Slow Changes

By Scott Coulter When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I could tell when my blood glucose dipped below 70. Sixty was downright scary, and anything in the 50's or lower was cause for alarm. That was almost 20 years ago. Today, my blood glucose can get well into the 40's or 30's before I feel the signs. The nature of the signs have changed, too. When I was younger, the signs were entirely physical sensations. I don't remember a time when I got so low that I had cognitive effects — confusion, difficulty putting my thoughts together, disorientation, etc. That's not the case any longer. These days, I might not notice my low blood glucose until it lands me right in that "land of fog." I wrote about one of these experiences a while back in a previous blog entry. I was teaching a music lesson (my primary source of income), and my faculties simply gave out. I missed any early physical signs, and didn't realize I was low until I was stuck in the middle of a lesson, unable to even finish a sentence, scaring the living daylights out of my student, who just kept looking at me and asking, "are you OK?" As he was asking this, I was downing glucose tablets. After about 5 minutes, I began to regain my faculties and was able to at least explain to him why his teacher had turned into a nonverbal caveman in the middle of his lesson. I ended up offering him a make-up lesson the following week since my blood glucose had effectively ruined this one. This isn't a unique situation. We all...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs