I did good.

Saturday night sucked. It took a while, but gradually I woke up. When I opened my eyes I saw that it was 3:35am. Who knows how long I had spent floating on the edge of consciousness, trying to wake up. But at 3:35am, I woke up. And I felt like crap. My heart was pounding, I could feel it in my ears. It was like I had just run a marathon but I wasn't even out of breath. I was also sweating and clammy. And my knees had that familiar wobbly, weak feeling to them. That's right folks, I was low.

I haven't woken up low in forever. (Well, at home anyway. I wake up low all the time in the hospital when I'm on call but that's another story.) And it's not fun, but I am lucky in the respect that some diabetics don't wake up at all when they are low. I have always been able to feel it it my sleep and it gradually sucks me out of my rest. Which is a good thing really because bad things happen when you get too low. There was only one time in all my 18 years as a diabetic where I was low and I didn't wake up. Thank God my husband was there. There was no seizure, nothing too nuts, but I was crazy out-of-it. My husband has been with me so long (he even went with me one summer to be a counselor at a diabetes camp). So he did great, got me to sit up and slowly sip some orange juice. I don't remember most of this but let me tell you, when I came to, I was completely freaked out. ::shudder::

Anyway, I was shaky but I could tell I had this one under control. I decided to let Brad sleep and go out into the living room to take care of myself. I tested and my blood sugar was 42. Awesome. I had a Barnies Coffee Cooler with friends earlier that night and those things do a number on my blood sugar. So I gave myself plenty of insulin. Well, obviously I overdid it because 5 hours later, I was sitting on my couch shaky and clammy downing a glass of milk. That's my go-to low fixer. Milk. I know it's weird. And sometimes I use OJ when I'm on the go and just need a quick fix. But milk works great. About 8 to 10 ounces is perfect, has just the right number of carbs for me (15gms or so) and protein so that I my blood sugar doesn't crash again in a hour when my body has burned all that sugar. It takes a little longer than OJ to kick in since it doesn't have anywhere close to the crazy sugar power of OJ. But if I have the luxury of time it's great and doesn't bounce my sugars all over the place.

Here's where the devil on my shoulder comes into play. I really should have stopped at the milk. But I had just made some chocolate-peanut butter fudge and it seemed like the perfect time to indulge. But I promise it was just one piece!! And since I knew I'd rebound, I stayed up for a while to check my sugar and take some insulin before I went back to bed. I was hoping that I wouldn't wake up with a narly high. And when I rolled over the next morning and realized I had to pee like a mo-fo, I was worried. But my blood sugar was 122. Perfect!! I was pretty pleased with myself.

While I was up I was remembering all the dBlogs I had found recently. And I was thinking, cool, I can blog about this and maybe other diabetics out there will see it and totally relate like I was relating to their stories. But mostly I'm just proud of myself for treating my low, not overdoing it and not ending up sky-high the next morning. Sometimes it can be so hard to deal with the ravenous hunger that comes with lows. I feel like a never-ending vessel, running out of fuel, needing the sustanence so badly that I will just eat and eat and eat. And sometimes it takes so long to come out of those lows. Of course I know from experience that once the low does subside, that I will feel like crap for eating like it was going out of style. My blood sugar will also suffer the consequences later on. More often than not I try to take it slow. It does help to have a go-to staple for lows. Like I said, I like milk or sometimes OJ. That way I don't have to think or scramble for a solution, I have on on-hand and my low-brain won't get the opportunity to steer me wrong.

~Layne