Your bed can do more for you than just help you get some quality rest. For Serena Stephens, her bed actually saved her life. She recently sat down with Sleepopolis’s Nichole Mondshein to tell her story. Serena has had type one diabetes her whole life, and as it turns out, her focus on sleep health and sleep wellness saved her life during a diabetic coma back in 2018.
Growing up in inner-city Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Serena was super active; swimming in middle school, high school and even college. However, around 1986, Serena got seriously ill, and went into ketoacidosis, but didn’t know it at the time. During her hospitalization, she was diagnosed with type one diabetes, and while she was taught how to use her insulin, she didn’t really use it very often. Serena notes that she didn’t grow up in an environment where there was health knowledge accessible to her, saying “at that time, and in that decade, and in our financial situation, we just didn’t have the access to what I have access to now.”
In 2009 Serena was hospitalized with ketoacidosis once again, and this time it was accompanied with rapid weight loss, losing 20 pounds in less than three weeks. Serena was again diagnosed with Type One Diabetes, which at this stage of her life had been uncontrolled for about 20 years. After this, she became depressed, and her doctors were urging her to act and take control of her illness.
Serena began doing manual injections of insulin, since she could not afford a pump, and was not pricking her finger to test her blood sugar regularly. However, Serena credits her introduction to Sleep health with not only changing her approach to her diabetes, but saving her life.
How Did Sleep Health Change Serena’s Life?
Serena was first exposed to sleep health in 2016, and this exposure prompted Serena to start questioning her health more broadly.
To Serena, her mattress (Serena bought a Tempur-pedic mattress, and you can read our review here) and adjustable base are the most important when it comes to sleep health and sleep wellness. Serena notes that having her bed in an elevated position helps her stay in one place all night long.
In 2018, right before Christmas, Serena was taking her insulin injections as she usually would. She did one with her evening meal, and another right before she went to bed. Over the night, Serena ended up falling into a diabetic coma, which happens after one’s insulin drops and continues to drop. Since Serena didn’t have an insulin meter, she wasn’t alerted to the drop in her insulin.
By the time Serena’s mother found her, she didn’t have a pulse. Serena recalls that she could hear her name being called, and seeing her own body in her bed. Ultimately, Serena woke up while she was being resuscitated.
While she was being treated at the hospital, Serena discovered that she wasn’t breathing for seven minutes, and that the brain typically experiences death after being without oxygen after five minutes. Serena’s doctors told Serena that they believe that, since Serena was sleeping in an elevated position thanks to her adjustable base, the blood flow to her brain and heart was maintained and her brain and heart were preserved.
How Did Serena’s Life Change After Her Adjustable Base Saved Her Life?
When asked by Nichole how that day changed Serena’s life, Serena remarked that her sense of entitlement to another day went away, and she really remembers not being able to make herself wake up or breathe. Serena also now has felt a big calling to a ministry of health, where she can educate those who might not have access to information in her community about sleep health and sleep wellness.
Serena also noted that she has seen a drastic change in her diabetes maintenance after focusing on sleep health. Since sleep and recovery have become more important to her, she lowered her A1C from 17 to just 6.7 and her stage three kidney disease, which she was diagnosed with in 2020, has remained constant since her diagnosis.
As Serena steps into the next chapter of her life, she wants to be sure that she makes a difference, and to have more conversations about sleep health and sleep wellness.
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