Mar 11, 2008

Where's Your Brain When You Need It?

Jan Chait

Hypoglycemia is a strange thing. Just when you need at least a couple of brain cells to rub together, they seem to have all disappeared. Perhaps I was a bit hypoglycemic when I wrote last week's blog entry ("South of the Border [and So Was My Glucose]"), because it appears I didn't make myself clear enough.

First of all, I do not, and never have, lived in Texas. I am a native of West Virginia currently living in Indiana. I've lived in several other states but, aside from changing planes, have only been in Texas once and that was to visit my friend, Nancy, for a few days during the year she lived in San Antonio. Nancy's husband is career military and they don't live anywhere for very long. This year, they are in Germany.

As far as food goes, I like pretty much everything except Brussels sprouts and some fish. I have eaten my way through the local or native cuisine on three continents and several small island nations without a problem. But the food has to be edible. The cook at the restaurant in Nuevo Laredo didn't even reach the level of "mediocre."

Most importantly, however: Of course there were snacks for the children. I still take snacks for them on trips even though they are now teenagers. However, snacks are not meals, plus we were in an urban, commercial area with plenty of food and drink to buy. In addition, we did plan to have dinner in Mexico. We just selected the wrong restaurant.

Now to my supposed lack of glucose tablets. I don't recall that I've ever been without some source of fast-acting sugar. My old CDE, Sonja, would disown me if she thought I hadn't heeded her teachings. I can, however, recall times when, as my friend Ann puts it, I "did not have mental access to [my] glucose tablets." When you are hypoglycemic, your brain takes a vacation (to put it mildly).

At home, I have glucose tabs and glucose gel on my nightstand (among other places). However, when I go low in the middle of the night, I raid the refrigerator. Maybe sweet pickles sound better (it's happened). Maybe I decide that, since I have a kitchen full of food, I need to save the glucose for an emergency.

On that particular day in TexMex Land, I wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Nothing but a peanut butter and jelly sandwich would do.

(For those of you thinking: "PB&J is not a fast-acting carbohydrate. You're supposed to eat a fast-acting carbohydrate," please reread the part about having a brain that's taken leave.)

Nancy once found me standing in front of her refrigerator holding a two-quart carton of orange juice, looking for the straw. (Yes, I usually know that two-quart cartons of OJ do not have a straw on the side.) I might still be standing in her kitchen looking for the straw if she had not poured a glass of juice, thrust it into my hand, and told me to drink.

Lest you think I'm the only one who turns into a brainless wonder while struggling through a hypoglycemic moment, read on:

"JUUUICE! JUUUUUICE! JUUUUUUUICE!" Ann wailed pathetically as she stood in the middle of a hotel ballroom, tears running down her cheeks, amidst a crowd of diabetes educators during an American Association of Diabetes Educators convention.

It was a Saturday morning and she had injected her morning dose of Regular insulin half an hour before she expected to eat breakfast.

Unfortunately, she was delayed, and her mind became focused on drinking some juice to get her blood glucose up. However, by the time she got to the ballroom where she expected breakfast—and orange juice—to be...the food had already been put away.

"The whole time I was wailing 'JUUUUICE!' I had glucose tablets in my pocket," she recalls. "But I couldn't think of that, because in my hypo state my brain was frozen on my last cogent thought."

Socks are also on the minds of some people when they slip into hypoglycemia.

"Socks...muuuust have sooooocks..." Sara Smarty Pants has been known to say while in the throes of hypoglycemia, describing "an instinctive, corporeal need and urge for socks. I can go from store to store, in search of exactly the right treat that I can enjoy without 'guilt' since I am low. Do I want a pastry from the Italian bakery? Do I want something from Godiva? Oh, there is Ben and Jerry's...No wait, I have Ben and Jerry's in the freezer and there is no way I am paying that much for a measly scoop. Then I will get sidetracked and remember that I...need socks and since I am in the area of Kmart anyway, why not go look, all the while dropping and dropping...Then I find myself in the checkout aisle with three packages of socks and no freaking treat."

Fortunately, she managed to come up with a couple of brain cells and grabbed something from the stash near the cash register.

It was during the O.J. Simpson trial and an unnamed contributor to the insulin-pumpers.org mail list was watching the proceedings and folding socks when her daughter came home from school.

"Call Judge Ito!" the woman screamed. "I solved the case! Just don't touch the socks!"

Instead, her daughter took a cue from the trial and brought her some...OJ.

Sometimes I ponder the miraculous machine that is our body, with its perfectly balanced systems that work in harmony. At least, they do when we don't have something that's gone awry. Like that little insulin "thing."

If I didn't already believe in a higher power, that one thing would make me think seriously about the existence of a creator. In the meantime, those of us who are pancreatically challenged and take glucose-lowering medicine of some kind do the best we can. After all, we're only human.

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