This part matters, because it explains how things were able to get as bad as they did.

January 3 – Urgent Care Wasn’t “Nothing,” But It Wasn’t Enough

I went to urgent care on January 3rd because of nausea and vomiting. That was the complaint. I wasn’t there for fatigue, weight loss, thirst, or anything metabolic. I just felt sick and couldn’t keep food down.

They did not check my blood glucose.
They did not do labs.

What they did do was prescribe Zofran for nausea.

And at the time, that felt reasonable.

I went home with the medication and genuinely believed that if I could just stop vomiting, everything else would settle down.

January 3–5 – 48 Hours of Trying to Outlast It

The Zofran helped just enough to keep me from constant vomiting — but not enough to actually reverse anything.

For the next two days, life narrowed down to:

• Hugging the toilet
• Sipping water constantly
• Trying to keep anything down
• Lying still to avoid triggering nausea

I wasn’t eating.
I was barely functioning.

What stands out in hindsight is how physically wrong everything felt:

• Extreme fatigue
• Constant thirst
• Dry mouth
• Rapid breathing
• A sense of internal panic without anxiety

And there was one thing I did have objective data for.

The Heart Rate I Ignored (But My Watch Didn’t)

According to my Apple Watch, my heart rate stayed consistently above 150 bpm for at least a full day during this period.

Not during exercise.
Not during anxiety.
Just… all the time.

At the time, I chalked it up to:

• Dehydration
• Being sick
• Stress on the body

Which wasn’t wrong — but it was dangerously incomplete.

That sustained tachycardia was my body trying to compensate for severe dehydration, acidosis, and metabolic collapse.

January 6 – When Symptom Management Failed

By January 6th, it was clear this wasn’t something I could ride out.

The nausea wasn’t improving. The weakness was worse. Standing up felt like effort. Breathing felt fast and deep without me consciously doing it.

This time, when I went in, it wasn’t just for nausea anymore.

And this time, they checked my blood sugar.

That number — in the high 400s — instantly changed everything.

Within hours, I went from:

• Treating symptoms at home
  to
• Being diagnosed with diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA)
• Started on insulin and IV fluids
• Developing unstable heart rhythms
• Requiring ICU-level care directly from the emergency department

The urgent care visit didn’t cause this.

But the absence of basic metabolic screening meant I lost two days — days where my body was quietly running out of ways to compensate.

What This Gap Taught Me

This wasn’t negligence. It was a system doing exactly what it’s designed to do: treat the complaint in front of it.

But DKA doesn’t announce itself loudly at first.
It disguises itself as flu-like nausea, dehydration, and fatigue — until it doesn’t.

Those 48 hours were the runway.

January 6th was takeoff.

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Next: Day 2 – The Emergency Department, DKA, and the moment things accelerated beyond anything I expected.