a lifetime of diabetes (pt. 2)
College was different. I honestly don’t remember testing my blood sugar level AT ALL during my first year of college. I was rebelling against diabetes. I still took insulin and ate food, but I relied on my feelings more than the tests, which is great for an 18 year old boy experiencing the first year of college. Yikes. I’m surprised I survived.
Luckily, I had a roommate who had a general understanding of diabetes. I did put a small fridge in our dorm and kept it stocked with Orange Juice and emergency candy. During that first year an ambulance was called on three occasions to revive me out of an extreme low blood sugar pass out. That’s a lot for a 9 month span of time.
Since living with diabetes for 31 years, I’ve had ambulance rescue SEVEN times total, so three in a year is kinda nuts — but again, I was not taking care of myself properly (but come on, what 18 year old DOES take proper care?)
Waking up from a low blood sugar pass out (is it a coma?) by paramedics is frightening. In my head everything makes sense to me whether I’m low or not. You can’t see the way the world really works when you have low blood sugar. After the fact you can sort of piece it together, but you don’t have your druthers. Your mind / body can’t function properly without the correct amount of sugar in your blood, so it improvises and distorts your reality.
I took a trip from Chicago to California and back with three friends (Randy, Brian and Matt) just for skateboarding. We had known each other for a few years. They knew I was diabetic, but I don’t remember explaining the ups and downs and how to help if I was out of it. Something that’s kind of necessary considering the amount of energy skateboarding takes… But I was 19 years old and indestructible.
Thank You Skateboarding
Half way through the trip we were in San Francisco (the mecca of skateboarding in the 90’s) and I was all about pushing forward and making the most of it. Early one evening I’m woken up in a hospital. Apparently I’m passed out in our shitty motel and the guys can’t wake me up, so they called an ambulance. The EMT’s arrived and couldn’t revive me right away so they took me to a local hospital where they spiked my sugar up like crazy.
I remember being SO CONFUSED waking up in a hospital bed with a few EMT’s and a Doctor staring at me.
This is not in my waking register. This is not where I should be.
What is happening?
I’m sure this is what it’s like when anyone wakes up in an ambulance or hospital (and this was not the worst example for me).
There’s no way to properly explain the feelings. Your brain believes everything that is happening is true, even though the lack of sugar in your blood makes everything weird. I imagine it’s like a bad acid trip (I’ve never done acid).
The CRAZIEST low blood sugar moment for me happened in 2006. I was working as an admin assistant in an architecture/interior design firm in Chicago. I got to the office pretty early, took insulin and was about to eat breakfast when the boss told me I needed to set the conference room up for an important last-minute meeting. Instead of eating, I went to work.
The meeting set ups were involved, so I had to clean and set up projectors as well as get the coffee and foods, etc. There was a lot of running back and forth printing out the proper look books for the meeting. I had forgotten I shot up insulin when I first got there, so by the time the meeting started my blood sugar was LOW. Probably in the 20’s.
I stepped outside to get something to eat and suddenly felt the world was moving backwards. I’m stepping out of the office the way I went into the office. I thought my life was ending. I’m going in fast motion reverse through my life — to the ending. (It made sense in my low BS state). I was dying. I knew it. I walked down the street yelling “This is it! The world is ending!” like a fucking lunatic, but my mind convinced me that I was dying, and that made the most sense. I surely looked like a madman to everyone I passed on the street.
In my head I wanted (needed) food and walked 2 blocks to Dunkin Donuts and ate a donut (isn’t that what dying people do?). In fifteen minutes everything kicked back into gear and I was not actually dying, it was just my low blood sugar mind making sense out of nonsense.
It scared the hell out of me. It has happened 4 times in my life since then. It’s a Low BS “tunnel vision”. It has something to do with my body’s survival mode kicking in. My non-scientific justification is this:
My body wants to survive, but it doesn’t have enough sugar in the blood to make sense of it, so it goes into a panic mode hoping to trigger survival instincts. My weird creative mind thinks I’m dying, so I better eat something (?) to prepare for death. I do, I survive and live another day.
I lived with this panic / tunnel vision up until I started wearing a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) But those didn’t come into play until 2009.
