The only time I woke surrounded by people was in the time of ancient insulins whose hypos had much more severe symptoms.
I was visiting my parents with my hubby and misjudged food/exercise (small helping of shepherds pie and then ran round from one beach to the next for the fun of it and forgot to eat more before I went to bed. Duh!) So when I started sweating in the night, my hubby got up to go get the honey pot from the kitchen, which was how we dealt with it in those days because I never woke up. On the way, he knocked on Mum and Dad's door, poked his head round and said, 'Don't worry if you hear me rattling around, I'm just getting something because Margi's hypo.' Bad choice! :shock:
Mum shot out of bed and began panicking. She had not dealt with my diabetes ever, I'd gone off and been independent almost as soon as I was diagnosed at 17, so Mum had no idea how we did things after about seven years of marriage. So, instead of letting hubby get the honey and deal with things, she got on the phone to the doctor.
I came round with the bed surrounded by people. The whole family were visiting to see the start of the Tall Ships race at Falmouth, so there was Mum, my sister, Dad, a few others I can't remember and a really dishy young German sailor I had seen in town that day!!
Or so I thought.
The main light was on and they all seemed to be shouting. I remember trying to say, 'Leave me alone,' but I don't think it came out until the umpteenth try when I almost screamed it. I very clearly remember someone, probably Mum, say, 'She doesn't know what she's saying.' :shock: Oh yeah? You all know what it's like coming out of a bad one. You need complete quiet, no light, no input etc until your brain starts to be able to process stuff again. My hubby knew that, but he was never able to take control of other people, and sort of got pushed aside. Of course, I'd had the honey by then: hubby used to rub it on my lips and I'd lick it off
The dishy young sailor disappointed me by turning out to be the doctor who had been called. He agreed to let the ambulance people, who had also been called, take me to hospital just to shut my Mum up. Hubby and I both knew it was pointless, but what can you do? He'd already rubbed enough honey on my lips to bring me round, and I only needed to be left alone to sleep for a while then I'd have woken up and eaten something more and been fine, but no... Mum was still panicking so off I went.
In the morning, I was the one panicking. I was blowed if I was missing the start of the race, so I got up, got dressed and said I was going home. Staff said, 'No you're not. We need to find out why you're having all these unexplained hypos.' Well, that was a puzzle. 'What unexplained hypos?' I asked. 'There was nothing unexplained about last night's, it was just a bit of careless miscalculation.' I kept right on getting dressed. I explained that I was on holiday, I no longer lived in the area etc. and that the traffic from Truro to Falmouth was going to be horrendous with the race about to start, and we needed to be there, get out on the water in Dad's boat and see it from the sea. I wasn't going to be late for that for anything.
It turned out that my notes had been muddled with someone else's! When someone thought to ask if my name was the same as the one on the notes they had, they realised their mistake. I still had to sign a release form, but Dad, bless him, had come up to take me home, all on the back roads so we avoided the traffic jams and we were in time to see the ships sail.
Happy endings.
Before I left home permanently to get married, I had a couple of 'unconscious mobile' episodes. The first one I was out for about three hours and came round rolling around on the lawn with Mum presenting me with a plate of something and mashed potato. She never did learn that sugar should come first... well, she did after the one in the night. You'd never think she was from a family of doctors. Mind, I guess most of them were practicing before insulin was even discovered. This all happened in the good old days of glass syringes too.
