I sometimes look back and wonder how I have survived some of my own decisions. I think sparring in karate while in the 40’s or 50’s was not too bright. Or standing at the top of the mountain and pointing my skiis downhill while extremely low wasn’t the brightest thing either. Life seems to happen around us and sometimes you just try to keep up with it and others…no matter what. …anyone else wanna share their brilliant decisions?
Keep going…Peace, Bob
p.s. I was honored to have a nice article in The Florida Times Union this morning…you can see it at my blog…joyofdiabetes.blogspot.com
You need not run low, just buy some of the those 15 carb glucose tablet at your local pharmacy and before you exercise take one or two if you feel are are low. They work and can be kept in your pocket. They have saved me many times and I don’t travel without them. And you can drive about 20 minutes as they absorb quickly.
Went into the storage room (10’x 10’ room at work) in order to get a can of soda… from the piled 12-18 open cases of the soda cans.
Got L-O-S-T… then
injured by attempting to pull a “favorite soda” from the bottom of the pile of cases rather than the ones that were on top (and easy reach)… hit by several cases of “falling” soda
A couple of years ago I was coming home from work on the bus, and decided to stop at the grocery store after I got to my neighborhood. I had taken a very big dose of rapid-acting insulin to cover a huge serving of lo mein at lunch - a dose that was too much. I was in the store and my bg started to fall rapidly. The only samples they were giving that night were itty bitty cubes of cheese, which didn’t help. The store has a very comfortable waiting area and I could have easily got some soda and sat for 30 minutes to come back up. But, it was January, and 30 below zero windchill. I wanted to get home (3 blocks away). So, out I trudge. We’d had some serious snow the day before and it was blowing all about and really hard to see. I knew I was continuing to drop and then decided to duck into the foyer of a condo building and test! my fingers were too cold to get any blood out of. By then my thinking was really fuzzy and I think I just stood there for several minutes before deciding to put my mittens back on. I don’t quite remember getting home. But I did and then drank half a jug of maple syrup (you don’t even wanna know about the results of overtreating…
So, what did I do that I shouldn’t have - gone out, on foot, on a bone-chilling Minnesota night when I knew I was dropping. I consider myself lucky to have lived to tell the story. And, yes, I had 2 full tubes of glucose tabs with me - guess I forgot about them.
OMG Kathy! That’s simultaneously scary and hilarious. I decided I just HAD to move the junk in my car up to my apartment today, even though I didn’t feel good. I thought it was just the heat at first, but a whole can of fruit salad and a giant swig of guava juice later, I started to feel better.
One day I decided that I would take a spontaneous run up the mountain behind my house, leaving my glucometer and any sort of food behind. I knew I was going to drop low even before I went, but I made a run for it anyway. I didn’t tell anyone where I went, either, but literally ran away. Soon, I started falling over in what I guess was the preliminary step to passing out. Somehow I heard my family calling my name. I started screaming for them, and they found me. I don’t know how they knew to look for me up there. I got very lucky indeed.
Let’s see… I was definately low… and had been having some wonderful ~intimate moments~ shall we say with a diabetic woman I had been dating at the time…
After some rather “pleasurable exercise” on a gorgeous Saturday morning… I slowly wondered toward the kitchen and decided instead that one SHADE in the living room needed straightening-lowering a bit more…
Living on the first floor… I proceeded to pull the shade completely out of the bracket instead and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working!!! Needless to say when she came to see what the loud noise had been …and she looked more than a little paniced a) that we were now “sharing” ourselves with the entire complex at 10am on a summer morning and b) laughing hysterically because she knew instantly that I was low, and even so was attempting to protect her ~modesty~…
I think one of the strangest was being out in the Okeefenokee swamp in south Georgia. My buddy and I were out in a rental john boat and wanted to see some gators. It’s one of those places where the 3 miles ahead of you looked just like the 3 miles behind you.
We had gone to the little store to find something to take with us and eat. There weren’t a lot of selections but I remember bringing some M&M’s or the like for the “sweet” side of life.
That was great…for the first hour… in the baking Georgia sun. After about 2 hours, my bloodsugar was dropping like a rock and I remember my buddy (who was driving) swinging the boat around this little island and putting me face to face, 4 feet away from a very agitated and up close gator. Needless to say, I was in the back of the boat in about .05 seconds.
I remember we were looking for something to treat the low, and all I had left was beer, Spam, and mustard…not my first choices, but it did get me “outta da swamp”
Not too bright going into the swamp with very little back-up. I always wonder how I survived my 20’s…
Alligators…beer…Spam…mustard…big swamp… and diabetes…not a great combo!
Oh for pity sake. Well, at least you’re here to tell the story. Bring to mind once when i went boating on the Mississippi and knew that my friend would have a cooler full of beverages. Well, when I was crashing at the end of the day I opened the cooler and there was nothng left but diet soda!!
Bob the dumbest thing I ever done when low and knew it (no warning system now) was to drive my car not only once but 4 times trying to get home to out run the low! Wreaked EVERYTIME b/c I would hit the low 30’s or even the low 20’s and still thought I had time to get home to get something to eat! And that was with my dumb butt passing up about 5 stores just to get home and eat! That was of course before I got any common sence! HA!!
Well I attempted a ski run down a mountain… my husband noticed I was confused (and a bit argumentative) so the ski patrol came- and they were VERY cute- and they took me down the mountain in one of those ski baskets. And they gave me some glucose so when I got down the mountain I was fine. And the ride was FANTASTIC!
This last week I was typing a $30,000 proposal and I kept reading the numbers like 6 times…nothing was making sense. I went into one of those blank stares looking at the math. It is always a good idea to recheck the math because someone would have gotten a really good or a really bad deal!!! Why yes, I can make 2+2=5…
Wishing you more…Cheers, Bob
I’ve decided that it is just my stubborn nature. That plus my Hopper temper. That was my madien name and my mom always said I had the Hopper Temper when I HAD to do it MY WAY!!! HA!!!
…well, I don’t think I have a bad temper but I can get really p-o’d about stuff. That night I was probably throwing a tantrum saying “I want to go home right now and I’m not gonn wait…so there”.
That sounds JUST like me! HA! Did I forget to tell ya’ the one about passing out in a Kroger Chain store in the cereal ilse? Now that one was really stupid all I would have had to do was just grab some of that really sweat kids cereal and I would have been ok but no I had to pass out while alone during my valued time alone while shopping for groceries! Not to meation food everywhere to start with! HA!!! I had a seizure, foming at the mouth like I had rabies and all! You should have seen all the manijors and employees surrounding the paramedics. I know, not funny to all the others (or even me) at time but totally funny after it all happened. I even got a free twole out of Kroger at the time and they were about 6 or 7 dollars. Of course I’m talking way back in the early 90’s or late 80’s!!! HA!!!
