The time I had to call 911.
When I was 21 years old I was living with my parents and looking to move out. I met a boyfriend working a seasonal job and his mom worked as an at home aid for a diabetic blind woman. She was required to have someone live with her to be her live in aid when the at home aid wasn't there to help take care of her and make sure her sugar levels were controlled. Since I was looking to move out and this was essentially a free place to stay, I had no problem with helping take care of her at night. This meant I had to be okay with being woken up from time to time to help her get something to eat if her blood sugar was low or help her with getting her insulin machine set up when it needed to be changed. I usually just helped her get food to boost her sugar levels because my boyfriends mom would usually set up the machine when she was over. I was still able to have a job and could plan to stay at friend's houses, I just had to spend majority of my time there at night. I got into playing co-ed softball with my county's league and I usually still got home around 7pm at the latest. My team wanted to have a meeting because our season with the county league was almost over and we wanted to discuss tournaments that most if not all of the players might be interested in participating in so that we could call it practice in the off season. I made my roommate aware that I would be coming home later than usual and not to wait for me to eat something for dinner. She was fine using the microwave and she had food prepped in the fridge so I knew she would be fine, plus we made special snacks that give her a quick blood sugar boost when she knows she isn't going to be able to eat something and have enough time for it to digest to boost her sugar levels if she was having a low blood sugar. I had a softball game and went to my meeting and I got home earlier than I expected because I assumed the meeting would take longer than it did. I got home around 8:30pm to see my roommate passed out at the kitchen table. I thought it was weird because she usually just goes to be when she's tired no matter what time it is. I put my stuff in my room telling her to wake up and get in bed if she's tired, but she kept snoring. She was usually pretty easy to wake up, so again, I felt like that was weird. I walked back into the kitchen and nudged her saying her name. Still snoring, then I yelled and shook her. Nothing. She was drenched in sweat and I looked at the table to see there was one of the snacks we made to boost her sugar sitting on the table with one bite out of it. I realized she must have an extremely low sugar level if she's unconscious. I instantly became overwhelmed and anxious but I knew the best thing I could do for her was call 911. I told them the situation, and they said she's snoring because she might not be in the best position for her airway to get in oxygen, so they asked that I pick her up and lay her flat on her back on the floor. I wasn't very strong and had to try to lift her off of a chair and lay her down gently so I didn't cause further injury and it was extremely difficult, but I was able to do that, then I got back on the phone with the operator. Thankfully I knew all of the answers to their questions about her health, because I think that helped a lot for them to know what to do when they got to the house. After the paramedics showed up I got off the phone with the operator and called my boyfriends mom because I knew she would be able to comfort me and answer any questions they may have that I wouldn't know the answer to. They helped her and as they were leaving, they told me that I did a good job keeping calm (I was crying the whole time, so I wasn't 'calm') and they told me that if I was a half hour later than I was getting home that she may have died from lack of blood sugar. I've been asked if she thanked me, but she never did. I'm not sure if it's because she was embarrassed, knowing she could've eaten something to avoid the whole situation or if it was just something she's so used to happening that she didn't see it as a big deal. I'm so thankful that I got there when I did and I learned a lot living with her. She knew how to live with her blindness, and she wasn't blind her whole life so a lot of the time she would need descriptions of what people looked like. I'll never forget about my time living with her.
