Diabetes and driving

One of the scariest things for me as a spouse of someone with t1 diabetes is worrying about them being behind the wheel. When we're together, I drive. Mostly because I get horrible motion sickness and it's just better for everyone if I'm driving rather than getting nauseous, but partly because I worry that he might go low.

He tells a story of being in college. He was going on a date one night and his blood sugar went low while he was driving. He was aware that it was dropping but wasn't present enough to take care of it himself. So his solution was to stop the car at an intersection, exit the car, and lay down in the street. Without saying a word to his poor date. His lying there stirred up some attention and finally somebody noticed his medical ID tag and knew what to do for him.

We laugh at that story but sometimes it's downright dangerous.

When we'd been married just a few years, my younger sister came to live with us. We had two small children and she was a Senior in High School. She was doing the running start program and the college was near where Dave worked and they'd often drive together because our house was pretty secluded.

One time they were driving home and he was driving. She said he wasn't making sense while he was talking but she didn't really know what was wrong. It wasn't until he drove right past the turn off to our house that she started worrying. She tried to get his attention but he was out. He was driving on "auto pilot" with no awareness of what he was doing. When attempts to get his attention failed, she reached her foot over and pushed his foot off the gas and stopped the car herself. Somehow (personally, I think angels helped because I've tried moving him before when he's out and it's hard) she managed to switch seats with him and she drove him home. She left him in the car and I took juice out to him and sat with him until he came to.

I fully believe she saved his life that day and I'll be forever grateful.

Another time I got a phone call about an hour and a half after he left for work. He just said "I don't know where I am. The car hit a curb and popped a tire. The last thing I remember was the garage door closing at our house." He had driven a good 45 miles on the freeway and he didn't remember it. He was able to tell me some landmarks around him and I helped him figure out where he was. He was closer to his work than to me so I called his office and they sent someone to go help him out.

I've learned to live by the phrase "no news is good news". It crosses my mind daily that he could drive low today, but I figure as long as I've heard nothing, he must be safe. Because if something bad happened I'd be getting a call from the police, fire station, hospital, morgue or something along those lines.

I've learned that silence is good. And that he should check his blood sugar before getting in the car. :)