A Scary Moment

I had an interesting day yesterday. I woke up with a headache that felt surprisingly like a migraine I had one time. I was feeling like crap & took some headache medicine to try to keep it from getting any worse. About 2 hours after I took the medicine, the headache eased off. Thank God. But then severe heartburn set in right before my lunch. I am not sure why. I rarely, if ever, have heartburn. I did my best at lunch to eat a meal that was low in grease & other heartburn creating foods. It did okay, and that also eased off.

I had a chiropractor appointment that evening and left work a little early to get there in time. When I got there, I checked my blood sugar & was a little surprised to get a reading of 74. I turned my pump off and went on into the office. About 1/2 and hour later, when I got out of the appointment, my blood sugar was up to 86. I like numbers like that.

I went onto Wal-Mart to try to get an organizer for my closet. I didn't find the one I wanted, but I did find a book and a bag of peanut M & M's :D I went ahead and ate them and gave some insulin (not for the whole bag) because I knew I had an hour drive ahead of me and I didn't want my blood sugars to shoot through the roof before I got home.

Fast forward one hour: I got home and fixed myself dinner. A peanut butter & grape jelly sandwich on wheat bread. Yummm. When I checked my blood sugar it was 63!!!! YIKES! When did that happen? I ate first and waited about 35 minutes to bolus. I wanted to give my blood sugar time to come up. Two hours after my bolus my blood sugar was 53!!! What is going on?????? I don't have a clue. I don't know why this is happening. But I ate a zebra cake and didn't give any insulin at all. Yet another hour later my blood sugar is still in the 50s. I can't figure this out.

By this time I am laying on my couch trying my best not to fall asleep. I know it is because of the blood sugars, not because I am tired. My body on auto-pilot, I got a box of honey nut cheerios out of the cabinet and began to eat them straight from the box. All my thoughts are fuzzy. I can't make a coherent thought, I just know that I need to eat something. If I had been thinking coherently, I would have realized that I had juice boxes left over from teaching Sunday School sitting on my kitchen table. This would have taken care of the problem quickly.

One of my friends called me while I lay in my semi-coherent, cheerio eating state. She knew right away that something was wrong by the way I was talking. To say the least, I wasn't forming sentences that made much sense at all. She managed to get out of me what had been going on. That I had been fighting this demon low all evening and I was loosing at this point. She talked to me until I started making sense again & was able to check my blood sugar and it was at a safe 140.

Then she yelled at me. I love her for it. She told me that I should have called to let someone know that I was fighting the lows. "What would have happened if you had gone unconscious?" she asked. I didn't have any answers for her. I live alone. My family & friends call me frequently, but sometimes it may not be frequent enough to catch it if something was wrong.

I wanted to cry. Not because she yelled at me, but because I don't have any answers. And yes, it scares me. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't been able to eat enough to get the blood sugar up. I was scared. For me, for my friends and family. I have lived alone for years. I don't know that I have ever had an episode that really bothered me emotionally like the one from last night. I was disturbed.

Maybe I should have a roommate. Maybe it isn't smart for me to live alone. I don't even like to think that. I am so independent and I have lived alone for the past 6 years, give or take a few months that I lived with a friend and her husband between jobs.

The ugly monster of diabetes reared it's head last night. No control and no reason for it. I wasn't sick. In fact, when I checked at midnight (on the orders from my dear friend with instructions to call her and let her know what the blood sugars were) I was 110 and this morning, due to over treatment, I was 364.

It was just weird. A fluke. Another thing with this crazy disease that can't be explained and can't be made to go away. No matter how perfect I try to be, it seems like there's always the times like last night that make it almost not worth it.