Question from Shreveport, Louisiana, USA:

Almost three weeks ago, my father was taken off life-support. He had been throwing up, and had diarrhea for about 24 hours, but didn’t complain of anything else. He never indicated to me that he thought anything was wrong. I was awakened in the middle of the night by his cries for help. I found him sitting on the floor, very pale, and it sounded like he was having difficulty talking. He asked for water. I brought it to him, then called 911. Shortly after I called for help, he asked me to help him again. I didn’t know what I could do for him at that point and he was too heavy to pick up so I laid him down, and then he stopped responding to me, but was still breathing. He regained consciousness when the paramedics got there, but as they were rolling him out, he went into cardiac arrest and was down for 20 minutes, which, in the long run, caused a lack of oxygen to his brain and caused him to be brain dead. His blood sugar was over 1400 mg/dl [77.7 mmol/L] when they first took it, and they said something about his toxicity level being higher than that doctor had ever seen. And, I remember the term DKA being used a couple of times.

There is an autopsy being done, and I know there was question from a member of my family as to if he could have been poisioned and that’s what caused his blood sugar to get so high, and the toxicity level to be so elevated. His doctors seem to think that he just died from complications with diabetes. Is what happened to him common, especially with the virus-like symptoms? At one point I know he was throwing up blood, but not sure if he was aware of it or not.