Yet Another Bout with Death, late 2007

The following post was first published some time in late 2007:

Once again, I have been plucked from the hands of death. Not more than an hour ago, I was slipping over to “the other side,” but for the 200th or so time in my life, I was spared.

As an insulin-dependent diabetic, I often walk that line between life and death. Though elevated blood sugar wrecks long-term damage, such as heart and kidney failure, it is the low blood sugars that are the most worrisome. When my blood sugar dips, fuel is not getting to my body, and my brain shuts down too. My response varies greatly, from paranoia to an oppressive feeling that everything that is transpiring in the world is somehow my doing, my fault. When my son is with me during an insulin reaction, I often revert to the emotional wherewithal of a preschooler, whining that he is going to abandon me when he runs off to find some orange juice or chocolate to give my sugar a boost.

Sometimes I lose consciousness, as I did at Hof’s Hut a few years ago. I had taken my shot before walking the mile or so to the restaurant with my son—definitely not a smart idea. The place was packed, and so our meal was delayed. While waiting for the food, I dipped into insulin shock, becoming hostile when Aaron tried to get me to drink some orange juice, then collapsing into my bowl of soup. Aaron summoned paramedics, who gave me glucose intravenously, as I was unable to swallow. One clear sign of low blood sugar is my biting at orange juice while it spills out of my mouth, unable as I am to negotiate the simple act of swallowing liquids.

Sometimes low blood sugar hits me in the middle of the night. These are especially dangerous times, as I’m asleep and I live alone. So many times I have awoken to find my nightshirt, my sheets, and my pillows drenched in sweat, literally dripping in sweat. No, not perimenopausal drippings. Not even digging-a-trench-on-a-100-degree-day sweat. This is a sweat like no other. An adrenaline sweat. A this-could-be-my-last-moments-on-Earth kind of sweat. In one last ditch effort, my body is crying out for help, and its tears are this sweat. Wake up, Heidi! it’s screaming. Do something quick! There have been times when I’ve rolled back to sleep—not a good thing. Always, during these shadow moments when who I am is dissolving and I feel myself fading into another realm, something-I-know-not-what speaks up from inside me and shouts, Get something to eat! This aspect of self or of Self comes to the fore and takes charge. I stagger into the kitchen and find some juice and somehow get it into my mouth and down my throat. Once, during a middle-of-the-night plunge into darkness, I was so uncoordinated that I banged into walls, cutting my forehead and calves, and leaving a trail of blood on the carpet on my frantic trek to the refrigerator.

When I was pregnant with Aaron, my blood sugar once dropped so low that my then-husband came home from work to find me slumped against the living room wall, one eye staring upward, the other sunk downward at the carpet, unable to tell him my name. When the paramedics arrived and checked my blood sugar, it was 10, an insanely low level, as normal is between 70 and 140, and I begin feeling symptoms of low sugars at 65. Even though it was a hot summer day, I was shaking with cold. This was the first of five emergency-room visits during my pregnancy.

Last weekend, Aaron and I visited the South Coast Botanical Gardens. While walking the grounds, I began to slip into insulin shock, reverting to a scared, uncooperative two-year-old. After he somewhat revived me with one of the glucose tablets I keep in my purse and a slice of baklava I had squirreled away, held over from lunch, I marveled at the rock about 50 yards away. In my mind, I had been standing or sitting near that rock and had no conception of how I had walked from there to where I now stood. These are the space-time rifts I enter during insulin shock.

So, this morning was just such a brush with death in a long, long history—35 years to be exact—of brushes with death. I had gone downstairs to take out the garbage. In the courtyard I encountered Al, the manager. Every time I talk with him, he tells me of people he has threatened with bodily harm and of his Vietnam days. This time he went on about his bad-ass motorcycle-gang days in which he “didn’t kill no one, just bust up a bunch of bars and cars and took swings at a few cops.” After I had extricated myself from Al, I walked up the stairs to my apartment. Here I was given my first warning sign: I felt dizzy and had trouble walking.

I tried to write an article whose deadline is fast-approaching, but I couldn’t seem to get out the first word. I went to lie down—usually something I would consider shameful at 10 in the morning. I lay there, floating in and out of coherent thought, as a vague feeling of oppression descended upon me. Yet from some deep place within my soul emerged that saving voice: You need something to eat. I managed to push the covers off my legs and stumble into the kitchen, clutching the walls to steady me. I checked my blood sugar: 43. I looked in the fridge. Not much there. I began whimpering and whining, even though Aaron wasn’t there. I was becoming a small child and yet I knew I had to take care of myself—something the child definitely resented. Help me! Help me! I demanded like the scared little girl that I was. Please help me! I couldn’t find any juice or anything sweet besides a little bit of jam at the bottom of a jar. I spooned it out and wolfed it down. But I needed more. I grabbed a piece of bread and gnawed at it, crying and complaining like a frustrated child. The thought came to me that usually comes to me during these times: I’m dying. This is the last. Just lie down and pass over. But there, too, was that other voice, prodding me to eat something more, to pull through.

Because I am writing this, it is obvious that I did pull through. Once again. And this time, like all the other times, I said thank you afterwards. Thank you to that part of me that resisted the pull of death. Thank you to that voice deep within me, the voice of God (?), that wants me to pull through. Through these private, mostly solitary, bouts with mortality, I have come to know the divine in a way that few others can know. When all else is stripped away, when even the ground of my little self, my personality, is gone, something remains—life itself, calling to me to continue to live, again and again and again.