Making the low go

Tuesday 5/11 – Making the low go. Tell us about your favorite way to treat a low. Juice? Glucose tabs? Secret candy stash? What’s your favorite thing to indulge in when you are low? What do you find brings your blood sugar up fast without spiking it too high?

Every diabetic has had to deal with a low blood sugar having no idea as to how much lower it will go before it levels out and/or begins to rise. When this happens to me, I treat using one of the following:

The best: glucose tabs. Essentially 4 grams of pure energy. They are so sickly-sweet it's hard to really overeat them.

A good alternative: a small can of orange pop. I've found this works pretty well because (a) there is only half a can, (b) it is drinkable, which is nice when chewing becomes an issue, and (c) you can drink it when it is warm and it doesn't taste bad.

The common: one of the problems I have with just glucose tabs is that they bring you up but there is nothing of substance there. In those cases (read: 2:30 am) I sometimes opt for a bowl of cereal and rice milk. 1 cup of each does the job. The trick is to stop eating after one cup. Better said than done, particularly when you a bit "out of sorts."

And now a quick story of a diabetic nightmare:

It was a large slice of chocolate birthday cake covered in frosting. Ever diligent, I computed the amount of carbs necessary to cover and gave myself the bolus. About the time my insulin pump beeped that it had injected all of the requisite insulin my stomach decided that it didn't want any cake. In fact, it didn't want anything inside it and caused me to run to the toilet and throw up.

So now I had absolutely nothing in my stomach and enough insulin coursing through my bloodstream to cause a serious medical situation. I grabbed a Coke from the refrigerator and did my best to chug it down, then threw it up, chugged more down, threw it up. It was awful. Adding to the problem is that due to its carbonation, it is pretty hard to chug large amounts of Coke. It is also sickly sweet, nauseatingly sweet.

I was eventually able to get enough sugar into my system to balance out the insulin, but the experience haunted me for a long time. I stopped bolusing before meals and would wait until after I had eaten. I've gotten over that, but still I rarely bolus until the food I've ordered has been delivered.