It's always good to reflect, remember, to learn and grow.
My husband has had diabetes for almost 39 years now. Type 1. Not because he's not fit but because it was his lot. One of our first times meeting, before we were officially dating and before I knew he was diabetic we were out with a group of friends. I didn't particularly take interest in my husband yet and quite honestly was not very social with him. At some point during the evening, the group of friends I knew moved on and I with them; and my husband, well I don't really know where he went or what he did.
Well, I know now, but at that time I didn't. Come to find out, he ended up in the ER because he had a diabetic low in his car in the parking structure and a parking attendant found him at some point and call 911. For him, he was too humble to want to burden anyone else with his problem so he just went to his car (well I'm sure, it wasn't that simple as nothing when a diabetic has low blood sugar is simple). For me, I was the worst of all friends because I didn't care anything about him even as a person to notice he was no longer 'in the group' of us.
As we began to date, I went through more than enough of these times to make up for that one I missed. A car accident with broken ribs due to a tree pounding in the driver's side door and me coming to claim him at the ER; praying over him so many times I can't even count, praying for God to use the one drop of juice I could manage into his mouth amidst the foam and half swallowed tongue and the choking on spit to multiply into enough sugar to bring his body back into normal functioning, the muscle spasms that had him flailing limbs and body on our bed, relentless, without ceasing, the whales, the yells, the endless choking; waking up to the snore I came to know as the warning sign that it was happening and was usually to late, rolling over to feel him in a pool of cold sweat - yep it was too late. And the solution to these almost daily overnight occurrences, well the quick solution was a Glucagon shot, which cost $20 a pop, of which we'd get one once in a while because they were too expensive and never failed, if I used it, I'd just need it again in a night or two anyway and we wouldn't have had the money to refill the Rx. So the cheaper solution, Capri Sun. The only juice that I could tilt at most any angle to feed to him while he was incoherent.
Opening the cabinet where the shot would be if we did have one and it not being there and then opening the cabinet where the juice was kept to find out he'd finished the box and we hadn't gotten more yet - my worst nightmare. Do I pray and then call 911? Do I wait it out and pray for a miracle and not call 911? If I call 911 that's $75 dollars for the ER visit and we don't even have the $20 for the shot, so that's not a good plan...If I don't call 911 will this time be the time that I pray and he doesn't make it out of it? And those last EMS people (Fitch-Rona just to clarify; we love the Mazo crew!) were incredibly rude, disrespectful of him and me, thought they knew exactly how to handle a diabetic and why does he have this much trouble all the time. Though his yearly A1C test (standard for diabetics) always came back in great standing, he took good care of his body, despite these daily lows. Sometimes I just prayed, feverishly, crying, pleading with God, methodically. Sometimes, I called 911 and bit the bullet. And here we go loading up the kids at 2,3,4am down the 25-30 minute drive to the ER; call them into school because they missed half a night of rest. Then deal with the condescending doctors. then there were the lows where I was able to get juice into him (he was good at sucking while incoherent but it all depended on the conditions he was in) and warm him up with layers of blankets since his clothes were sweat-soaked, but once he came-to, he couldn't speak - he literally could not form words with his mouth, and his legs would not work; he would have to crawl on the floor very unsteadily like a newborn learning to walk. It would take a good five to ten minutes before his mouth and limbs were functioning normally again. That was a strange season of his lows, for sure. He often bit his tongue also during these ceisures. Once though, he bit it sooooo hard, he couldn't talk and had a very difficult time eating for just shy of two weeks.
The most notable, and only because it was the most recent and the closest to my memory I still have left, was the coma he was in for two and a half days after a low. I handled it as I always do, try the juice but he was choking on his spit. Okay, pray over him. Did that and then all of a sudden he sat up in bed and choked and started turning blue....ummm, that's never happened before. Yep, calling 911 this time. So they come, he's doing better but not responsive so they strap him in and I plead, can't you wait just a bit longer to see if he comes around? I really hated hauling the kids down the to ER to do the whole pick-up thing. But nope, he just wasn't responding and they needed to take him in. But the nice EMS man offered to bring him home for me at the end of his shift in a short while if he was doing alright. Wow, so nice. But then I got the call, he's not responding yet, you should go down there. So once again, there we were, pack the juice and the goldfish and drive down to the ER. And there was daddy, in a coma. A very unrestful coma at that. There was a security guard outside his ER room standing watch as he had been combative when they brought him in, typical of some diabetics in a low state. Funny thing was she was an older woman that could have done nothing to prevent danger, had he gotten combative again. But he was strapped down like a mental patient to the bed, so the danger was not really an issue anyway.
For two days he was in a coma, I was questioned about how he cared for his diabetes, he was mocked for not taking care of himself, we were treated like this was all new and we needed to know more. My ninth year of dealing with it, his 38th....don't think we needed more information. Really, it's out of our control to a certain degree. If it were controllable, it wouldn't be a DISEASE, need I remind them??!
But he came out, with no memory of the event. And, more beautiful than that, for two weeks, he slept the most peaceful as I had ever, ever seen him sleep, ever. Wow, those were some good nights. However, the episodes did resume. I had started thinking, this is what I imagine hell to be like, having to try to aide my husband in a low constantly but he never coming out of it. The continuous anxiety, the sounds I had to listen to, seeing him clenching on his tongue and knowing the pain of that would last far longer than the time it took to create the marks, the limb thrashing, choking, loss of breath, etc. over and over and over. This was my personal hell; what happened in the dark while the rest of the world was sleeping, I was crying my eyes out praying for my husband's life.
God promises, ask for what you need in my name and you will receive. Can we ask for a miracle, to take this cup away from my husband? You bet ya! Today, I am ashamed to say, I lost count of how many months it's been that I have NOT had a night like this. I am ashamed because it is a MIRACLE I longed for our entire married lives. It has been about four months, as a rough estimate. Not only has God taken away this night-time lows, but he's also been healing my husband's body so that he is taking in less and less man-made insulin as the months go by. More often, instead of going low, he's just really really hungry. He used to have to use insulin to 'trick' his body into feeling hungry; he had no idea what he was feeling the first few times his body said to him without a shot of insulin, 'I'm hungry!'
What a glorious miracle. I can rest and he can rest at night too. Something neither of us experienced to any degree until God's grace in delivering this miracle to both of us.
I reflected on these events this morning, and although there were several miracles to speak of today, for me it was important to share this one - so that I can reclaim the miracle and so that you can see that God can do the impossible; Type 1 diabetes is not reversible like Type 2, not by human hands without a pancreas transplant. Thank you Abba.
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