Minny9
Newbie
- Messages
- 3
Hi All -- I will get to the two of my most frightening tales of severe hypoglycemic episodes shortly in this post, but first a little background...
I joined the community here a couple of days ago and have been overwhelmed (in a good way) by the volume of posts and helpful contributions. I am 53 and was diagnosed as Type 1 in February, 1991, at the age of 23. At the time, I was less than a year removed from completing my university journalism degree in Toronto, Canada (I now live near Vancouver). I once had every intention of becoming a freelance magazine writer, but my diabetes effectively ended all that before I had even started. Essentially, the prospect of working without a consistent income and with no company health benefits to help pay for all my diabetes supplies suddenly didn't appeal to me. I ultimately forged a career in distribution and logistics, having worked 21 years in the industry. At least my emails are always grammatically correct -- haha! My job(s) require me to sit a desk in front of a computer screen, and that serves me just fine, particularly from a Type 1's perspective. Routine is a good thing.
Anyway, as I outlined in my separate introductory post, I am a widower, having lost my wife to cancer in December, 2016, when we were both 49. We were together 23 years (married 19), but had no children -- for several reasons. One of those, rather prophetically, was her desperate fear of leaving her child(ren) without a mother, as she had lost her own mother to cancer before we met when she was 25 and her sister just 22. But truth be told, by the time we both hit 40, neither of us felt as if our lives were unfulfilled not having kids. So, having no children, I now live alone -- and that simultaneously breaks my heart and scares the hell out of me. Let me explain...
As it relates to my diabetes, I probably never fully appreciated how incredible she was helping me whenever I slid towards the oblivion that is "being low". My insulin and testing regiment hasn't changed much over the course of the 30 years I've lived with diabetes. I'm not a "brittle" diabetic and rarely fluctuate wildly high to low, or low to high -- at least not without good reason. My crashes are often times imperceptible to me at first, and when in the company of others, it is often they who will notice before I do. And my late wife was an expert at this. I called her my "safety net". But she wasn't with me all the time, and now she's not with me at all. She's no longer the one to hand me a glass of juice and stand over me until I drink it. Or to shake me and call my name as I drift into sleep as my glucose levels fall. Or to call the ambulance after having a nocturnal episode where she was unable to wake me before having a seizure. And that remains my greatest fear as I continue to move forward without her.
So what were my scariest "lows"? (NOTE: for the record, I don't often have severe lows, and these are extremely exceptional events from 3 decades as a Type 1).
1. The time I was highway driving with my wife and sister, and my wife, in a moment of panic, brilliantly thought to begin yelling at me that she was about to throw up. Somehow I had enough awareness to pull over, as I certainly did not want her to get sick in our new car -- and she knew that would get my attention. What I remember most about this was randomly pushing down, again and again, on both the gas and brake pedals after I had stopped, not able to fully understand (being so low) that the car was now parked. My sister has since told me she was terrified when their calls to stop the car weren't being heeded, and also remarked how quick my wife was to think of saying something so brilliant to finally get my attention before something potentially tragic happened.
Honestly, it's amazing how much the act of driving a car is instinctive and can be done without our full concentration. Having said that, this "overconfidence" has led to trouble on a few occasions where I am left wondering after a "low" what roads I had just taken to get where I had just gotten to.
2. The night I fell into an unplanned deep sleep on my sofa after not first checking my glucose. This one happened nearly 3 years after my wife had died. I woke up (or came to) on the floor next to the sofa and noticed there was vomit on the carpet. As well, I had soiled my self and the cushions were badly stained. I was in shock, but was able to clean myself and do a blood test. My reading was over 14 mmol/L, which didn't make sense to me. How could I be so high when I obviously had seized from being dangerously low? It was later explained to me that adrenaline likely brought me back. Regardless, I noticed my heart rate had quickened and I was becoming feverish. I wasn't well, and I was rapidly getting worse. The next day, I called a woman I knew and asked if she could take me to the hospital. There they found me to be extremely dehydrated, and a chest x-ray also found that I had developed aspiration pneumonia from ingesting some of my vomit into my lung. It took me almost 7 weeks to fully recover. There have been 2 other times I can recall when I've soiled myself after a nighttime reaction. The common thing I've noticed each time is that I had drank (too much?) beer before falling asleep. Could it really be that my tolerance for alcohol, as it relates to my diabetes, has changed this drastically?
Thanks for reading. I am in the process of getting my GP to authorize a continuous glucose monitor. I have, until recently, been reluctant to the idea of having some device affixed to me like a prosthetic. But living on my own now, I realize it is foolish not to embrace what could be a life-saving change to how I manage my diabetes.
Steve
I joined the community here a couple of days ago and have been overwhelmed (in a good way) by the volume of posts and helpful contributions. I am 53 and was diagnosed as Type 1 in February, 1991, at the age of 23. At the time, I was less than a year removed from completing my university journalism degree in Toronto, Canada (I now live near Vancouver). I once had every intention of becoming a freelance magazine writer, but my diabetes effectively ended all that before I had even started. Essentially, the prospect of working without a consistent income and with no company health benefits to help pay for all my diabetes supplies suddenly didn't appeal to me. I ultimately forged a career in distribution and logistics, having worked 21 years in the industry. At least my emails are always grammatically correct -- haha! My job(s) require me to sit a desk in front of a computer screen, and that serves me just fine, particularly from a Type 1's perspective. Routine is a good thing.
Anyway, as I outlined in my separate introductory post, I am a widower, having lost my wife to cancer in December, 2016, when we were both 49. We were together 23 years (married 19), but had no children -- for several reasons. One of those, rather prophetically, was her desperate fear of leaving her child(ren) without a mother, as she had lost her own mother to cancer before we met when she was 25 and her sister just 22. But truth be told, by the time we both hit 40, neither of us felt as if our lives were unfulfilled not having kids. So, having no children, I now live alone -- and that simultaneously breaks my heart and scares the hell out of me. Let me explain...
As it relates to my diabetes, I probably never fully appreciated how incredible she was helping me whenever I slid towards the oblivion that is "being low". My insulin and testing regiment hasn't changed much over the course of the 30 years I've lived with diabetes. I'm not a "brittle" diabetic and rarely fluctuate wildly high to low, or low to high -- at least not without good reason. My crashes are often times imperceptible to me at first, and when in the company of others, it is often they who will notice before I do. And my late wife was an expert at this. I called her my "safety net". But she wasn't with me all the time, and now she's not with me at all. She's no longer the one to hand me a glass of juice and stand over me until I drink it. Or to shake me and call my name as I drift into sleep as my glucose levels fall. Or to call the ambulance after having a nocturnal episode where she was unable to wake me before having a seizure. And that remains my greatest fear as I continue to move forward without her.
So what were my scariest "lows"? (NOTE: for the record, I don't often have severe lows, and these are extremely exceptional events from 3 decades as a Type 1).
1. The time I was highway driving with my wife and sister, and my wife, in a moment of panic, brilliantly thought to begin yelling at me that she was about to throw up. Somehow I had enough awareness to pull over, as I certainly did not want her to get sick in our new car -- and she knew that would get my attention. What I remember most about this was randomly pushing down, again and again, on both the gas and brake pedals after I had stopped, not able to fully understand (being so low) that the car was now parked. My sister has since told me she was terrified when their calls to stop the car weren't being heeded, and also remarked how quick my wife was to think of saying something so brilliant to finally get my attention before something potentially tragic happened.
Honestly, it's amazing how much the act of driving a car is instinctive and can be done without our full concentration. Having said that, this "overconfidence" has led to trouble on a few occasions where I am left wondering after a "low" what roads I had just taken to get where I had just gotten to.
2. The night I fell into an unplanned deep sleep on my sofa after not first checking my glucose. This one happened nearly 3 years after my wife had died. I woke up (or came to) on the floor next to the sofa and noticed there was vomit on the carpet. As well, I had soiled my self and the cushions were badly stained. I was in shock, but was able to clean myself and do a blood test. My reading was over 14 mmol/L, which didn't make sense to me. How could I be so high when I obviously had seized from being dangerously low? It was later explained to me that adrenaline likely brought me back. Regardless, I noticed my heart rate had quickened and I was becoming feverish. I wasn't well, and I was rapidly getting worse. The next day, I called a woman I knew and asked if she could take me to the hospital. There they found me to be extremely dehydrated, and a chest x-ray also found that I had developed aspiration pneumonia from ingesting some of my vomit into my lung. It took me almost 7 weeks to fully recover. There have been 2 other times I can recall when I've soiled myself after a nighttime reaction. The common thing I've noticed each time is that I had drank (too much?) beer before falling asleep. Could it really be that my tolerance for alcohol, as it relates to my diabetes, has changed this drastically?
Thanks for reading. I am in the process of getting my GP to authorize a continuous glucose monitor. I have, until recently, been reluctant to the idea of having some device affixed to me like a prosthetic. But living on my own now, I realize it is foolish not to embrace what could be a life-saving change to how I manage my diabetes.
Steve
