27

Evidently, that’s how low Ron’s blood sugar can get and he can still let me know that he thinks his sugar is low.

Low blood sugars most commonly occur during the night and you can sleep through the early stages. When I’ve had a low blood sugar, the nausea will wake me up pretty quickly. My lowest (that I’ve caught) has been in the low 40s. I heard Ron’s water jug hit the floor around 1:30 AM so I got up and went around to his side of the bed to pick it up. He was sitting up on the side of the bed, holding his hand in a semi-clenched state and said that he didn’t feel well. I asked him if he felt hospital-bad or just bad, and what part of him was sick. He couldn’t tell me. I asked him what he wanted and he said he’d been trying to get a drink, but when I put the water jug back into his hand, he couldn’t hold it. He was very sweaty and clammy.

His pain patches had come loose due to the excessive sweat so I pulled them off and cleaned the area with an alcohol wipe. I asked him if he was still sick and if he felt like he was going to vomit. He said, “I think I’m having a low blood sugar” so I got his tester and checked. Sure enough, it was low. 27. Two. Seven. Nearly coma level.

I hurried into the kitchen to get him some juice and when I came back, he was collapsed across the bed. In hindsight, I probably should have just called an ambulance but he’d already told me no on that suggestion. I got the juice down him and three Oreo cookies. I waited a few minutes and he was able to let me pull him into a sitting position. I took his sugar again and it was up to 47, which was a good improvement but still terribly low.

I went back to the kitchen and fixed him a peanut butter sandwich and got him two more cookies. It took a while, but we finally did get him stable and he was able to go to sleep feeling better.

That’s two nights in a row that he’s had something go on that was out of the ordinary. Saturday night, he had several instances of body twitches and he was breathing so shallowly that I checked a couple of times to make sure that he really was breathing. He may have had a low blood sugar at that time but because he stayed asleep, neither of us knew it. He didn’t look like he felt good Saturday or Sunday but by yesterday afternoon, he looked and acted much better.

I honestly think if I hadn’t been there last night that he would have slipped into a diabetic coma. It just goes to show how strong of a constitution Ron has to be able to bounce back from that low of a sugar.