Ah, hypoglycemia. Everyone's favourite
pancreatic disorder.
In Grade 2, when I was 6 years old, I started getting sick at lunch time. I wouldn't throw up, but my stomach would feel all swollen and distended, and I became too weak to play. I would just try to sleep it off on the classroom couch, and often had to go home early.
My mum took me in to see the family doctor. He ran the hypoglycemia test -- two blood tests, one before and one after a meal. I was diagnosed.
I was told that I might grow out of it, or, because of my family history, it might turn into diabetes. In the mean time, it could be diet-controlled.
Sometime in May of 1999, I (age 18) started getting fatigue and depression. I had assumed that, since I didn't develop diabetes, I must have outgrown my hypoglycemia. I thought I might be anemic, but my doctor said that actually my hemoglobin levels were quite high. But I was still hypoglycemic. It could still be diet-controlled.
Ah, hypoglycemia, my old friend.
This is how hypoglycemia works for the hypoglycemic. Whatever sugar you ingest gets converted into energy much faster than it would in an average person -- and in fact, much sooner than any of the other nutrients in the same food get broken down. If you eat something particularly sweet, you get a freaky sugar-high that makes you really hyper, speak really fast, tell crazy jokes nobody else gets, giggle maniacally, and try to climb things you've never climbed before (like buildings).
This is the fun side of hypoglycemia. Now let me tell you about the evil side.
Because my pancreas is continually churning out insulin, my sugar reserves continually decrease faster than those of someone with a cooperative pancreas. That means that I start suffering the effects of starvation within about 18 hours of not eating, whereas someone else could probably go for 40 hours or so before they start to feel this way.
If I'm happy when the low comes, I'm crazy-happy. It's almost the same as a high. But that only lasts for as long as I'm happy. If I become sad, or even neutral, the crazy-sad kicks in.
Crazy-sad works like this. First of all, you realise that you are alone, painfully alone, and nobody will ever understand you. You realise that, unlike all those angst-ridden teenagers, you can say it and it is true. What's more, you realise that everyone else is out to make a big fool out of you. They don't have any sense of goodness or honesty or sincerity, or if they do then they're just ignorant; in any event, they're all set to crush you and everything you value.
At this point, you are likely to curl up into a foetal position, crying, trying simultaneously to be nonintrusive, unhurtable, and also so pitiful that someone will help you and show you some tenderness and attention.
Sometime later (probably after 24 hours), you will start to walk pretty funny (funny as in, not in a straight line), bumping into things and generally having trouble standing up. If this continues without food, vomiting and black-outs are imminent.
Although chronic hypoglycemia ain't as bad as diabetes (since it can be diet-controlled), it's not a fun fun funfest. I offered to go halfsies on pancreases with my severely diabetic uncle, but unfortunately the technology doesn't yet exist.
Maybe some day, though.