I really try not to let my brain go straight to diabetes when someone describes how they're feeling. I really do. But tonight when The Mr. came to me and said he felt light headed I had a feeling he needed to test his sugar.
It's been a while since I've updated on this and I'm sure there are readers who don't know the The Mr. had gastric bypass on Feb. 3. In the six months since surgery he has lost 150 lb. I know! He has lost nearly half of his body weight. There are plenty of struggles and triumphs but we certainly weren't expecting what happened tonight. Especially not at six months post-op.
So as I sat in our home office The Mr. and I discussed how he was feeling and we chalked it up to maybe not having had enough water today, our afternoon photo shoot with a wonderful family or maybe some sort of bug.
Maybe 30 minutes or less after he started feeling light headed he said he was sweating. He doesn't sweat much anymore, which is odd considering we live in the freaking desert. I immediately made him test his sugar. He was 44 mg/dL! I was shocked. I grabbed a juice from my bedside table and made him drink it.
"Really?" he asked between sips. "Really 44?" He was just as shocked as I was.
And all I could think was that I had several bouts of hypoglycemia prior to being diagnosed with diabetes. And with his history of insulin resistance before surgery I was already thinking that this was the beginning of a diabetes diagnosis.
He felt horrible. It was something he had never felt before and I couldn't help but say -- not in a mean nor condescending way, just a matter-of-fact way -- "Now you know how it feels."
He tested again about 10 minutes later and was up to 84. He said he still felt shaky and basically terrible. I told him he may feel that way for an hour. And then the fatigue hit him.
"This isn't a fluke," I said. "You need to call your doctor in the morning."
About 30-45 minutes later he tested again and was down to 68 mg/dL. I ordered him to eat some complex carbs.
I emailed several friends to ask for insight and consulted Dr. Google. One friend suggested that The Mr. had been in a honeymoon phase for the last few months and now his body is adjusting to a new normal. While that sounded good, it still didn't make sense.
I found something online that actually made a lot of sense. Gastric dumping, which can happen to people who have had gastric bypass, can cause hypoglycemia. This makes sense because the only carbs The Mr. had today were at dinner: reuben sandwich and fries. He rarely eats breads or starches of any kind anymore because they don't agree with his stomach. Almost as soon as we got home from dinner out he made a trip to the bathroom. Not long after that is when he started feeling bad.
It's starting to come together now. Eggs for breakfast, salad for lunch and high fat and carbs for dinner.
The low has hit him hard. He went to sleep pretty quickly and still feels rather weak. I suspect that his primary care doctor will have him take a glucose tolerance test. And I suspect that he'll pass. But better to be safe.
