My Horror Story: The morning I Almost Said Good Bye
My Horror Story: The morning I Almost Said Good Bye
am sure many of us have horror stories about our past and different points in our lives, some more gruesome and troubling than others but that's all subjective I suppose. I am here to share mine and as you can probably guess it’s linked to the big D... diabetes.
Before I begin my tale, I came across something just this
week about a post of a diabetic who passed away from low blood sugar. This post
highlighted the fact that this person was diabetic for years and has now passed
due to severe hypoglycemia, also it mentioned that it was done intentionally.
This brought back memories of a loved one who passed away due to a similar
hypoglycemic episode which was also done intentionally. I mentioned in a
previous post that many diabetics, including myself, suffer from depression.
Sad to say but sometimes it becomes too much for one person to deal with trying
to deal with this disease, dealing with everyday stress, and wanting to be like
a “normal” person. Eventually in extreme circumstances people choose to take
their life in this way.
If you asked me 6 years ago about the forms of suicide, I
would not have said a diabetic with low sugar. To me, that seemed like an
accidental death or an unfortunate situation. But hearing stories like this one
and my own experience with a loved one passing this way makes me sure that it’s
becoming more common. Not every hypo related death is intentional but it makes
me very sad and makes my heart hurt that these fellow diabetics are not getting
the help that they need. Even in cases where they have a support system, at the
end of the day no one can really understand the life of a diabetic, sometimes
not even other diabetics.
But I do find that with growing social media support
groups (in place on conventional support groups which for some reason I am not
a big fan of) there are fellow diabetics out there who want to lessen the burden
of being a diabetic by sharing their experiences and wanting to help those
struggling. Even with something as simple as good job, you’re on the right
path, or keep up the good work they give hope to someone who at times can lose
home when shit hits the fan. In treating the disease we, along with all those
we meet, forget that we are still humans and we crave acceptance and
encouragement. In the few months of having joined these communities, let’s say
that my faith in humanity still remains a bit tacked, which is the silver
lining on my cloud these days.
Now on to my story, I just want to say that what occurred
the night and
morning where I almost died was NOT a suicide attempt. It was
finals week, the dreaded week of any college student. Where tensions run high
and being sleep deprived is the norm. I was struggling in my classes and with
my severe depression at this point. I spent most of the night studying for a
final and stressing out a lot. Funny thing, I can't remember now what class it
was. It seems insignificant in retrospect to everything else that happened. I
was binge eating in the night time, because studying and junk food go hand and
hand. I was so exhausted but since this class was early in the morning I
couldn't just go to sleep. I ended up injecting myself with insulin after
checking my blood sugar. As you can imagine, after eating a ton of chips and
candy the insulin required would be a hefty amount. You see, I had over-compensated
the amount of insulin I needed for that food (if you can call it that) I ate.
My thought was, I am going to eat breakfast before I leave so it'll be fine.
I remember asking my mom to make me breakfast while I lay
down on her bed. I told her I was going to leave the house in about 40 minutes.
The plan was that I was going to power nap for 20 minutes and than have
breakfast. I took the nap, next thing I know I am groggily waking up to my dad holding
me in a sitting position and force feed me juice with a ton of extra sugar mixed
in it. 2 minutes later, the ambulance was here and the EMS
people were asking me a bunch of questions. After drinking about 2 glasses of
the vile juice (low blood sugar leaves a gross taste in my mouth), the EMS checked my vitals and I had ended up with high
blood pressure. They sort of convinced me to go to the hospital to get
everything checked out just in case. At that point, I was already late to my
final so I figured it would be better for me to actually take care of myself. After
spending almost 8 hours in the ER I was given a clean bill of health and told
to take it easy. Apparently the low blood sugar caused my blood pressure to
rise and I still don't know why that is the case, funny enough neither do the
doctors.
While in the ER waiting for the doctor to see me, I did a
lot of thinking. Quite a bit of it was on what if questions. What if I didn't
wake up? What if my parents didn't check up on me? What if I hadn't gone to
take a nap in their room instead of my own? What if I did actually die? Would
anyone miss me? I'll be honest, I was terrified and scared. It finally sunk in
that I just came back from the dead so to speak. I beat myself up over it for
several weeks afterwards. If I hadn't been careless about my junk food eating
habits and my insulin regimen I probably would not have experience this
traumatic experience. After a few weeks, I decided to stop wallowing in the past
and actually get help from my doctors. We upped the dosage of my
anti-depressants and I tried desperately to take more control of my life and my
choices.
This was a rude awakening for me and I needed it. Looking
back now, I feel more fortunate at getting a second chance at life, despite
everything I think it made me realize that I am important to me and that I need
to focus on me and making life better for me. Screw the social pressures of
being stick thin, hanging out with everyone, eating out, being “normal”. From
this point on I didn’t care if I didn’t fit into the norm, for the first time I
was happy with trying to be me.
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