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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.


depressed diabetes dark thoughts suicide
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. 

Diabetes, depression, positive motivation, support group;

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. 
 
Diabetes, light at the end of the tunnel, low blood sugar
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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