Low Places

05/13/08 Living Well

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fi-----------ne!” I screamed the lyrics to REM’s song while hanging halfway out of the window of a minivan. Passing cars honked and their passengers pointed, cheered, laughed, found the song on the radio, and chimed in.

My girlfriend grabbed my pants to keep me from falling headlong into the street while her mother cursed. My girlfriend then stuffed more hard candy in my mouth, as she had done before. Again, I laughed and sprayed her with it. I resumed my singing and my girlfriend’s mother floored it, moving as quickly as possible to the hospital.
   
I don’t remember any of this. All that I’ve told you is second-hand information, because by the time I got treatment, I was belligerent, swearing and had a blood glucose reading of 23 mg/dl.
   
I’d spent the day trying to recover from a stomach bug, mostly by drinking ginger ale and Pepto Bismol. I watched my glucose level hover between 65-90 mg/dl and tried to adjust my insulin to my food intake, or lack thereof. But the situation was beyond my control and soon my head was as troubled as my digestive tract. The last clear memory I have of the evening is testing my glucose level and repeating, almost as a mantra, “Something isn’t right.”
   
From there I turned into the whirling dervish of hypoglycemia. Once the initial threshold of jitters and hunger is surpassed, a new realm of an almost drunken euphoria emerges. I embodied this as a dancing spectacle. I twirled and pranced in the middle of the emergency room and then ran atop a bank of chairs, headed toward the bathroom, where upon reaching the door, I dropped my pants. My girlfriend busily tried to convince the staff that I was not intoxicated and, indeed needed medical care. 
   
Something changed while I was in the bathroom. I moved away from the euphoria and entered the last stage of hypoglycemia before unconsciousness. I became volatile, cursing at nurses, other patients, and my girlfriend. The staff did take notice, but was bewildered because I was still standing. My girlfriend managed to test my level while her mother held my arm. The resulting 23 mg/dl got me strapped to a gurney.
   
When I awoke, I felt as if an injection of clarity had passed into my bloodstream. The raucous static in my mind dissipated, and the gauzy sheen of blurs around me solidified.  I saw myself, both arms tied in restraints, one with an IV in it, and my legs were restrained. Sticky goo congealed across my cheek and chest, and the coppery taste of blood ringed my mouth. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, my girlfriend and her mother, all hovered around my bed, their faces transfixed, as if I were some show at the carnival.
   
I haven’t since experienced a hypoglycemic episode of this magnitude, nor do I ever want to. The fear this encounter imbued within me has left me guarded and rightfully so, because the song I so gleefully belted out could easily have been a much more grim and prophetic statement.

Eric Devine, 30, has lived with type 1 diabetes since he was 12. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and two daughters where he works as a high school English teacher. Devine is an avid writer and is currently seeking publication of two Young Adult novel manuscripts.