Thank You Twitter

Sometimes I feel like I live in a vacuum. Not because everything sucks, no!! That’s not it at all (cause really, things are pretty darn good). But a lot of times I’ll throw stuff out on the internet just to get it off my chest – not thinking that anyone is really reading it or paying attention. I mean, *you’re* reading this now…but…Facebook and Twitter… you know how it is. Maybe

Anyway, last night I learned that there are some pretty amazing people hiding out here in my computer! And I’m going to tell you about them. But of course there’s some background first 🙂

As you know, I’m diabetic. I’ve been on insulin now for about 9 years.  I take an injection at night before bed (in addition to some new ones at meal times – but yesterday was actually a really good day – sugar-level-wise) and generally go to what passes for sleep these days and wake up and re-start my day!

For the uninitiated, insulin smells like bandaids. Go ahead. Go open a box and take a big sniff. I’ll wait…

To continue, about a month after I started the insulin routine, I did my usual injection and almost immediately could ‘taste’ the insulin in the back of my throat.  Went to bed, as usual. Unusually, about 2 hours later I woke up with my heart racing, sweating like I’d just walked to the starting corrals at Disney (haha!) and shaking. I knew something was wrong so grabbed my glucose meter. First indication that I was in trouble was that I couldn’t figure out how to use the meter. Eventually I got it together enough to test and my blood sugar had dropped to 25. Now, my doctor would get worried if I fell below 65 or so, so I KNEW this was bad. At the time I had small cans of real soda in my fridge so I drank one and waited for the magic. Then I had some milk and waited some more. I may have had some candy around at the time and had that as well. Slowly my numbers crawled back into normal ranges and I went to bed.

Since then, it hadn’t happened again. Until last night. I had that same taste in my throat as I went to bed so grabbed some leftover jellybeans from Easter. Just in case. And then a couple of hours later, it happened. I woke up, heart pounding,sweating, and shaky. This time I had more of my wits about me and tested and was low – 37.

The difference this time was social media. I made a random comment on the Twitters that my sugars were low and that I would call 911 if it didn’t come up. Then I put my phone down and started eating jelly beans. And waiting. And testing. And eating more jelly beans. And waiting. And eventually my symptoms went away and my numbers returned to low normal numbers. And I went back to sleep.

Until the door bell rang. And Phred started barking. And I looked at the clock and it was 1-ish in the am. The bell rang again. And then again. Finally I figured I should get up and see what was going on. Looked out the window and there  was a Middletown police car in my driveway.

My first thought was “oh shit”. Figured either they had the wrong house or someone’s dog was out.

As I was heading downstairs, they turned their big spotlight on lighting up my whole bedroom and rang the bell again! I opened the door to a young officer. After some initial confusion we confirmed that someone from Indiana had called and they were concerned – and THEN the lightbulb went on (I’m sure the handsome young officer saw it go on!) and realized that I should probably check back in on Twitter.

Special props to Kate and Patty for getting in touch with my local police department. And Jenn for, as always, being there even from Mexico.

As soon as I realized that these fabulous women were worried I checked in.

I don’t think I can apologize enough for making them worry — and there are no words to express how thankful I am to them and how much I appreciate their concern. And can’t wait to give both of them a huge hug the next time we are running Disney together!!

Thanks so very much Kate and Patty. Ya’ll are AMAZING and I’m very lucky to have ladies like you watching my back

Tags: Gratitude, invisible friends