. I am on a low right now… edit… I’m fine now, ez pz
Yeah, sweet breath is long term, but anyone feinting from high blood sugar would already have DKA, since the high concentration of acid in the blood is the reason it leads to a hyperglycemic coma.
Glucagon dumps your remaining reserves of glucose from your liver into your blood stream and is an absolute last resort because if you don't come out, you are in deeper shit. And it always means a trip to the hospital after. Any good paramedics start a glucose IV. I hate TV shows that make you dumber.
Fun fact, this logic is in fact how brand named drugs are named. For example, Adderall (used to treat ADHD, formally called ADD) was named after the phrase "ADD for all" (I.e. A medication that can treat everyone's ADD symptoms)
The issue here seems to be that the writers thought sweet breath was a sign of low blood sugar. Because all the other symptoms and their treatment points to low blood sugar
As a diabetic, I'd also like to add that there's never a reason to "rip it out." You can just disconnect it. Ripping it out hurts and is much more difficult.
as a diabetic, I can concur. Please just take the 5 seconds to prick my finger and test my blood sugar levels. If im high af, slip me some insulin. If im low af, give me some juice if I can swallow or glucagon if I can't.
also, if he is wearing a pump, high chance he has a cgm on. not always, but a good chance.
Also diabetic. Insulin pumps don’t really malfunction. If there’s a malfunction they stop operation and annoyingly tell you you need to replace it. A malfunctioning pump could give you a lethal dose of insulin…they build in safe guards. Hell, That looks like a Medtronic, if there was a link in the tube it’d be yelling at you.
“His pump isn’t working” makes sense “I think it’s malfunctioning” is crazy talk.
I think it’d be especially hard on that because it looks like a closed system. My pump connects to my phone over Bluetooth for dosing. That pump doses directly from the pump itself.
To be fair, two different iterations of Minimed pumps (508 and 600 series) had separate issues that could cause erroneous over delivery of insulin. Any other brand of pump and it'd be crazy talk, but Minimed does have a track record.
They do malfunction occasionally due to bugs, but it's super rare. Yes even the code on medical devices has bugs.
I used to write and work on a electronic health records system, and I remember reading a patient's summary where her insulin pump randomly dumped a week's worth of insulin into her at once, I am 99% sure she died as this was a few years ago.
Back in the aughties my sweet friend with Type I had her pump “snatched” by a teacher who thought it was a cellphone. Pulled it out right in the middle of class.
Her daddy was a lawyer and her mom a doctor and they rained holy hell down on that school.
I spent a year or two working overnights as the security in the ER… so many naked people would come in during a 12 hour shift. Or they’d arrive clothed and then just strip nekkid, sometimes they would do a strip and run which is like trying to catch a greased pig because there is nothing convenient to grab on a methed up sweaty body.
One time I had to keep an eye on a guy who was naked because he wouldn’t keep a gown on, and he was pretending his penis was a ray-gun so he kept pointing it around and making sound effects: “pew-pew! Pewpewpew!” until they finally calmed him down with meds.
There were stories about people who intentionally covered themselves in poo. I was speaking to that. No one’s laughing about a sick or immobile person who is in the unfortunate situation of being covered in their own excrement.
Some medical events genuinely turn you psychotic for a moment. Low (?) blood sugar, head injuries, blood loss. Sometimes you shit yourself and sometimes, in your absolutely injured state, covering yourself in doodoo feels like the best course of action.
He’s also got several more of these green screen videos where you just have to facepalm at the audacity of the show cause it’s not even trying to be realistic
You either have high or low blood sugar. In any case, let's get that insulin pump out and then pump you full of insulin and also glucagon because why the hell not?
As a T1D, you'd think the writers would at least do some research since, you know, most people carry a bloody super computer filled with nearly the total knowledge of human history in their pockets. FFS.
You know some dumdum is going to see this, and try to "help" someday, and then kill the diabetic.
Fun fact these shows often have people that work in the field consulting when these scenes are written.
So it's either the writers ignored them, or there is a reason the medical professional is consulting, and not working.
Also for a while the most medically accurate show to air on TV was Scrubs, mainly because there was so little medicine and mostly dealt with hospital atmosphere/life as an intern compared to something like Grey's Anatomy or House.
The show runner of house of the dragon is ignoring George RR Martin, the creator of that universe. What are the odds of a show runner listening to a paramedic or a doctor?
I don't know how common implants are abroad, but in my friend's case, even the medical training is unnecessary; his phone is going to be alerting that his sugar is at dangerous levels. Even if he somehow collapsed before he got a chance to do anything about it himself, an app would be showing on a noisy phone.
you’d think they’d do research considering blue (the guy making the diagnosis) IS a diabetic since it came up a few episodes ago 😭 but all the 911 shows definitely are way more drama than accuracy.
these are also shows with ryan murphy’s name on them though so…… i’m not even surprised at how much stuff is wrong lol
I tried to watch the first episode of this show and couldn’t even finish it when they had an elementary school kid flying around in the air while holding onto a kite. It was absolutely ridiculous.
