Greetings, all!
Today has been a godsend - thanks to MLK day, I am off work and school and happily able to play catch up with all of my homework. Booking Gigs, invoices, phone calls, trying to sort out hospital bills, while doing homework and studying is no easy task. But I'm slowly and steadily working through it, reminding myself to be calm and not get overwhelmed. Philippians 4:6-7 is a verse I have had to remind myself of a lot lately:
6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
Don't worry indeed. I have to keep myself reminded that God has got it all covered. I will keep doing what I do, and pray, and trust in his plan (despite my stubbornness!)
Anyways, as a break to myself, I wanted to share an experience I had all the way back in September with you. I thought that it would make a good story, so, here you go:
It was Labor Day, and I was sitting in a hotel room in Forsyth as Josh's family was busy moving. Marleigh, Laurie and I had driven a big carload of stuff and then stopped back at the room to rest; I was absorbed in my studying, freaking out about the massive amounts of reading and assignments I had left to do.
So when they decided to go back out and pick some more things up at the house, I solemnly declined so that I could stay and study.
Sitting in the room alone, it briefly occurred to me that I might get low. Did I even have a snack left on me? But as I had just eaten a snack a short while ago, I steadfastly delved into my genetics homework, the possibility not really being a huge worry to me.
The clock ticked by silently, and I did my best to focus.
I studied on...What was it that I last read? My thoughts flitted.
15 minutes later when the shake started, I knew what was happening. NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo. I pleaded as I grabbed the meter and tested. Luck was against me today, as it would have it. It was confirmed: I was 49 and likely falling fast.
Shoot, shoot, shoot. What was I going to do? I was stuck alone in this hotel room.
I thought that surely, I had to have a snack somewhere. I checked my backpack. My purse. I started to frantically search the hotel room. I look everywhere - there was not a carb to be found. I had no change, only my debit card, for a soda machine. I had no snack, there was nothing here I knew about...
I grabbed my phone and started calling Marleigh, Laurie, Josh, Jake, Anyone. No one picked up - they were all busy moving, and doubtful they had their phones on them. Stupid! I yelled silently at myself. How had I forgotten to bring a snack? I never wanted to be in this kind of situation.
I started to panic. I paced the hotel room. I looked again for snacks. All the while the shaking consumed more and more of me as the minutes passed. My ears were buzzing, my brain numb, my tongue tingling. I wobbled unsteadily through the room, knowing that if I didn't find something soon, I was in serious trouble.
Maybe the situation wasn't even that bad, in retrospect. Maybe it doesn't sound bad to you. But to me - this was terrifying. No one was around. No one knew what was going on. I was by myself in this struggle, and it sucks, to feel powerless, to feel like something is getting the best of you. This low was getting the best of me - me, for all of my drive and passion, I am transformed into a lifeless, irritable zombie of my former self when I am low. Transformed in a moment of bodily shock and pure desperation, I don't even recognize who I am. I am simply someone who needs something, in those moments. It's those moments when you realize how dependent you are... and how scary it is to be so dependent. And if you don't treat a low, you will eventually pass out, and can go into seizures and die. And judging by my blood sugar at the time, that wasn't necessarily too far off.
I sank down to the ground and cried. The low was messing with my head. I was panicking and my heart was racing, but I was so weak I didn't really have any idea of what to do. I couldn't think straight, couldn't react, only cry and curse Diabetes and wish things were different. I did this for about 4 minutes until I lifted my chin up and looked at myself in the mirror.
Look at you, Lacy. This isn't you. And Diabetes isn't you - you aren't helpless. Don't like this situation? It sucks? Get up and do something about it.
I brushed myself off and got up. I grabbed the room key and left, barefoot and stumbling, down towards the lobby. Someone had to be around that could help me, right? I took me about 3 minutes to pad slowly down to the lobby, and once I found it I couldn't see anyone inside, it was midafternoon on a holiday and very quiet. But I saw the breakfast room, and though everything was cleaned up, like a beacon of hope, a lonely orange lay in the fruit basket. I was so excited I ran right over to it and reached to grab it.
"Can I help you?" One of the worker men asked as he came out of the kitchen. Startled, I said, "I'm low - I have low blood sug - well, I'm Diabetic and I need help and - do you have any more fruit?"
He went back into the kitchen and brought out two apples. I was delighted. "Thank you!" I said, biting into one of the apples, holding the other one in my hand like a trophy and walking slowly back to the room. It didn't take long to feel much better after eating both, and I was so thankful in that moment for apples and nice hotel employees that I almost forgot the panic I'd felt just minutes before.
These situations are scary, but I have to let them serve as wake up calls to remind myself that Diabetes never takes a break. I think that's what's so bad about it - it's a constant barrage of numbers, blood sugars, carbs, emotions, lows, highs, dry mouths, everything. It wears you down and just when you think you have had enough, you have no choice but to turn on the bedside lamp and give yourself the Lantus you forgot to administer before bed. Diabetes is as much psychological as it is physical - as a reader, I hope you will understand that. Imagine all of your troubles, and then pile on one more thing, one more constant, neverending thing, and ask yourself how you feel. When you're running late for class and you have to eat breakfast so you aren't low later but didn't make time to test and you have to drive to class while eating breakfast when do you find time to give your insulin? When, in all of those dicey, running-late times, do you make time to test when you're already exhausted because you've worked three days straight and gotten practically no sleep? Do you test, or sleep and face the guilt of a possibly bad number later...then you are the only one who can be held responsible if you get complications later in life?
These mind games are the games we live with.
That I live with. The time I say I won't need to take a snack is the time when I'll need one, and so on. And so I adapt, I get better, I bring 3 snacks instead of 1. Diabetes gives life lessons about treating it, just like life gives us lessons in order to better live.
As the case with most lessons, though, they usually come after the situation in which we could have used them.
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