I didn't sleep enough Wednesday night, so by Thursday afternoon my eyelids were heavy and my body was screaming out "Sleep! Sleep!" So a little after five in the afternoon, I decided to take a quick nap. A little power nap to recharge my batteries before diving into study and cleaning mode to prepare for the coming weekend.

My blood sugar was at 222 with only a little active insulin. I'd been high in the early afternoon and hadn't accurately bolused for a late lunch. I decided to leave it alone until after my nap though...giving my body an hour or two to use that remaining insulin and peak out.

I curled up in bed with my cat and a good book...falling asleep within a few minutes. It was a dreamless sleep...too deep to notice the world around me or the world inside me. A limitless fatigue overwhelming every inch of my body and soul. The effects of ineffective sleeping and the recent change in medications.

At 7pm, I heard the buzz of my cellphone. Foggy and still fatigued, I answered the phone with a little difficulty. My mom was on the other end of the line. I struggled to hear her tell me about her tough workday. A knotted, heavy feeling in my stomach alerted me that something was wrong.

Every inch of me struggled to move. I reached for my meter, remembering that I'd run out of test strips before falling asleep. The surplus was downstairs. I considered just getting juice without checking. The symptoms were all too familiar. A "night" low, probably in the mid 50's.

I just couldn't bring myself to treat something that I wasn't 100% sure of when I'd been in the 200's just hours before. A long trek downstairs to grab a bottle of strips and a meter check later, all while still fighting to comprehend what my mother was saying...I was 40.

I immediately grabbed juice and told my mom that I was really low. I couldn't manage to drink juice, hold a phone, and stand up all at the same time. 40.

Two bowls of cereal later and several phone calls from my mom checking up on me, I was feeling okay. No fuzzy feeling left in my head, words flowed easily, and my body wasn't heavy or fatigued. But my emotions were a little frayed.

Generally, I wake up from those sleeping lows in the mid-50's. It's almost always a 56 or somewhere close in range. I do get lows in the 40's every now and then. But I always wake up before heading below the mid-40 range.

This time...was I going to wake up? After already making it to 40 and feeling so exhausted, would I have caught it before something serious happened? If my mom hadn't called to jar me awake, where would I be?

Although I'm not one to dwell on the things that you can't change, I am kind of stuck on this moment. I know, the fact of the matter is that she DID call and I DID wake up...but that "what if" lingers in my mind. Severe lows are all too common in my life...and all too common when I'm sleeping. That factor always weighs in my mind...but this is so much different.

I live alone and I wasn't wearing my CGMS...nothing to alert me that I was trending further south. No roommate, no alarm, no one to check in on me...just my own instincts and the rarity of the cat's ability to sense changes. This low could have ended much worse. I could have slept straight through...going into a seizure, a coma, or worse.

And there was no trigger...nothing that I could say set it off so that I could prevent it next time. The heaviness of fear lingers over me. A fear that lows like these are too common for me. A fear that I'll have another seizure. A fear that someone won't be there to catch me. A fear that I'll never wake up.

Maybe that's why I've always struggled with sleeping so much. That and those crazy dreams I have.