My mom said that she was the sickest she ever got when she was pregnant with
me, and having 10 other full term pregnancies to compare with I find that strange,
especially when the next most sickest she got during pregnancy was with Jesse,
who shares many of my same health issues. Mom and Dad both told me that I
looked like a starving child from Africa growing up, skinny legs and a pot
belly, even though they fed me regularly. Mom has been calling me
"hypoglycemic" for as long as I can remember, because if I went too
long without food I would get really cranky. (I have always thought that I was
supremely blessed to have the parents that I have, they were very patient with
me and my changing moods, and my bossy know-it-all nature.) I never got a
diagnosis from the doctor that my blood sugar was particularly low, but as I
grew up even I noticed the adverse symptoms that would come when I didn't get
food, and sleep. I was always scared I would get diabetes, watching my aunt
Kris and uncle Ron suffer with type 1 diabetes and subsequently die young, it
became traumatic for me to think that might be my future. But whenever I'd
visit the doctor my blood work always come back "normal range" and I
started to think that "hypoglycemic complex" was just all in my head,
and really I just had a character flaw -- inability to control my emotions.
The older I became however, and the more I learned to manage those emotions,
the more I started to deteriorate biologically, and hypoglycemia, or whatever
it was, began to rear its ugly head in ways I could no longer ignore.
"If you are clinically hypoglycemic--the opposite of diabetic--your body has lost the ability to make glucagon on its own. In someone who is hypoglycemic (a fairly rare condition), the blood sugar could become dangerously low without glucagon injections. Note that simply feeling like you experience low blood sugar occasionally--or even often--and receiving a diagnosis of hypoglycemia are two very different things. The former is likely a result of a diet that isn't properly balanced in protein and fat, while the latter is a health condition that must be managed with medically prescribed glucagon." --Diane Sanfilippo, BS, NC
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