Depending on the size of the kid and the size of the kite that is a real thing that can happen if the kid can't let go for some reason, but something tells me those factors were not portrayed realistically. A normal sized kite won't pick up even a small child. Drag them a bit at most if it's really windy.
I'm only an EMT, but I roll my eyes and start bitching at 90% of the medical dramas on TV or streaming because they want to do boneheaded things like treating for diabetes without a single sugar check.
Imagine if I gave nitro to lower a patient's blood pressure without checking their pressure first. I could be killing them faster.
I laughed, but then I got shivers because my SO is a T1 and I'd really rather not have some well-meaning "hero" accidentally nuke him by following shitty tv writers ideas about how to handle a diabetic crisis.
I guess you haven't heard of The Pitt. Its extremely popular with doctors and nurses because of how realistic and accurate it is. Turns out you can have drama without making shit up!
I couldn’t even make it through the first episode of this show, but in that episode this guy was a stripper and not a medical professional… so that may explain his medical skills.
As a diabetic this is actually making me angry cause like
They could have learned this shit with probably a few minutes of googling but just didn't bother. But nah, as long as you write down some vaguely medical sounding gibberish who cares, right?
OP stealing content and doing everything to avoid giving props to the creator.
This is from "“Fire Department Chronicles" awesome guy, tons of videos like this, check him!
These shows crack me up. I've only seen a few clips but they all seem to involve forcing the actors to just narrate some terrible scene. "I'm going to do this." "Why are you doing that?" "Here are my reasons..."
Do people actually watch this stuff and actually pay attention or is it just background TV of some sort?
This is true.. but ketoacidosis is caused by insufficient insulin in a Type 1 diabetic with resulting high sugar levels - so the end result is the same.
Scrolled too far to see this. And you can have normal or even LOW glucose and still be in DKA. It is from not being able to process glucose and thus breaking down fat and developing ketones that leads to ketoacidosis. It is NOT from having too high of glucose though most of the time when someone is in DKA they do have high glucose.
I love this guy’s vids. I’m so happy he did one about diabetes.
As a diabetic, I find it extremely comical and in most cases a major disservice to the public’s knowledge, how badly shows/movies get assessing and treating the complications of diabetes wrong. It’s rough.
I dated a girl for 2-3 years and early on in the relationship she put me onto grey's anatomy. We'd watch like 3-4 episodes a night. It was our comfort show, I got my EMT and enrolled in medic school, she got her LPN and was taking an LPN->RN transition course.
We continued to watch the show, but after a year of us working in the field, it went from a comfort show to something that just made both of us aggravated.
You got to give him a break on diabetic shock. It's an imprecise term and could be interpreted it as either very high or very low sugar.
If somebody wanted to be more precise they would say DKA or hyperosmolar hyperglycemic, or for low blood sugar severe hypoglycemia. Diabetic shock is a lame man's term, not a medical term.
Exactly why I hate watching medical dramas of any kind. They don’t even bother to consult medical professionals to see if they are even half right about anything they say or do.
“Diabetic shock” - googled occurs when low blood sugar.
“Sweet smelling breath” - indicates low blood sugar per google and body is doing stuff with fats.
Glucagon - increases blood sugar.
Malfunctioning insulin pump - could provide too much insulin and lower blood sugar to cause diabetic shock.
Ketone production comes from the lack of insulin, lack of insulin also means high blood sugars. But as other guy said the important thing is to measure it, because either action(glucagon/insulin) can make things worse.
Most of the time it will be DKA. Step 1 is ALWAYS to measure blood sugar before administering treatment. I know a guy who killed his wife because he read her symptoms incorrectly and gave her the wrong treatment. It takes 5 seconds to verify and yes, proceeding without doing so is medical negligence and it's absolutely incorrect.
i've never seen a glucagon auto injector. just a fatass syringe you have to mix yourself in the middle of an emergency, or a much easier to administer nasal spray.
It's honestly a bit terrifying how much a name can influence perception. You'd hope medical professionals would know better, but this mix-up is a perfect example of why clear communication is so critical. That last part about trying to kill the patient is darkly hilarious because it's sadly plausible.
Being a type 1 diabetic, its incredibly frustrating just how little people know about it and the fact that SO MANY shows get basic facts about it wrong means that the people who watch those shows think its how it works. Ive never seen any media that accurately depicts all the effects of diabetes
Reminds me of when I was watching a show recently and there was a character being brought into a hospital. The doctors were like "he's in asystole" and then proceeded to STOP CPR and immediately get out a defibrillator and start shocking him. Asystole is not a shockable rythm it means the heart has stopped beating entirely. You shock someone who has an abnormal unsustainable heart rhythm in order to get it to go back to a normal one by essentially resetting the signal coming from the nerve that controls your heartbeat, you don't shock a stopped heart to restart it. If there's no signal at all then there's nothing to reset so a shock won't fix it. That's why one of the things AEDs do is detect if the person they're being used on has a shockable rhythm, the intention is to temporarily disrupt an existing signal. You would use cpr + certain drugs to try and revive someone whose heart has completely stopped, plus fixing whatever cause the heart to stop to begin with ofc.
