I have lived with two diabetic parents for my whole life. My mom was
diagnosed with gestational diabetes, but it never went away like her
doctor said it would. My father got diabetes about a year after i was
born due to bad eating habits. I have had to learn all about diabetes
and how to deal with some very stressful situations. On Valentine's day
one year my mom went into a diabetic seizure. We live together and i
was the only other person in the house. Looking back now it's obvious I
should have called an ambulance, but i called my dad at work instead.
He told me that if i didn't calm down my mom would die. Well that got
me into action right away. It was pure luck that my mom gave me candies
in the morning for Valentine's day, because she had eaten all the other
candies in the house. So i sat with her for three hours watching my mom
slowly regain her consciousness and become herself again. It was a
surreal experience. One that happened to my dad when we were up at the
cottage in the middle of nowhere with my step mom about 4 months later.
At first my step mom and I had assumed my dad just drank too much so
that was why he was acting strange. Then he suddenly jumped up and
somehow stumbled into the cottage and sat in teh kitchen, my step mom
followed very quickly. By this point I knew I was about to relive my
experience with saving my mom because my step mom didn't know very much
about what to do when their sugars got that low. I took a second to
collect myself then went inside to help. I walked in and she was
feeding him sandwiches, I instantly started running through the
cupboards. I came up with marshmallows, cookies, and hot chocolate mix.
so i gave my step mom the cookies and marshmallows and told her to make
him eat those. I put the hot chocolate mix in a cup of milk (which had
to have been disgusting) and gave him that to drink. He was very
emotional and my step mom was distraught. I made sure he was feeling ok
then he went to bed to sleep off the effects. We checked on him every
hour, i think, and he was doing fine. My dad also developed a huge
callous on his shoulder, where he injected his insulin. He went to the
doctors and found out he was having a lot of low sugars because the
insulin wasn't reaching his blood stream. Since he's been on his new
insulin he has changed his whole life, not always for the best but at
least his insulin works. My mom had an accident when she had her low
sugar, it happened in her sleep. She is amazing at tracking her sugars,
she had to be because she was a single mother. It has all made me more
aware of how you can lose a loved one in any second, that's all it
takes. I learned to never take things for granted and to be grateful
for the moments I get.