Number that scared the #$%^ out of me

I have had the last week off of work.  I work in education and it is just one of the breaks we are fortunate to have.  This time has been a great opportunity to refresh, renew and prepare for very busy weeks that are coming up.  When I'm on vacation, not that I'm complaining, I sometimes have a hard time because I'm thrown off my regular schedule.  Normally on Sundays, I go walking in the morning to start off my day.  Today, however, I went to church with my friend I normally go to church with but we switched from Saturday night's contemporary service (loud music and younger crowd) to Sunday's classic service (standard hymns with older crowd).

Because of the change, I didn't have breakfast until I got home around 9:30.  I really wasn't paying much attention to what I was doing.  I prepared my standard breakfast, oatmeal and eggs, and took all my meds/vitamins.  I spent some time working around my house and then I decided to take a nap later in the afternoon.  I didn't sleep great last night.  I just kept tossing and turning to the point where I turned on the light and one of my cats was sitting up, staring at me and giving me that Will you pleeease stop moving? look.  It actually was pretty hilarious.  If I would have had my phone next to me, I would've taken a picture of her face.  Anyway, I took the nap and dreamt about having the gastric bypass surgery.

This surgery for me is something I look forward to having, but there is also a voice that pops up every now and then that asks me if it's the right decision, if I'm really that far gone that I need surgery to help me to lose weight and other thoughts along that vain.  I think it is healthy to ask questions because I want to make absolutely sure that I'm making the right decision.  From where I stand right now, I am inclined to go with gastric bypass but my dream was about whether or not I should consider getting the vertical sleeve done instead since it's much less invasive.

When I awoke from my nap, it was with a startle and not at all feeling as though I had just gotten good sleep.  In fact, I felt horrible.  I felt tingling in my feet and fingers and I noticed I felt clammy with sweat on my forehead.  That meant one thing to me from previous experience ... my blood sugar was too low.  By the time I made it into the kitchen, where my glucose meter is kept, I was shaking.  I pricked my finger with the lancet device and had a hard time even getting a drop of blood to test.  Here's what my meter read (70 is considered low for reference).

My first thought was I hate fucking diabetes.  Sorry for just putting it out there like that but it just pisses me off.  It makes me want to cuss like a sailor.  I have been diabetic since the year 2000.  I don't know if I ever shared the story on here of how I found out so I'm going to digress for a paragraph (you guys should be used to my shift-changing by now!).

I was taking a shower at home alone.  I remember reaching for the shampoo to wash my hair and then the next thing I knew I was grabbing the shower curtain and rod on the way down to the ground as I was fainting.  I hit my upper thigh on the edge of the tub and landed on the tile.  The water was still running but I was somehow awoken by my then two concerned cats.  Thank God for curious kitties.  I somehow was able to get up, although the pain in my leg was excruciating.  I called one of my friends and told her what happened.  She was insisting that I go to the hospital.  She used to be a paramedic, so she was immediately concerned.  I told her no, I would be fine.  Besides, Kaiser was pretty far from where I lived at the time.  After a few minutes, I called her back and asked her to take me to the hospital.  The pain was just too insane for me to handle.  By the time we got there, the pain in my leg was beyond anything I can describe.  I could barely get out of the car with having to bend my leg.  All the time I was in the ER, here I was worried about the pain in my leg and the doctors were more concerned about why I fainted.  My leg turned out fine with contusions, but the rest of me was not.  My resting heart rate had gone up 40 points and they had to fill me with two bags of saline because I was so dehydrated.  I remember the night before I had gone out with a friend and I had two humungo daiquiris.  Apparently that was the thing that helped me discover I have diabetes.

Okay, back to the low blood sugar.  After I spent a few seconds being mad, I had to get over it and take action to increase my blood sugar.  I've had my blood sugar lower before, but I definitely was not going to wait around to see how low I could go.  I have a bag of frozen fruit from Costco in my freezer so I had a cup of that to get my blood sugar to go up.  As it was hitting my system and making me feel better, I wondered why I had gone so low.  It didn't make any sense to me.  It wasn't as if I had gone and worked out.  Sure, I did do things around my house but I don't think enough to have the sort of effect.  The only thing I could figure was either I waited too long to have breakfast or I injected too much insulin.

Once I was out of the woods, I had to let the episode go as much as possible.  Having diabetes is the reason I have been opting for the gastric bypass instead of the sleeve, but I suppose that's something I'll need to keep thinking about and talking to the surgeon about when it comes time.  To be free of this disease is a great motivator to keep moving forward.  In the interim, I will keep doing my best to take of myself right now with exercise and clean eating.  Who knows, I may decide not to do the surgery in the end.  Right now I find that highly unlikely, but all I can do right now is take it a day at a time and watch my blood sugar.

Water Challenge Day 39:  Drank 100 of 183 ounces