So I'm in the hospital. It's 1984. at this point I am not injecting anything myself. Whatever.I am sort of taking it all in stride. I never went through any denial (at least not for the first decade or so).
My first night out of intensive care and in my own (shared) hospital room, the nurse comes in with a white styrofoam cup. She puts it on the bedside table and says if you wake up in the night and feel weird, drink this. She doesn't tell me what it is, and I don't ask. Like I said, I was pretty docile and accepting. I guess she thought I would know what the deal was, but at that point I didn't really know much of anything.
Later that night, I find myself in a state somewhere between asleep and awake, kicking at the sheets and feeling extremely irritated. Still sleepy, but angry as a bee in a sweatsock (just made that up, like it?) And I'm hot. Really, uncomfortably warm. "This is freaking weird", I think, and DING!! A light goes on. The nurse said if I feel weird, drink this. So, like Alice in Wonderland, I do. I drink it, and wonder at the weird sweetness of it, what could it be? I also ring for a nurse, cause I figure it must be something they need to know.
The night nurse comes in and I tell her I had to drink the stuff. I think. I felt weird, so I drank it. "The stuff?" She smiles. "It's orange juice," she tells me, as she picks my finger to test my blood sugar (they still don't trust me to do it myself, I guess).
Yes, my blood sugar is low. Good thing you drank the juice.
Juice?
Weird.
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