In Bruges

Ray: Bruges is a shithole.
Ken: Bruges *is* not a shithole.
Ray: Bruges *is* a shithole.
Ken: Ray, we only just got off the fookin train! Could we reserve judgement on Bruges until we've seen the fookin place?

Sorry for the language but I can relate to some of the logic of Ray from In Bruges.

I have been having trouble sleeping lately. You know, pain and discomfort in neck, shoulder and back causing crapness in trying to get to sleep. I do get there eventually, but awake completely exhausted and spend the first half of each day half-awake. Come evening, I am wide awake and unable to sleep again.

It has been crapping me off, so over the weekend I decided to do something about it. I started taking some sleeping tablets.

I took a half tablet the first time. Seemed okay. I slept well and don't recall spending hours awake.

The next night happened to clock 45oC (113oF) in Melbourne. It was, errr, hot. We moved the spare mattress to under the aircon. We downed a few beers and tried to avoid venturing into other areas of the house without access to the aircon. These parts were like a stinking furnace. I felt bad for the poor dog stuck outside in these conditions.

We watched the Monday night movie, Derailed. I was interested to see a mother prepare and inject her fitting (diabetic) daughter with glucagon. Nice move from the actor (Australia's Melissa George).

Later, I was hopeful that I would be able to sleep, but lying down I had the same sense of uncomfortableness that leaves me awake and struggling for hours. I didn't want to endure another night of that so I took a full sleeping tablet.

I dreamt of escalators and spies, of being at train stations, waiting for the 'sting'. Not knowing which commuters were the bad guys. A morphed version of the station scenes from the movie I think.

I suddenly awoke - perhaps it got very exciting in the dream - and found myself breathing hard. The light was on but I didn't question it. Ewin was awake and telling me to drink some Coke.

I didn't question this behaviour at all. I assumed it was normal for him to be awake at 5.45am offering me drinks. What a man. But not Coke, thanks. That is bad for diabetics.

'I just want some Diet Coke' I replied.

He asserted again that I should drink the Coke.

Well, I was thirsty. But I don't want Coke. I want Diet Coke. I just want some Diet Coke. I'll drink, but I want to drink Diet Coke.

This seemed to annoy Ewin.

Then I started to cry. Quite enthusiastically and uncontrollably. Struggling to take in oxygen between sobs.

'Well eat some lollies then.' Ewin went to get the Diet Coke. I was pretty insistent on my preferred beverage. I continued crying as I started to shovel lollies into my mouth. This also made breathing difficult.

My Navigator started alarming. Ewin checked it. It read 41 (2.3mmol/l).

Something clicked. Perhaps it was seeing the number on the screen. Apparantly I was low?!

I started to eat more lollies. Progress was aided by controlling my breathing and reducing my sobs. I kept saying, 'I'm sorry', but I had no idea what I was sorry for. I still didn't know why I was crying in the first place. I was sorry I didn't want Coke and for annoying him, I guess.

With my insolence (my endo taught me that word!) dissolving, I started to piece things together. Ewin filled in some gaps, and also showed the bright orange box. Crap. It was all ready to go, fluid already mixed in with the powder and reloaded into the syringe with that big whopping horse needle.
Had I not come out of the seizure when I did (thanks to the dream-movie climax), it was going straight in me.

I started crying again.

Yeah it was getting a bit pathetic. Well, I think that is what Ewin was thinking. Although I am not sure what he was thinking. His wife was only moments ago in a Grand Mal Seizure next to him and only HE could do something about it, and then when she came good she lacked any common sense and got all emotional on him. Must have been a bit scary (Although if you ask him he will deny it.). Or at least a little abnormal.

I ate and ate and ate so many lollies. It took forever to bring me up again. I checked the Navigator report for the past six hours - I had been hovering about 40 (2.3ish) the entire time. Apparantly each time the Navigator alarm went off, I would wake up and acknowledge the alarm. Then I would fall straight back to sleep without doing anything about it (like eating lollies to raise the glucose levels). Brain was simply not working, and not working due to lack of glucose. And, after a while, it simply provides the best avenue to sound an alarm: a full blown seizure.

Ewin had presumed that I was dealing with the alarm appropriately - because that is what I do 99% of the time. Some nights it can sound the same alarm for faulty functionness. They sound the same. It is important to note here that the Navigator worked perfectly - this was total operator error from not having a functional brain to manage the information appropriately.

Unfortunately I have freaked others out like this in the past. After riding to the farm one weekend a few years back I freaked my parents and brother out with a middle-of-the-night seizure which was, and remains, a terrifying moment for them. I had no Navigator on that time. I have also witnessed them too. My teammate Bobby during 2007 RAAM was unable to be raised due to continued low glucose for an extended period of time. He had been lying on his Navigator and muffling the constant alarming, and we were so out of it due to pure exhaustion that no one realised the alarm noises were for something serious. Although not in seizure, he couldn't stand, couldn't talk and the images and impacts of this haunt me to this day.

What is slightly bothersome is that I can't say exactly what caused this one. It wasn't from super extended physical activity (like the farm incident). The heat itself wasn't enough to trigger such a landslide in levels, and for extended periods - I had been sleeping under the airconditioner!

I do know drinking beer on a super hot day, and taking a sleeping tablet contributed to my lack of responsiveness to the alarms. So, for now, I will stop both. I will also stop watching movies with weird train scenes and/or images of people using glucagon. The coincidence of seeing the orange box twice in one night was more than a little freaky.

I had enough guts to ride the next morning, but by the afternoon I was too scared to make the ride home. The Navigator was alarming, and I was all ears and action.

I've slowly regained confidence in the recovery and in myself. No one likes to go low, and NO ONE likes to be so low they require assistance from others. It is what we fear most of all in the short term (well we can fear long term complications, but also come to a sense of comfort that these are years and years away).

But what we do like is hitting 99 (5.5mmol/L). Diabetes perfection.

Fortunately I was able to balance out the week with a couple of 99s and an arrow pointing straight across. Ahh, diabetes perfection.


And so we continue towards this goal: striving for diabetes perfection (well, as a nice bonus) while avoiding the need for others to knock some sense into us and feed us glucose. Or a horse needle.

Ray: Ken, I grew up in Dublin. I love Dublin. If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn't, so it doesn't.