Sunday, December 18, 2005

Scary

Today, I am writing about a D experience that had me scared out of my wits. This past week was my first every college exam week, and let me tell you, it was NOT fun. I had 3 exams on Monday and 2 on Tuesday. I'm not sure if I've ever studying so hard in my academic career. Tuesday morning I had an exam at 10am. I got up at 7, studied for a while, went to breakfast and headed off to my exam. I get to the room only to find that my exam starts at 10:30am, not 10. So I head back through the freezing cold back to my dorm. As I'm sitting in front of my computer pretending to be studying, I feel a horrible wave of nausea come over me. The first thought that rushes through my mind is, "Oh no! I can't get that stomach flu NOW! I have to take an exam." The second almost always present thought follows behind. "I'd better check my blood sugar." I grab my meter, whip out my pump (I use the CozMonitor) and wait. 50. 50!!! I look, and I have close to 4 units on board. This will put me at about negative 90. But unlike normal, I do not want anything to eat. I want to throw up. My room mate, who the wonderful people at my college put me with, is not around. She's usually pretty good at getting me to eat. I finally decide that I can probably manage some juice. I whip open my pitifully small fridge, and guess what? The juice is GONE. I grab a fruit snack, my trusty friend in times of hypoglycemia, and slowly start eating. As the food hits my stomach, the nausea slowly decreases, and I start eating as fast as my hands can hit my mouth. As the panic of throwing up or passing out decreases, I look at the clock. #()%&)!!! It's 10:27, and my exam starts at 10:30. I grab a little more food, grab my trusty #2 pencils, and I run out the door. I got to my exam 5 minutes late, in a panic. I start taking the exam, with my head still in a fog. About 10 minutes into it, it hits me to recheck my blood sugar and bolus a little for all the carbs I ate. In my hurray, I shut the "friendly" your last blood sugar was low alarm off. I check and I'm up to a whopping 90. I ate 100ish carbs, and I was only up to 90? I push down the panicked feeling and daringly bolus for 25 carbs. I waited the rest of the day for the rebound high that never came. I still have no idea why I went low. I know my breakfast bolus was fine. I guess the stress of exam week decided to rocket me from the 300's of the past few days to a nasty low. All I know is that I was scared. Very scared. I thought I might have to use my glucagon on myself. Or worse, that my roommate would come back to find me lying on the floor, or in the bathroom vomiting my guts out. Morale of the story? There is none! Other than, just maybe, that diabetes sucks, and I'm thankful that a thing like glucagon exists, if I needed it. Oh, and Diabetes sucks.

1 comment:

Rachel Segall said...

Hello Hello. Did you by any chance do any exercise the night before or anything out of the normal.

I had a similar experience in college, but I can relate it directly back to a walk (ironically the JDRF walk) and then a nap which caused me to go into a really bad low, friends called the ambulance and the day before I was supposed to be taking my accounting final I was stuck up in the hospital with an IV.

Luckily my professor was understanding and I was able to come back during the summer to take the test. I was banking on that day to study study study.

I can hear the frustration in your writing. I'm at that point too and it's hard, really hard. it's nice to know that you aren't alone and that other people have been in or experienced very similar situations.