At the TCOYD conference I attended this past weekend, the question of low treatment came up during a panel. Specifically, “What is your favorite thing to treat a low blood sugar with? Not what you should eat to treat, but what you want to eat.” My opinion is unpopular, but I’d sell my soul for candy corn. It’s soft and…
Every few years, my symptoms of low blood sugars morph a bit. When I was first diagnosed, numb lips and quick tears were my reflex symptom. The emotional uptick would hit first, and I knew things were going south quickly once my mouth and tongue would go numb. This caused a lot of slurred speech during hypoglycemic events, an immediate…
I opened my eyes slowly, taking a second at least to convince my lids to lift. Oh, home. I’m in my own bed. Moved my hand towards the cellphone on my bedside table, in pursuit of my continuous glucose monitor graph. My hand moved in slow motion, a trace of its movement in the air behind it. 53 mg/dL. “Not…
Last night looked like this: And today I feel like this: Which translates into a low blood sugar that Basal IQ couldn’t fully pull me out of, most likely the result of … I have no idea because I didn’t exercise more than normal, didn’t eat anything that required a shit ton of insulin, wasn’t feeling extra stressed, wasn’t possessed…
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It’s not always reasonable things of juice or precisely stacked glucose tabs; if you’re low, you’ll eat whatever it takes. Like a granola bar you’ve found at the bottom of your purse and is smashed into an almost unrecognizable pulp. Or the Skittles that somehow ended up in your car and rolled around loose on the floorboards. Yeah, you’d pick them…
I love going out on the town for the night And having a meal by a soft candlelight (Because I know, at a restaurant, meals are yummy; For the food isn’t prepped, touched, or cooked by me.) But to dine with type 1 can be quite complex, Because restaurant food has a whole set of specs That require some SWAG’ing;…
BEEP BEEP BEEP!! Insistent noise, drowned out only slightly by the sound of two toddlers dunking basketballs on each other in the living room. “Do you have any juice?” My friend reaches into her fridge and pulls out a 1/4 full carton of lemonade. “Would this work?” She and I know one another, but we’re fledgling friends. Still in that…
The alarm went off. I couldn’t shake the sleep from my body. This morning, I swept the empty carcasses of two juice boxes off the bedside table, a reminder of what must have happened last night. I looked at my CGM graph and saw a line with the shape of a teaspoon etched into it around 2.30 am, where I…
Seven Versions of One Low Blood Sugar
Diabetes Advocacy, Diabetes and Emotions, Diabetes Community, Diabetes Online Community, Psychosocial Support, Real Life Diabetes, RelationshipsSCENARIO: A blood sugar of 53 mg/dL caused me to wake up at 2 am, drink a juice box, and stay awake until 2.30 am waiting for my blood sugar to rise. DESCRIBING TO MY FRIEND: “Yeah, sometimes diabetes is a thing at night. I had a low last night that woke me up around 2 am, but that’s why…
I read a post on Facebook this morning about a mom who spent a few hours by her kid’s bedside, monitoring a low blood sugar and keeping the snacks at the ready. I thought about my own mom, who carried the bulk of the diabetes burden so that I didn’t have to, and how life felt normal because she made…
Even the best laid plans can go awry when hypos creep in before the meal is served. Glucose tabs … the most unappealing appetizer. You might also like: The Art of the Pre-Bolus. Endless Lows. Dealing with Overnight Low Blood Sugars. Mommy’s Little Pack Mule.
BEEP BEEP BEEP 2 am Low alarm. Where am I? Hotel. Hotel room in Kansas City. Damp. Damp with sweat. My long sleeve shirt stuck to the inside of my elbows, ironed by panic. BEEP BEEP BEEP Kansas City. That’s where I am. Why am I beeping? 51 mg/dL. That red circle with the down arrow attached to it. Asking…
“Do you mind ringing out this orange juice first?” I asked the lady who was working the cash register. “No problem,” and she went bip with the scanner against the bottle’s bar code while my Dexcom screamed BEEP BEEP BEEP! from my phone. I opened the bottle and downed the majority of it in one, open-throated gulp. My son, strapped into…
The low alarm goes off and my arm snakes out from underneath the covers in slow motion, a serpent in search of snacks. The jar of glucose tabs sits on my bedside table, most often collecting dust but on this night, it’s an essential item. I flip open the lid and count out four tabs, piling them on the side…
We don’t drink juice “for fun” in our house; it’s only for low blood sugars, considered almost as medicinal as the insulin hiding out in the butter compartment of our fridge. So when I came home with these juice boxes unintentionally, I was pissed. 35% less sugar? That’s exactly what I don’t want! Useless juice. I’m bringing it back and swapping it…