Sweating, shaking and worried

And so it happened. Living in my daughter's house during the power outage for six days now, with a slightly altered schedule and routine, finally took its toll on me.

Last night at 1:30 a.m., low blood sugar left me shaking and sweating, prompting wife Suellen to fetch some fruit juice which she poured down my throat and brought me back from the dregs of hypoglycemic despair.

Then with blood sugar back to a still low 61 mg/dL, I stood in the room with my shirt and sweatpants dripping wet. Excessive sweating is one effect of low blood sugar. I changed clothes and dried off and worked for an hour to restore my blood sugar to a normal level, while watching "The Desperate Housewives of Orange County" on TV.  Then in the numb fog of the aftermath of low blood sugar, I returned to bed, still chilled from sweating so much and feeling as though I'd been given some knockout drug.

I was groggy. My IQ had dipped, although the return of blood to the depleted brain does cause some wild creativity. Sometimes I write down my thoughts that seem so amazing at the time but turn out to be drunken banter when I read them the morning after.  

Awakening this morning, I  felt dreary and unenergized. Still groggy.

This was the first dramatic low blood sugar I'd experienced since April. I could blame the power outage for putting me off schedule. But that's a cop out. Whenever situations change, as occurs so often in life, those of us with diabetes must adapt. I did not eat enough last night and went to bed with blood sugar that was too low. (About 80). I'm to blame, not the snow or Allegheny Power.

Today I feel like a boxer who'd been down for the count the night before. Brain remains somewhat foggy. Slight headache. Eyelids wanting to close. Hands cramping up a bit as I type. I'm drinking Vitaminwater to get a little extra sugar in the blood, which continues to be slightly low, and have apple juice available in case I need a stronger boost of sugar. Probelm is, I'm not hungry, but the sugar continues to be low. 

Typically after an episode of hypoglycemia, the blood sugar rebounds with a vengeance. The next day usually features higher blood sugars as the body pours sugar stored in the liver and other organs into the bloodstream in reaction to the grand depletion of blood glucose. Nature overreacts. But, for some reason, that's not occurring today.

Go figure. Nothing about his disease is thoroughly predictable or routine.

So I'm testing my blood sugar even more often than usual.  I feel like I'm floating in a mental coccoon.

But worst of all is the fear that such episodes will further destroy kidney function. I blame a really bad episode of low blood sugar that left me unconscious for four hours for destroying enough kidney function to convince me to get on the transplant list. Hopefully last night won't affect kidney function because Sue did bring me back to life quickly. And yet, it still causes concern. I have 17 percent kidney function, which is  only a few percentage points over the point of complete renal failure.

So how was your night?