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 up, dust them off, and eat them in a hot hurry if you’re stuck in traffic and dropping fast.
Or a marshmallow that you’ve left on your bedside table because all your normal low BG supplies were in the car and you were too lazy to go out and get them so instead you stashed a fluffy marshmallow by the lamp?
Or sugar packets from the coffee machine in the hotel room. If you’re feeling creative, you may stir a few into a cup of water and gulp it down. If feeling less creative, you’ll open them up, pour them directly into your mouth, and try to swallow the contents using spit.
But the grossest thing I’ve ever eaten to treat a low is this:
A box of gummy boogers. They came in Birdy’s Halloween haul a few years ago and we never ended up throwing them out. “Ha ha ha, boogers!” Back pantry shelf for at least a year. Until a low blood sugar sent me foraging for glucose sources and low and behold, the gummy boogers were it.
Regret. But when a hypo comes knocking, you answer with sugar packets and gummy boogers in hand. Whatever it takes.
Oh the joy of only having sugar packets in your purse and having to shove the content in your mouth in public 😀 As you said, whatever it takes!
Sugar packets have been my “go to” for years!! Always do the trick for just a few calories instead of downing candy or chocolate – and at no expense to me!
Kudos to actually admitting you ate boogers! : ) Squished fruit snacks that have been expired for 6 months? Yes, sure I will! It’s amazing what we’ll eat to recover from a low.
Thanks for your honesty…..
Half drunken juice boxes open for the last 3 weeks….
2 year old starburst ….. you have to soften then significantly before the raise your bg rather than breaking a tooth…
Glucose tablets that have turned to concrete in the glove compartment since first being placed there during the Bush administration….
But the caveman inside with the urgent drive to kill and eat will take anything……when a glucose is plummeting, bringing on a sense of impending doom…
I snickered at least a half a dozen times. You are so funny with your talented prose Kerri! Thanks!! And so true every word! That’s our world !
Way back when I had to eat snacks between meals and at bedtime (this was pre-blood glucose era), I remember my mom giving me a piece of bologna and a glass of milk. The fact that I still remember that 30+ years later tells you how gross that tasted. Here’s to two year old starburst!
Tame, Tame Tame
https://forum.tudiabetes.org/t/things-only-a-diabetic-knows/45303
Check out number 4