Scared by Low Blood Sugars
There’s not much that scares me. Low blood sugars scare me to death. I’m afraid that they’re going to kill me. There’s only maybe one other thing that scares me as much, and that’s DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis). I’ve been in DKA less than I’ve encountered the almost death by low blood sugars. Low blood sugars scare me. And they’re just plain annoying to top it off.
It’s really only been in the last couple of years that I’ve become severely scared by low blood sugars. Mostly, I just fear them at night when I’m asleep and they creep up on me and I don’t know it and next thing I do know I open my eyes and the room is all blurry and I can hear my dad saying “you’re ok kid, just relax” and I really have no clue what’s going on other than something bad happened. Low blood sugars scare me.
I can remember the first low that really just shook up my family, I don’t remember my reaction to it, but I remember bits and pieces of the ride to the hospital. My sister found me, sitting on my floor against the window seat in my bedroom. Just sitting there, staring into nothingness. She tried to talk to me and I wouldn’t respond. She got mom and dad, they couldn’t get me out of it. They checked my blood, it was in the 70s. (For those of you that don’t know, 70’s not all that low).
They apparently kept trying to put glucose gel into my mouth and I kept spitting it out, they tried to get me to drink juice and it dribbled down my face. They finally loaded me into the car to take me to the hospital. This is where I start to remember stuff. I was in space, traveling around a space station. There were portals that I kept going through, it was like a scene out of Star Wars where the space craft are jumping to light speed, the lights are a continuous line as you blaze past them. That’s what I remember of my trip to the hospital. I have no clue what they did there, I don’t remember coming home. Other than being in space, I wouldn’t even recall the account of this low blood sugar if I hadn’t been told.
I don’t believe I need to recount the number of times that I’ve had seizures, or how I passed out while driving. Have I mentioned that my blood sugar went low somewhere between the time the plane I was going to jump from left the ground and when I actually let go of the wing of it? Low blood sugars scare me.
Tonight I went low, and it wasn’t really all that low, 74. Normally, that wouldn’t have bothered me, I would’ve just drank juice, eaten shot bloks, downed glucose tabs, maybe thought about eating some glucose gel. No big deal really. Tonight was different, I had been high just a hour before that low, 420 to be exact. I also had very large ketones. I dosed 1.5 times my correction for the high and the ketones, drank some water, and went on my way.
An hour later I was sitting on the floor in my room, trying my hardest to focus on the laundry sitting in my duffel bag from my last trip that needed to be put away. It wasn’t happening. My body felt like lead. My brain couldn’t focus. My vision went into a dark tunnel. I knew I was low. I tried to remember what I had done with my machine because I had used it earlier when I checked for the high blood sugar. I finally found it, and checked my blood, 74. What’s up with that, I wasn’t all that low. I reach for the juice box on the shelf below my desk and I fight to get the wrapping off the straw. I finally get it off and start sipping the juice. It really couldn’t make it through the straw fast enough. In the back of my head, I’m reminded of the stomach ache I have most likely a byproduct of the prior high blood sugar and the ketones. I get up to go out to the living room where my parents are. I start to talk to them about work. Mom stops me to ask how low I was. (I’m thinking I was making little to no sense, heck, for all I know, my words could’ve been slurring. Sometimes when I’m low, I just keep talking and talking, tonight was one of those times.)
Fifteen or so minutes later I head back to my room to check my blood. 5…4…3…2…1…79. 79, that’s it, I just drank 20 someodd carbs of juice I should’ve been higher. By this time, my stomach was very upset, I was very sure I was going to vomit. I couldn’t afford to vomit, if I did, I was just going to need to drink more juice. At this moment though, I needed more juice anyways. I headed out to the kitchen, told mom what was up. She wasn’t too concerned because I was still above 70. I drank some cranberry juice, took some papaya for my aching belly (at my mom’s suggestion) and headed back to my room.
Here I sit an hour and a half after the last glass of juice, I’m only 84. I should be far higher than that. My brain is still fuzzy, I can feel the vomit in my throat, but I’m going to bed, I’m exhausted. I can almost guarantee I’ll wake up low in the morning. Hopefully I wake up at 6am to my alarm and check my blood to find out that I’m low instead of waking up to my dad’s voice because I woke him up in the middle of the night thanks to a seizure.
Low blood sugars scare me.
One Response to “Scared by Low Blood Sugars”
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April 24th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
79 an hour after a 420? Yikes. Sounds like panic time to me! Hope the rest of your night was uneventful.
I hit 39 yesterday when I hadn’t even had a bolus for about 5 hours. I didn’t even feel all that low. Freaked me right out.