Diabetes medication can be oral or indictable depending on the severity of the condition. If you pancreas is still functioning at some level, oral meds usually suffice. If it has shut down you will need to go on insulin (indictable usually although there is some progress in making it into a spray that you inhale).
Your pancreas secretes insulin, which helps you to metabolize sugar, if your natural insulin production goes down it results in an increasing blood sugar level, which, in the extreme, can cause you to blackout. Having said that the effect of either form of medication is to stabilize your blood sugar levels within a specific (healthy) range by either stimulating your pancreas to produce more insulin (oral meds) or by replacing your natural insulin completely (indictable insulin).
Your blood sugar varies from day to day depending on diet, exercise, stress levels, and most importantly insulin level, this requires a diabetic to test his/her blood with a monitor (invasive procedure, which requires you to draw blood), usually twice daily. This provides you with information used to adjust the next dose so as to be neither over or under medicated. The process is rather like a duck flying backward in that you don't know where you're going, only where you've been. The process is not perfect and can result in applying the wrong dosage, which can be dangerous.
This is the important part:
If you allow your blood sugar to get either too high (hyperglycemic) or too low (hypoglycemic) the resulting effect is almost the same, drowsy, groggy, can’t mentally focus, vision problems, and if it's bad enough unconsciousness followed by comma.
Yes, the train engineer could have blacked out either because he overdosed, or because he didn't take his meds at all!
Regards,
GtG
Regards,
GtG