Every morning I drive my son over an hour to school and back. Some of the stretch on State Road 44 to Deland has nothing but road: no stores or even houses. This morning, without a convenience store in sight, I got low blood sugar. I immediately grabbed my glucose tabs and found there was only one left. As I started to swerve, I knew that one would not be enough, so I searched the car frantically and found an old, warm juice box. There was no straw so I poked a hole in it and chugged. It was disgusting and had possibly even gone bad in its life in my car. But as a diabetic, I had to do what I had to do.
It made me start thinking about the gross stuff I had done in the past when I got low blood sugar. One time I drank pancake syrup right out of the bottle, which ended up making me sick. But that's not it by a longshot. I've eaten rotten bananas, crunchy pumpkin pie and even a hairy butterscotch I found on the floor, still in its wrapper but still very questionable. I've often sucked sugar out of sugar packets until the paper dissolved in my mouth.
It's not that I'm just a completely irresponsible diabetic, but things happen. I've been at single friend's houses who didn't have any food or juice in the fridge. I've been stuck on freeways in bumper to bumper traffic and sometimes, just simply forgot to buy more juice or glucose tabs. When it comes to getting my blood sugar up I've had to be extremely creative.
But in the end, I guess it all worked because I'm still here. I guess I'm stronger, too. "How old are those graham crackers?" Who cares?
