Yesterday was a pretty good day. We went to a new restaurant for breakfast. We are compiling information for a book about good family dining places to eat breakfast at in Detroit. The place we went to will not be in the book. The food was not that great. We both came home and spent a good portion of the next hour in the bathroom. Good thing we have two.
Then I took off for the Red Cross, as they have been calling me and asking me to give blood. I had made an appointment for 10:30. I still felt a little iffy after the breakfast, but was hopeful that things would calm down, which it did, gradually, and 1-1/2 hours later I was out of there. I was lucky this time, didn't have any problems with blood pressure, hemoglobin, or clogged veins, and didn't get light-headed.
When I got back Dave wanted to go bowling. Great, I just gave blood, in my left arm and he wants to bowl. But I don't want to say no because we really need to start getting out and moving around and loosening up our joints so that we can exercise and loose weight. So I wrapped my arm up and we went bowling. We only bowled two games each so I didn't stress my arm out very much. Dave got a 205 on his second game. I didn't break 100 on either game.
Then we came home and relaxed. Then we were back in the car again, this time to go to the Eastern Michigan versus Central Michigan baseball game. The weather was slightly cold, but EMU won and it was fun to get out of the house.
Then today we checked out another breakfast restaurant. This one was good, so it will be in the book. Once home I browbeat Dave into helping me clean the house. It felt good to get things picked up and the floor vacuumed.
In keeping with our resolve to get out and exercise a little each day, if possible, we decided to go to the Lake Erie Metro Park and walk the 1-1/2 mile nature trail. Last weekend we walked the mile one and wanted to go back and try this one. This trail takes you along the shoreline of Lake Erie, so that was very scenic. We left about noon and it took us about 30 minutes to get to the park. For some reason we didn't plan very well. We didn't bring a lunch or drinks or even snacks. We just took off and left without preparing anything. I don't know what we were thinking. So a little more than half way through the walk I started noticing my blood sugar dropping. I looked over at Dave and he was fading also. We stopped to rest, but we both were not doing well. I think Dave was actually doing worse than I was. I totally forgot about his disease, where if he gets dehydrated, he gets ill and could die. Crap. I was scared. We were a little ways from the car and we did not have any fluids with us. Luckily we parked near the nature center and they had a vending machine with pepsi, water, and gatorade. After stopping for a few minutes, I was feeling a little better, but Dave seemed to be worse. I was holding his hand and encouraging him to keep going. I was trying to ascertain if I should make him sit down and have me go ahead to get some gatorade, but he said he could make it. He did. He sat on the bench outside the center, while I ran in to get the gatorade. As soon as he had his first sip, he said he started to feel better. I had enough change to get a pepsi.
We sat on the bench and looked at each other and wondered what we had been thinking. Why had we not been prepared for our hike? It has been so long since I have had to worry about Dave and the affects of his condition, that I had totally forgotten to be prepared.
It won't happen again, at least not this year.
Once the gatorade was gone, we got in the car, with me driving and drove to the nearest party store to pick up more gatorade and a candy bar for each of us. So much for dieting. But it was necessary that we both get our blood sugars back up quickly.
Then we headed back for home. Dave slept off and on in the car and is sleeping now on the couch. We did stop to eat supper on the way home.
Lessons learned. But this was a scary one. Dave works hard to live his life as normal as possible and he does a good job of managing his medications, so well, that I forgot about his condition. Low blood surgar for me isn't a big deal. Hypoglycemia (not caused by insulin injections) will not hurt you, as your body will not dip too low. You just feel uncomfortable. But Dave's low blood sugar was also accompanied with some dehydration and that is what causes his body problems.
Of course, it didn't help that I also was a pint low in the blood fluid area either, having given blood yesterday.
Well, all is well now. But having this little reality check, I am reflecting on how much Dave means to me and how devastated I would be if he were to not be in my life.
I took this picture of these ladies dancing. What I find endearing is that they were just dancing away, not caring how they looked. They were happy, like little kids moving and shaking. How cool that we adults can sometimes just let loose and become kids again.
Ronnie is great at performing. His signature style, as is his dad's, is that he goes out in the crowd while playing a song and shakes hands, plays the guitar with a bottle (slide) and plays the guitar behind his back.
