Bleh.
I did not have a very good week. I guess I’ll start at the beginning–last Monday afternoon.
I had to go to New Mexico for work. The plan was to fly out of the College Station airport to DFW, then make a connecting flight to El Paso, and drive to Las Cruces from there.
The airport in College Station is not much of one. To my knowledge, it only flies to Dallas and Houston. With the airline business and all things in general being in the crapper, flights from College Station are often canceled or delayed. Ours was delayed. Delayed enough that we just missed our connecting flight from DFW to El Paso by only a few minutes. Fantastic.
We traveled in a group of six. Four of us booked tickets earlier than the other two, because it wasn’t decided that the other two would be going on this trip until later. I was in the latter group of two. So, when we went up to the counter to receive new boarding passes for a later flight to El Paso, the first group of four got confirmed first class tickets on the next flight out to El Paso at 4pm, while the remaining two of us only got standby on the 4pm flight, and confirmed seats (not first class!) on the flight out at 5:40pm.
When boarding time arrives for the 4pm flight, we soon learn that there is absolutely no chance standby will get a seat. So our four co-workers board and fly in luxury to El Paso, while one of my bosses (Dr. J) and I sit around and wait another two hours.
At some point during our wait, Dr. J checks the screen to see if our flight is still on time. Guess what? It’s been delayed until 6pm and they’ve changed gates on us! Joy! So we truck it 15 gates down and sit and wait some more. As 6pm rolls around, someone comes on the speaker and tells us that boarding will be delayed further due to some sort of “maintenance issue” on the plane. Awesome!
Eventually we get on the plane. It was probably 6:30 or 7. But wait! The fun isn’t over yet! There was another 20 minute or so delay on the runway. How does this happen? Apparently some planes got mixed up. Or something. Ridiculous.
Whatever. We eventually get there.
Unfortunately for me, this is only the beginning of fun.
That night, I managed to have an episode with my diabetes. I talk about it on here often enough, but if you don’t already know, I’m type 1 diabetic, known a long time ago as juvenile diabetes, or insulin dependent diabetes. I was diagnosed late in life for a type 1, at age 18. I take insulin shots everyday, and if I didn’t, I wouldn’t make it very long. Recently, I started taking a different kind of insulin. My doctor’s solution after my last 3 month blood sugar average was higher than he liked. I’ve been taking this new insulin regime without major incident for a few weeks.
Back to Monday night. I was low before I went to bed. My glucometer read 54. Ugh. So I ate a snack and got it to over 100 before falling asleep (for reference, normal people levels are around 80 to 120 mg/dL). Of course, this just wasn’t good enough. I kind of remember waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. A brief flash, of sorts. But the next thing I know, it’s about 6am, and my pillow and sheets are covered in blood. And my tongue fucking hurts.
Apparently, I seizured from low blood sugar during the night. This has happened to me before, perhaps three other times in my life. But this is the first time it’s happened when I was alone. All the other times Andy witnessed it, and was able to get my blood sugar back up for me. My previous seizures always left my legs sore as hell. Sore like after you get a charlie horse. This time though, my legs weren’t sore, but my back was. But shortly after I woke up, the back pain was pale in comparison to the pain in my mouth from damn near biting my tongue off. It was not a pretty sight. I’m sure the hotel maids were thrilled to clean up the mess I made of the bed too. Haha.
But, luckily, I did manage to wake up, get dressed, and get on with my day. I went to the conference, and made it through the morning and half of the afternoon before my back just couldn’t take it anymore. I was struggling sitting through the afternoon presentations big time. So during the afternoon break, I thought it might help my back if I went to the other room and just lay down on the floor for a few minutes.
Bad idea. Horrible. What was I thinking? Sure, it felt better when I was lying down. But fuck me if I could get back up. I couldn’t even sit up or turn my body without immense pain. But I had to do it. I couldn’t just lay on the floor like that. So I got up without screaming, and went back out to sit down. A woman at the conference saw me, and apparently I wasn’t looking so hot, so she got some of my co-workers and they took me back to my hotel room.
I immediately changed and got into bed, and remained there for the next couple hours and slept. When I awoke, I immediately realized I had a problem. I couldn’t move without wanting to die. Luckily, I kept my cell phone close, so I could reach it when my co-workers called. They first tried the hotel phone, which was out of reach, I figured out. I was in a sad, sad state.
They had to call the paramedics. How humiliating. But I agreed to it, because what else could I do? I was damn stuck. There was no way I was getting up on my feet.
The paramedics arrive. They hear about my diabetic issue that caused the whole thing. Apparently diabetes is an automatic special case freak out for everyone. Ha. Anyway, they want to make sure my blood sugar level is okay. Of course, it’s not. It started out okay. Then dropped to 71. Then 44. Then the paramedics made me eat this disgusting sugar in a tube. And many minutes later I was in the hospital hoping to god someone just hurry the fuck up and give me pain meds for my back.
It was a pretty slow process, but eventually I came out of it with three prescriptions for pain meds/muscle relaxers. Yippee.
I slept through the next day. I missed my presentation, which was the whole reason for me going to this conference in the first place, but oh well. My blood sugar levels have been insane ever since. Just low low low. I can’t make any sense of it. It’s like the insulin turned into super insulin, or my pancreas decided to all of a sudden work after 9 years of spurting out nothing.
Throughout the rest of the trip, I was taking much less insulin than normal. I even skipped some shots altogether, and I was still winding up low. Today has been closer to normal, I think. Well, not normal normal. But I skipped my shot with dinner last night, was 170 before bed, so I didn’t want to take anything out of immense fear of going low, then I woke up at 292. Which is what should happen. So while 292 in itself is bad, it’s more normal for my circumstances. And it’s been running higher all day, as I’m just not sure what to do with myself anymore. If some sense of sanity doesn’t return, I’ll try and get in with my doctor this week.
My back is mostly better. I mean, it’s still sore and stiff a little bit, but not when I’m on my medication. My tongue is mostly healed. Finally. Despite this, I’m still not feeling very well. I had a sore throat yesterday, and a little bit today. Mostly, I think I’m just razzled. The medication I’m taking for my back makes me sleepy. I always feel very weird after I have a low blood sugar seizure. A feeling of death, I guess you could say. I feel like I should be dead. Or could have died then, and it leaves me strange and jittery and not very happy. Hopefully I will get over it soon.
Next week should be a normal week back in the office. I’m not looking forward to catching up on work. Here’s to hoping I can concentrate on it. Hope you all had a better week than I.
I will start this by saying with few exceptions, the people I work with and the people I have met in the program are incredibly nice and intelligent. But I suppose teh internets gets the best of everyone now and then.