The Highs and Lows

The highs and lows of being a diabetic are two fold for me. There are the blood sugar numbers, of course. There are also the emotions, some of which I’ve already touched on in my previous posts. This post is about the numbers.

The first time I ever felt a low blood sugar, I was still in the hospital for my initial diagnosis. I remember waking up in the emergency room feeling like there was cold blood running through my veins. I was panicked and shaking. It was an unfamiliar feeling and I didn’t like it. It was the middle of the night, and I thought maybe I was just feeling paranoid so I didn’t call the nurse and just tried to fall back asleep (hindsight – silly move). When the nurse came in to check on me, she asked how I was feeling. I told her. She checked my blood sugar and sure enough, it was 3. It was the first time I realized how my life was going to change.

I’ve had many, many lows over the years. They always feel the same: panic. cold sweats, an overwhelming urge to eat everything in sight. I’m one of the lucky ones because I can feel my lows. Some diabetics have something called hypoglycemic unawareness, which means they can’t feel when their blood sugar is low. I can always feel it, even in the middle of the night. I’ve woken up drenched in sweat, stumbled to the kitchen and rummaged through the kitchen cabinets to find something to bring my sugar up. I sleep really deep after a low too, like I’ve just run a marathon, and I wake up in the morning to the carnage of wrappers and empty juice boxes.

I’m also lucky in that I’ve never actually passed out from a low. Low blood sugar can be very dangerous. If not treated in a timely fashion, it can lead to a diabetic coma or even death. I’ve been as close to passing out as having tunnel vision, but at that time I lived at home with my parents still and was able to holler for a snack (MA! Meatloaf!). I used to have a lot of anxiety about sleeping. I was always worried that I could have a low I didn’t feel and would just not wake up. It has cost me a lot of sleep over the last two decades but my control is much better now, and I am finally able to sleep. That fear of lows is also one of the reasons I would sometimes let my blood sugars run a little high.

The lows are much more urgent than when your blood sugar is high. A low can be life-threatening in a shorter amount of time. As you may have concluded from my last post, I have also had many, many highs. The highs make me very lethargic and cause extreme thirst and blurry vision. Over time, having blood thick with extra glucose can (and will) cause irreversible damage to any small blood vessels in your body. It can lead to things like nerve damage in your feet and eyes, and damage the filters in your kidneys. When the filters in your kidneys don’t work properly, all the toxins that are normally filtered out and voided remain in your blood stream. It will fast track you to an early grave.

I would also like to add a disclaimer that any of these complications can happen at any point in your diabetes journey. Tighter control greatly reduces your risk of complications, but it doesn’t eliminate the risk altogether.

Armed with this knowledge – why is it so hard to stay on track? I guess maybe thinking that it wouldn’t happen to me, the same way I thought that I couldn’t possibly have diabetes. I always thought maybe there would be time for me, time to get it together before I would see any complications. I was young and I wanted to be free to live my life. I will continue to write about the emotions that come with having a disease that you can never get away from, but I will say this: one thing I’ve learned about to help me through all of this, is the practice of gratitude. It has helped me through some of the darkest days, which I have yet to write about. They’re coming.