I had my first insulin-related low yesterday at work. It's seriously a crazy feeling. I ate breakfast and then worked through til lunch like always. I was feeling off well before my usual lunchtime, but being a creature of habit I pushed myself until noon. Then I got caught up in work and pushed myself a half hour longer. By the time I was taking off my lab coat, my blood sugar was down to 61. It was one of those numbers you read on the glucose meter and think "yep, that's about right".
I was told in our education class that people on a low may act like they're drunk. That's because brain function is impaired if the brain isn't getting enough sugar. I was surprised to find out the two feelings are so similiar. I could sense that my walk wasn't right; I was swaying and lurching with only the thought of food keeping me moving forward instead of falling over. It was the kind of trip where you get where you're going and then stop to think "how did I get here?". I picked the hightop cafe table for my lunch, which was a bad idea. I was afraid I was going to slide right off it. A booth would have been a much more comfortable place to pass out, for sure. I couldn't even eat right: shaky hands + terrible depth perception meant that I kept missing my mouth and knocking food off my fork. I felt like the only shot at maintaining any dignity was to shoot dirty looks at the surgical girls nearby who would surely judge my inability to eat food.
So yea, being hypoglycemic is a lot like being drunk. The difference is that being hypo sucks and being drunk is pretty enjoyable.
And that's not to say I'm a huge drinker. I turned 21 my senior year of college and barely touched any alcohol while I was on campus. I was that girl who didn't want to hit up the liquor store for her underage friends. I was such a baby. In fact, I only have one good drinking story and one bad drinking story. The bad one I save for my husband and my BFF (one of them will surely blackmail me one day).
The good one comes from an out-of-town wedding (don't they all?). The groom's dad - a sweetheart, by the way - got me happy on wine over the course of the reception. Afterwards we joined the wedding party at a bar downtown. It just so happened to be St. Patrick's Day weekend AND conference tourney time for NCAA basketball, and I got plowed cheering on the local team. Mixed in with the green beer was an Irish car bomb: that business tastes like dirty Starbucks in case you don't know. By the time we made it to our hotel I was lucky to be upright, as some of our party had passed out in the cargo area of my car. Eric was the DD as usual, so I was surprised that sober he didn't see a red flag waving over my white girl wasted walk to our hotel room. Not even past the lobby, I tripped and faceplanted. Hard. Turns out hotel floors are concrete underneath really cheap carpet. I heard a crunch in my nose and contemplated falling asleep facedown outside a stranger's room. In fact, the only reason I got up was because I heard a pizza delivery guy ask Eric if I was ok and I couldn't be THAT girl. So I ran to my room (drunk running feels like flying); Eric reassured the pizza guy and followed. One look at me had him holding back laughter: I had an immediate goose egg on my forehead. I alternated between sloppy drunk tears and maniacal laughter as I fell into bed.
We had a 10 hour drive back home the next day and I spent much of it stealing glances at my purple knotty face in the side-view mirror. The bridge of my nose had also bruised up nicely. The wonder of it all was my hands. They showed no bruising, no soreness, nothing. I took this to mean that I was so gone I hadn't even employed your #1 face saving mechanism: bracing your fall with your hands.
I tried to cover my battle wounds with makeup, but I hadn't been back at work 5 minutes before my coworker/BFF asked "what happened to your face?". Bitch. I'm pretty sure she spent the rest of the day asking me about my "trip" to Kentucky. I would have done the same.
Being that we work in a lab, I wear latex gloves all day. Here's where it gets weird: by the end of the night, pulling gloves off over and over had bruises rising to the surface on my palms. Taking off a glove was like giving my hand a hicky. When it was time to clock out, by hands were purple from my wrist to my fingertips. It was disturbing, but it proved that I must have tried, however ineffectually, to save myself from the fall.
Keep reading because this story is relevant. I mean, not to be "the diabetes girl", but it is.
I'm only good at testing my sugar on two fingers: my left middle and left ring. My right hand probably has some good bleeders but I'm not ambidextrous to the point where I can use the lancet/meter with my left hand. In fact, my left hand is just about useless. I'm pretty sure God only gave it to me so I don't look lopsided. Anyway, this means those two fingers get pricked and milked all the time. Over the past couple days I could tell my middle finger was getting really sore from all the abuse. So I start pulling my gloves off at work and wouldn't you know: my whole fingetip was purple. From the knuckle to the nail.
Many lessons are to be learned from this chain of events: don't work when you can eat, don't rely on one testing finger, and don't drink anything with a theme name.
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