Remembering 9/11.

[drz]

Today is a solemn day of remembrance for America. Most Americans living today have memories of that day seared in their memory. Days of great disasters and catastrophes generally get imprinted on our memories in an indelible manner. Most people my age in America also remember where they were and what they were doing when they learned about the assassination of JFK. My parents and grand parents had similar memories upon learning of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

I woke up at 2:30 AM thinking about the events of 9/11. I remember it as the most terrifying time in my seven decades of life. I woke up sweating with a headache and upset stomach and remembered thinking that those memories must really be impacting me. But after a few minutes I had the presence of mind to check my CGM (continuous glucose monitoring system) and it was reading in the red zone of 61 and heading down.

I thought "oh crap, i got to get up and eat something even though I am not hungry and I better hurry or it will be real serious soon". I got to my kitchen and grabbed a couple cookies and glass of juice from the fridge that I gulped down. One gram of carbs usually raises my blood glucose level about one point. Low blood glucose levels or hypoglycemic episodes are common for many people with diabetes and often happen when taking high dosages of pred meds. So I took about 75 grams right away and then another 25 cause I still felt famished.

This brings back memories for me of when I was in the in the nursing home six years ago and I would often go from 400 in the afternoon to 40 a few hours later in the middle of the night. And staff would try find something i could eat without getting nauseous.

Eating lot of carbs, usually sweets, when you aren't hungry is not really much fun when you have to do it to try stave off a bad BG low. It is also a great way to gain a lot of unwanted weight. Too low of BG and you can pass out and have a seizure and even die. Before this level some common symptoms often are sweating, shaking, being confused, anxious, upset, and or irritated and others. Each person may be different:

Hypoglycemia - Low Blood Glucose (Blood Sugar): American Diabetes Association®

Being extremely hungry and feeling like a famished person who hasn't eaten for weeks makes it hard to not over eat at these times. It takes a while for the glucose or carbs to get back into your blood stream and raise your BG levels back to normal levels and one tends to eat until this happens so then you go back to having super high BG levels and needing to take more insulin to get it back down to a safer level again. So to try avoid over eating right now I am blogging here while i wait for my BG levels to come up to a safer level.

This episode lasted about an hour of being super low with BG readings that got down to 40's. Now they are 168 and heading straight up so they will be too high for awhile until I take some more insulin later on.

This is typical for me. My symptoms this time from the list above for hypoglycemia were:anxiety, headache, weakness, sweating, sadness, confusion, light headed, shaking with poor coordination, rapid heart beat, and maybe I was having a nightmare when I woke up.

These episode leave me feeling weak with a headache much like having a bad hangover. Years ago when I first started having them I used to be wiped out for a day or more and spend most of the time in bed feeling weak with a head ache. After having hundreds of them and feeling fatigued most of the time anyway from Wegs and diabetes, it is harder to define the after effects. I do know I will not be getting up early and going to church though but hope i might feel well enough by afternoon to watch the football games on TV.

So I guess it might be good news that I was not having a serious physical reaction to my memories of 9/11 but I do want to share them anyway in the next post.