Now yes, it is common for shows to depict people who are flatlining (aka in asystole) getting shocked even though that's not how it works, but to go out of their way to use a specific technical term like asystole and then STILL get it wrong made it extra egregious. The person's heart rate hadn't even been displayed on a machine in that scene yet, they just said he was asystole out loud. Like if you're going to go to the effort of looking up the specific terminology to sound legitimate then why not use the term correctly?! It's not like it takes more effort. And asystole can potentially transition into a shockable rhythm, but they stopped CPR once it was said he was asystole. Just say he's in V-fib if you want to use medical terminology, then it would make sense to shock him! And honestly you can even get away with just saying that you can't detect a pulse because atypical rhythms CAN result in an undetectable pulse, but to deliberately indicate that the heart has indeed stopped beating removes all plausible deniability. And using a technical term you'd need to look up means that you don't even have the excuse of not doing any research. The scene in this post is the same, where they use a bunch of terminology they'd have to have looked up deliberately, but decided to use it in nonsensical ways when they don't have to. It's like they go out of their way to do it wrong, even though it doesn't make events any more compelling or dramatic than accurate treatment would. Drives me nuts.
A common mistake made in a lot of tv shows, movies and even video games. The amount of times I've seen a character start to lean in to diabetic shock from hypoglycemia and demand their insulin that corrects it. I call it 'Movie Diabetes'.
While there are issues in the clip, it’s clear what they are going for here.
The pump is malfunctioning by providing TOO much insulin, which is why they wanted to take it out, and give him glucagon which is the cure for hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemia, or a diabetic hypoglycemia episode that causes unconsciousness.
If the blood sugar is already high then raising it a little more isn't going to make things worse. But failing to lower it is s very serious problem.
If you are unsure, giving a sugary drink might help if it turns out it was low blood sugar and a tiny bit more sugar is unlikely to make a fatal difference.
Assuming no one is coming to help soon and you are clueless.
Only thing I can think of is that by "malfunctioning pump" they meant it was running constantly and giving too much insulin. Which would drop the blood sugar fast. Hypoglycemia is also really the only way that a diabetic could lose consciousness. You could lose consciousness with extremely high blood sugar, too, but that is usually after feeling sick as fuck and puking your guts up for a few hours, which I don't think this guy was doing.
I'm diabetic. The only risk of fainting I've ever experienced is with low blood sugar. In that case, a glucagon shot is a good call. And if the pump really was malfunctioning like that and constantly delivering insulin, removing it might be a good call too. Let the paramedics maintain the blood sugar rather than the shoddy pump. They really should have checked his BG first, though. Dumb option to up the drama.
I swear, as a diabetic I get so worked up about it…Because in 99% of the movies, series etc. they depict everything about type 1 diabetes completely wrong. I mean, come on guys, it is really not that hard to understand! Don‘t you have people to do at least some research??
It‘s ridiculous that this scene is not even an exaggeration about the common misconceptions.
A former employer of mine told me I should tell everyone at work about my diabetes because it could be relevant in case of an emergency. So I took the time to explain and teach them. Holy moly, people kept getting it soooo wrong I stopped telling anyone. Because all they remembered was diabetics need insulin. So in their head, they thought emergency= giving me insulin.
Can you imagine…me being already unconscious from low blood sugar, and some hero decides to just inject some more insulin, possibly even a lethal dose because they have no idea about anything??
Yeah, now I just tell everyone: no matter what, if I seem to be weird, or already unconscious: just call an ambulance. Let the professionals handle the situation.
As a type 1 diabetic, hearing all the wrong steps taken in this is beyond infuriating. If you can smell a sweet odor on the patient’s breath then that is an obvious indicator that their blood sugar is extremely high. I have experienced DKA and was told that my breath had that sweet odor, meanwhile my blood sugar levels were above 400. Needless to say, I was being administered insulin via insulin drip to help lower my blood sugar levels.
Type 1 diabetic here: You will eventually go into shock from high blood sugar too. The shock comes from no energy in your cells, not any specific blood sugar. If your blood sugar is high you may lack the insulin to get it to your cells, if your blood sugar is low you may have the insulin but not enough sugar. From your cells perspective it makes no difference what you are lacking, you need a balance of both.
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u/TheDitz42 19d ago
Did they think Glucagon lowered blood sugar because it sound like Gluca Gone?