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Greetings Everyone,
  What was to be a pleasant lunch with her sister and cousin, eventually
had my 70 year old mother hospitalised for low blood levels of sodium
and potassium. The clinical manifestations were an incredible learning
experience for us all. The day after eating a vegetarian patty with
bulgar wheat, my mother began to experience  her usual coeliac response:
two days of diarrhea and general malaise. When her diarrhea cleared up
by the third day, she thought the experience was behind her, and vowed
to stay away from bulgar wheat. That weekend, however, she developed
intense headache with neck and shoulder pain, and had no appetite at
all. On Monday she went to her GP, who diagnosed temporal arteritis and
prescribed prednisone and a blood test to confirm it. The next day, he
informed her that the blood test didn't match temporal arteritis, so he
diagnosed a pinched nerve, and sent her home with voltaren. The
following morning, I arrived at my mother's to find her on the floor,
quite confused. Back to the GP, who diagnosed a small stroke, unrelated
to the previous few days of headache. As she was becoming a bit more
lucid during his examination, he said to bring her back the next day. I
decided to stay over that night, and went to check on her before going
to bed. Again I found her on the floor, incontinent of urine, and
completely disorientated, unable even, to recognise me! This time I
phoned an ambulance, something I should have done that morning instead
of going to the GP. Everyone from the ambulance attendants, to the
emergency department staff, assumed that she'd had a stroke, or a
hematoma. While in emergency, she began to twitch or shudder every
thirty seconds or so. We were greatly relieved but puzzled when her CT
scan, and X-rays showed nothing abnormal. The answer was in her blood
results, which showed very, very low sodium and potassium levels. The
culprits? A diuretic she had been on for three months, and her accident
with bulgar wheat, which was the proverbial straw on the camel's back.

After a night on IV potassium/sodium fluids, my mother's confusion
disappeared, and over the next two weeks, with oral supplements, her
headaches cleared up, and her strength slowly returned.

  During her five day stay in hospital, we had several hiccups trying to
keep my mother gluten free, resulting in MORE diarreah, but that's
another story. Eventually the dieticians figured it out.

  We all know that diarreah can have devastating affects on anyone, but
in young children and the elderly, it can be much worse.

  My mother and I, and all the family for that matter, would be very
interested to read about anyone else's experiences with low potassium
and/ or sodium. Has anyone else had any of my mother's symtoms, and how
long did it take for you to recover?

  Thanks for 'listening'!

  Jenny
  Auckland, New Zealand