I've had a few close brushes with death. A few times doctors have even told me that I was dying. Once they even loaded me up with Dilaudid to help ease my passage into the next life. But each of those times I wasn't convinced that I was dying.
During the early morning hours today I knew to a certainty that I was dying. I knew there was only one thing that could possibly save me, and thankfully my plan worked, or I wouldn't be here to type this out tonight.
I woke up in the middle of the night because of a light in my room. There was a blinking light coming from my laptop. Ordinarily it wouldn't bother me, but this time, for whatever reasons, it did. I scrounged around my room, looking for something to block it or cover it. When I succeeded, I felt very strange. Like, low blood sugar strange.
I shouldn't have felt it. My blood sugar should have been very high after the dinner I ate last night. But just in case, I tested my blood. It came out to 52, which is not quite disastrously low, but pretty close. So I grabbed the almond M&M bag I kept close by for just such occasions and started eating a few. Except it didn't make me feel normal. It was making me feel worse.
My heart rate zoomed, and I could feel it straining to keep me alive. I found it difficult to breathe. I realized, holy shit, 52 wasn't my final answer. My blood sugar had to be dropping more. So I ate faster until I realized I was still getting worse. The sugar wasn't getting into my blood fast enough.
I wasn't going to make it. I was going to hit zero, and then I'd be dead. Or hopefully I'd just pass out, and the sugar would get into my blood just in time to bring me back. But that was seeming less and less likely.
My mouth was full, and swallowing became very difficult. I only had one chance: to get downstairs and get my brother's help. I stood up on wobbly legs that barely held me up while I went down the stairs, and I had to stop in the kitchen. I called out to him, and while I waited for him, I grabbed a box of Count Chocula and shoveled dry handfuls into my mouth. When he came up and saw what was happening, he went back down and came up with a whole package of Halloween themed Oreos. I sat in the kitchen and ate those until I felt normal again.
What a relief, huh? I was going to live. It would have sucked dying like that. At least with the booze people would have understood. When people asked how I died and were told the 'Beetus, they'd be like, oh, too bad. That's a rough one. He must not have been controlling it all that well.
No, actually, he died of low blood sugar.
Wait, what? He died of *low* blood sugar? How the hell did that happen?
I went back upstairs to my room and decided to watch Upload for a little in an attempt to go back to sleep. AND THEN IT FUCKING HAPPENED AGAIN.
After all the sugar I'd just eaten, there's no way my blood sugar could have been that low still. I tested it again and IT WAS MOTHERFUCKING 50. That couldn't be possible! Unless . . .
How low had my blood sugar gone the first time? Is it possible score negative numbers? Had I actually been to zero and come back a little?
I went back downstairs--on wobbly legs once again, once again trying to catch my breath and not have a heart attack--and I ate the rest of those Oreos. I overcompensated, just in case, and when I woke up this morning I scored 310, so I made sure I wouldn't die of low blood sugar, but that's a wildly high number. If I hit 400, I'd have to go to the hospital. I felt lousy enough to call off work, and I'm out of days, so yeah, this ordeal was pretty fucking bad.
It was the only time I was ever dying that I knew, for sure, I was dying. I felt like I was on a downward spiral, barely holding on by a thread. I felt like I was on the very edge when I sat in that kitchen, fully expecting to collapse and not wake up again, not even in a hospital room. Depending on what stuff of mine you read, Good Morning, Fuckers yesterday morning might have been the last of me you ever heard.
Well, I do have a postmortem GF column prepared in that eventuality, but I never expected it would need to be used so soon.
I lucked out. This time.
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