368

No, Sesame Street is not brought to you by the number 368.

Well, let's backtrack. Remember Dave and Robair's Blood Sugar Challenge? Well, we discontinued it a few months back. Not coincidentally, I was getting a little lax in my blood sugar readings and thought I was doing fine until this number was quoted to me by a nurse at the emergency unit at Florida Hospital in Celebration, FL, in the early morning hours of December 31, 2003.

I had a buffet steak dinner and was shopping for souvenirs when I began feeling funny. I went outside for some air, and then went back to my hotel, where I didn't feel any better. After about a half hour of feeling this way I was convinced I was having something... a heart attack, a stroke, a diabetic coma, who knows what.... I had my wife call the paramedics.

It turns out that when I was at the hospital, my heart and lungs checked out fine, but my blood sugar had been an impossible 368. Any higher and I would have checked out for a while. The ER doc gave me a saline IV and I was home within hours, and the following morning my sugars checked out normal, where they have been since.

I don't know if it was the cumulative effect of the various foods I had eaten since on vacation, or perhaps one cookie too many for dessert - but I am now going to be ever more vigilant about the blood sugar readings, and this time I won't have to put them on public display to do it.

I want to thank the paramedics of the Osceola County Rescue department and the staff of Florida Hospital in Celebration for their care. And hopefully my appetite won't get me into more trouble in the future.