My Hypoglycemic Day

I know, I know. I’ve only been talking about doctors and my health lately. But, since it’s a quickly-changing story, and one that I wish I could have read about in plain language somewhere over the last seven years, I’m going to make one more post on the same subject.

I went to the doctor for immunizations (required for me to take classes in the spring), and while I was there she took a health history and ordered some blood tests. Most of them pretty routine panel tests, but also thyroid and some other tests that are designed to test for PCOS.

I got a call from a doctor who was on call with my doctor’s practice about three days after I went in for the tests. He wanted to know if I was aware that my blood sugar was alarmingly low when I went in for the blood test. I wasn’t, of course. My blood sugar isn’t something I have at the forefront of my mind. He assumed that I was diabetic and had taken too much insulin. I’m not. He asked some questions about how I was feeling right at that moment, and then told me to call my doctor on Monday.

Right.

So, I spent the weekend researching hypoglycemia. I talked for two hours to a friend who is hypoglycemic. I read the Wikipedia page. You know, the basic obsessive researcher-girl stuff. And here’s the thing: everything that I have been begging doctors all over Nevada to help me with is explained by low blood sugar.

The constant hunger. Not regular hunger. FEED ME, SEYMOUR hunger. Crazy-making hunger. The intense fatigue. Mood swings. Unexplained weight gain. Disorientation. Upset stomach. Bloating. Not ever, ever being able to sleep through the night. Waking up so tired that I burst into tears.

On Monday, I was able to get the full blood test results, and also my doctor ordered another blood glucose test. That one came out on the very low edge of normal, with 11 hours of fasting. I’d fasted 17 hours before the very low test. She marked on the lab result that my thyroid function is borderline low, and it was obvious from the tests that despite taking iron daily, I’m still quite anemic.

I’m going to share with you what today was like for me. I think it’s important to get it out there because I was not able to find a straightforward description of a hypoglycemic moment.

I went to my son’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting at 10 a.m. I’d eaten breakfast and expected to be home by 11, and then have time for lunch before I went to a work meeting at 1. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the IEP meeting went long and I didn’t have time to go home. I left there with food on my mind, but still feeling pretty sane.

I got paid for a job through Paypal while I was in the meeting, so I thought I’d go to a grocery store, buy something to eat and get cash back to withdraw the money. Sane, right? This is what normal people do. Only I couldn’t find a grocery store. In my own neighborhood. I was almost in tears. The grocery stores were not where I thought they should be. I finally went into a CVS. I knew that I needed real food, so I just got my money and left.

Then I couldn’t find a restaurant. I finally stopped at a gas station. I went inside, and there was nothing there that seemed familiar to me. No cheap little hotdogs or pre-packaged sandwiches. For some reason this gas station had a full-service deli inside. Like a mash-up between an AM/PM and a Jimmy Johns. The sandwiches cost $10 and I couldn’t pay that much. I couldn’t decide on anything else to buy, either. I just stood there for at least 10 minutes, close to tears.

Then I saw a 7-Eleven across the street. Oh thank Heaven! I drove there, bought some juice and a chicken salad sandwich, and within minutes everything inside me had snapped back into shape. I went to my work meeting. About an hour later I was so exhausted I was barely able to drive home. I stumbled inside, sat on my bed and fell asleep sitting straight up. Two hours later, I woke up with a raging headache and an almost desperate need to eat again.

What this afternoon was like? It’s been so normal for me the last seven years, since my youngest daughter was born, that I had started to accept that some days, I’m incapacitated. Even after a lot of work toward accepting myself and my body, and raising awareness of Fat Acceptance, until today, having such an intense need for food meant only one thing: a lack of discipline. As in, no wonder I’m so fat, I can’t even eat lunch a couple of hours late without breaking down.

I guess the moral of this story is to listen to your body. If you don’t feel good, it’s almost a guarantee that it’s trying to tell you something other than “lose some weight, lard ass.” In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that the human body doesn’t even have that signal.