It turns out, glass bottles are not a comfortable place to land.
I found this out about eight years ago, when I was in the midst of what I call my ‘bad diabetic’ phase. I was working part time when it happened, splitting my week between a lovely museum job and studying for my MA. This split meant that, every Wednesday lunchtime, I would leave the museum and make the short walk down the road to the university. It was usually such an easy trip, but on this day things went wrong.
It started with a lack of blood sugar check.
Blood sugar checks are basically the foundation behind everything we do as diabetics. If our sugars are good, we can do whatever we want. They give us freedom to eat, drink, run and have fun. If they’re bad, we need to fix them.
If you’ve no idea what your blood sugars are then you don’t know what you can do.
At this point in my life, blood sugar checks were something I just didn’t care about. My doctor would often look at my results and struggle to count the checks to double figures over the last few months. I didn’t understand why I had to do them. They felt like a hassle, so I didn’t bother.
On that Wednesday, I hadn’t bothered for weeks. That thought terrifies me now. Like, as I type it, I want to check my blood sugar straight away just in case. However, you only get that fear by doing the stupid shit I used to. You only grow paranoid about it by passing out into a wine pyramid.
I signed out of my work computer and started to head down to the university. It was a really sunny day, so the sweat dripping from my head didn’t worry me. I remember feeling really tired, but again - sunny, right? It does that to you.
The next few minutes are a bit of a blur.
It felt like I was sleep walking. My eyes kept shutting and, when I opened them again, I was in a different place. It was as if I’d walked for ages without noticing it. Like I was floating.
At that point I started to feel dizzy. Something in my head reminded me I was diabetic and that this kind of crap can happen, and suddenly I knew I had to do something about it.
Alas, I didn’t know what. Unlike now, where I carry Dextro around with me everywhere I go, I didn’t used to bother with any of that. I had nothing in case of emergency. I went into the SPAR shop and had a look around.
By now I was basically unconscious, merely functioning on muscle memory and a faint understanding of how shopping worked.
If you’re a diabetic and you find yourself in this situation, here’s what you should do next:
GO STRAIGHT TO THE FULL SUGAR COKE. DOWN A BOTTLE. SIT THE FUCK DOWN.
Explain things to the cashier.
MY GOD. DRINK ANOTHER BOTTLE. YOU ARE ON THE VERGE OF HAVING A FIT AND IT WILL NOT BE FUN.
Here’s what I did:
Browsed the sweets selection.
Picked up a packet of white chocolate mini eggs.
Failed to type in my PIN because all the numbers were moving.
Passed out into a pyramid of wine bottles.
Imagine this image, just with me falling head first into it as a SPAR employee faces the stark realisation that they’re not paid enough to deal with this.
When I woke up in the back of an ambulance, I was drenched head to toe in red wine. I stank of it. The paramedics asked if I was drunk, because you know, I smelt like I was. As I sat in the hospital bed and the wine started to dry, doctors asked me if I was drunk. Other patients asked me if I was drunk. Even I started to ask if I was drunk. When my very kind flatmate came to pick me up, she was jealous that I’d got drunk without her.
I had cuts all over my body, a black eye, a sore head and absolutely none of the enjoyment I would have had if I was actually drunk.
In the battle of man v wine pyramid, the wine pyramid most definitely won.
Check your blood sugar, yeah?