Late night lows are no fun. They make me lose sleep, I consume extra calories that I don't want to, and I worry afterward about over-correcting. My usual routine for late night lows is to shift out of bed, stumble down the hallway to the kitchen, drain some juice until I stop shaking, and follow it with some peanut butter (the only tasty saving grace from a low). This stumbling routine is fine with just me and my sleeping husband in the house. However, it's a whole different game when we have guests at our house or we're guests at other people's homes.
We normally have guests sleep over about once a month, usually out-of-town family members. Most of the time, guests stay in our guest bedroom that is closed off from the hallway and my stumbling ways. However, we sometimes have enough guests that a few people have to snag a couch in the living room, right in the path to the kitchen from our bedroom. So handling lows during this situation requires a little more thought, something that's hard to do with low brain.
First of all, I have to remember to get appropriately dressed before I walk through the house. I don't like pajamas, never have. But I try to remember to wear . . . something . . . when we have people over, but it's hit or miss. But that's why God (and The GAP) invented robes. But putting on a robe is exactly what I want to do when my body is drenched in sweat (/sarcasm), but I do in case I happen to wake anyone sleeping on the couch. I also have to be careful about turning on any lights, which I tend to do at each turn when it's just me walking through the house. This is where that trusty light function on the pump comes in handy. And to avoid that bright refrigerator light, I will go for a banana sitting on the counter top instead of juice. Then I stealthily grab the peanut butter from the cabinet and a spoon from the drawer and head back to my bedroom. Thankfully, I've never woken any houseguests (that I know of) or they haven't mentioned it the next morning.
The other side of this scenario is when we're staying at someone's house as a guest. Most of the time, this scenario is either at my or Trey's parents' house. In both cases, the guest room is closest to the kitchen. So I do the same SEAL-like operation but in somewhat unfamiliar territory. And I usually settle for whatever I find to treat my low--cranberry blackberry juice cocktail with a granola bar? Sure! One time, I was looking for a piece of bread to munch on after drinking some juice at my in-laws. I happen to wake up Trey this time and he walked into the kitchen, sleepily looked at me and said, "What are you doing?" I was trying to open a pantry with no handles. "I'm trying to open this thing but there's no handles and I'm really low and want to sleep where's the peanut butter sad face." He helped me open the magic pantry and we found some bread on the middle shelf.
Now, some people may ask why I don't just resort to glucose tabs in these situations. Here's the thing: those chalky tabs don't work well enough for me. Even if I can get up from a low with those things, I still need some good protein to follow them to keep me from crashing again (hence, peanut butter). I have a jar of those in my purse, but I save them only for when I'm trapped somewhere without juice or money and access to a vending machine. There are truly a last resort treatment option for me, and it's worth the risk of pouncing through the house in the middle of the night in my underwear to avoid them.
