Another Low

Blood sugars have been a little off lately. Vince seems to be going low late night/early morning. Nighttime sugars have always been a struggle for him to keep at an acceptable level. That is one of the main factors that helped him to make the decision to try the pump again. No matter how he took the Lantus, he would go either too high (the majority of the time) or too low. With the pump, it is MUCH easier to control however it is rarely perfect.

Last night he had another low. That on top of the drowsiness from his Neuropathy meds resulted in spilled milk and yelling for my help at 3:30 in the morning. Usually I hear the bowl drop (as it has happened before) but this morning I didn’t. I just woke up to him yelling for my help. I went to the kitchen to find him half asleep, having a low, milk all over himself, the floor, and the table, and the bowl on the floor. All he says is “I’m weak” I didn’t see the cereal, so I asked him just to confirm that he ate it so I would know his sugar would be ok. He did. So I cleaned up the floor, the table, and himself and got him some cold water in hopes to stop his sweating that was resulting from the low blood sugar. I don’t remember if I asked him how low he was. I was half asleep myself. But I knew he ate enough. He was barely awake enough to get to bed so I told him to stand up and go straight to the bedroom and that I was going to get him a change of clothes.

Normally in this scenario, he says he wants a shower since he got milk on himself and he was sweating but luckily he didn’t. I say luckily because I am always scared to let him take a shower when he is that drowsy. So I got him to the bed, helped him change and got him to lay down. It took me over an hour though to fall back asleep. Just in time to get up for work.

We recently had a talk about how he acts when he is drowsy. I asked him why he gets so stubborn and tries to do things (such as shower) when he can barely stay awake. I expressed how frustrating this is for me. He compared it to being drunk. You don’t always know what you are doing and you don’t always listen to what people are telling you. That made complete sense. It seems that the conversation we had helped a lot. Somewhere in his mind, I think he was trying to be patient and listen to me this time because he wasn’t acting as stubborn as he normally does when the side effects kick in. He didn’t insist on a shower or getting another cup of juice or testing his blood sugar. When I tell him to go straight to bed, I know none of these things are needed. I take care of whatever things he might need at that moment since he can’t stay awake.

We are such a great team. We both try our hardest not to take out the situation on each other. Think about how you feel after taking NyQuil? What if you took two doses in one, and then had low blood sugar on top of it? It’s not the same thing, but the results of a foggy head from his medications and/or low blood sugar are similar.