Down the Memory Lane

There are some memories in each one of our lives which are buried inside our hearts. Memories, which we wish would get vague and disappear with time and the more we wish the clearer they get. We push them in a dark hole and the more we push the more deeply embedded they get in our lives. In this article I would like to share one such memory. And I hope to liberate myself through it.

Sunday mornings are no less than blessings for almost everyone. For office goers it is a day to relax and not think about their rude, always in ‐your ‐ face ‐ bosses and get away from the much notorious office culture. For students it is a chance to get up as late as they want and probably skip taking a bath and save water. For moms it is one day when they don’t have to get up early in the morning and go through the highly monotonous task of packing lunch for their husbands and their children. All in all, Sundays are what make us go through one more week of the same old daily routine and get enveloped in the blanket of boredom for six tiring days.

So there we were, on a Sunday; me, my mom and my dad, sitting on sofas. All three of us were reading newspapers and no noise could be heard in our house except for the turning of the pages of the newspapers. At exactly 9 am my dad got up and went outside to talk on phone, my mom asked me what I wanted for breakfast and I switched on the TV to tune into… well… anything. The same routine. It was one hour since I had taken my morning shot of lantus and as a result, my mom rushed through my breakfast. She came back from the kitchen with a chapatti in one hand and a toast in the other. I took the toast from her and started munching slowly. One sip from my glass of milk and one bite of the toast, for me, it was the best breakfast. And then it began .

By then I could tell when my sugars were getting low. And while munching my breakfast my eyes fell upon my hands and noticed the shaking. Not a hypo, please! I thought as I waited for two more minutes to be totally sure. I shouldn’t have. The shaking got pretty intense. I got up and took out two toffees from the drawer and threw them in my mouth.

‘hypo?’ mom asked in a concerned tone and I replied with a weak nod. Usually, the shaking stops in ten minutes but that day it would go on for what seemed like forever. After exactly ten minutes, I got up to fetch for some glucose biscuits but was stopped by my mom.

‘Don’t eat too much; your sugar levels will go haywire.’ I agreed and sat down. And then a feeling of numbness started to take over my body. I got up again and this time went straight to the kitchen and ate three biscuits. But to my utter bewilderment the trembling didn’t stop. Totally sure that something was wrong with my body’s response system I walked back in the room and reached for the switch to turn on the lights for the dressing room(which is where we kept the glucometer) and suddenly I realized I couldn’t walk. I just stood where the switch board was and stared at it. I was struggling to keep my eyes open. Five steps! Just five steps! I somehow dragged myself to the room (I am pretty sure I could have given a complex to a drunkard) and tested. 30. My eyeballs would have fallen out of their sockets if they could. I turned around and realized I couldn’t go back to the bedroom. I was frozen and I was finding difficult to stand let alone walking. I wanted to call my mother but couldn’t. It seemed as if someone had sucked the energy out of each and every cell of my body. Everything was slowly shutting down. My eyes had closed. My head was spinning. My legs were trembling. I would have cried but that would have required energy. I leaned onto the dressing table. I knew I was about to faint any second .If I fainted here nobody would know. Make it to the bed, I ordered myself. After three steps I knew I was going to faint. Everything blacked out and my body was about to fall to the ground when a hand grabbed my neck. Whoever that was must have been struggling as my entire bodyweight was on him or her. Then, something was forced inside my mouth and the person let me fall. Luckily I fell on the bed and succumbed to darkness.

I opened my eyes expecting to see nurses, long tubes and everything but was hugely surprised to find myself lying on my own bed. I could hear faint murmurs and it turned out my parents were in a heated discussion. But both of them seemed to be composed. The line my mom spoke on seeing that I had woken up summed up the day‐ ‘Rony, you scared the hell out of me!’ ‘Scared’. That was the first time I was truly scared. So much so that I have never really discussed this incident with anyone.

The thing that still ‘scares’ me is that I ‘still’ don’t know what caused the attack that day (almost three years ago). I had done everything as was in my routine. I had taken insulin at the same time, woken up at the same time, read the same newspaper, watched the same channel, eaten the same breakfast and taken the same dosage of insulin. And still it happened. Probably, the answer lies in the fact that no insulin comes without the unpredictability factor. The same dose of insulin can cause different reactions at times. The point is one should be prepared. Danger doesn’t come with a forewarning. It just pops out of nowhere and pushes you into situations you would never have seen yourself getting into. All that is required to tackle them is a firsthand knowledge of dealing with a severe attack of hypoglycemia. I believe in learning from my bad experiences but that was one bad experience I would have given anything to avoid.