Another interesting chapter in my recovery: what happens when you  mess up.

I made the biggest mistake of my recovery from open heart surgery tonight, and it seemed right to share it because I have to sit up half the night checking myself out. It was either that, calling 911 or rushing over to the emergency room. Mistakes will happen, and I’ve juggled a lot of things for four months, with Maria’s help. Tonight I stumbled.

I have two kinds of insulin I take, and I have to monitor both very closely after heart surgery, it is pretty important that my blood sugar not drop too low, I was warned about that  a million times. Diabetes reacts sharply to the stress and disruption of open heart surgery, it makes recovery more intense and complex.

I inject myself with a powerful short-term insulin before meals and a longer-acting gentler insulin at bedtime, the biggest shot of the night. It is the short term insulin I have to be careful about, if you don’t eat afterwards, your blood sugar can spiral down and into a coma, dangerous for a heallng heart.

Tonight, Maria and I watched “Oliver Kitteridge” with Frances McDormand on HBO – we love her and the book of the same name by Elizabeth Strout. When it was over (it was great, she is a great character) I went to take my nighttime shot, the biggest and most important of the day.

I have managed all of my insulin shots (they call the needles pens) and needles and heart medicines carefully and well, I suppose a goof was inevitable. But not one this big. I picked up the wrong insulin pen for my nighttime shot and gave myself a very large dose of the short term and very powerful pen.

I am grateful that I happened to look down and notice the color of the pen, if I had just gone up to bed and Maria had gone to sleep, I would have been in serious trouble, perhaps unnoticed for hours. But I did see it and we had to decide whether to call for help or run to the hospital. I decided to try and work it out myself, I felt clear and strong, Maria got dressed just in case and sat by my side. I took special emergency glucose drinks and tablets, had some dark chocolate, a bowl of cereal with some maple syrup.

My blood sugar dropped more than 80 points in a half hour, but the tablets and glucose drinks began to take affect and I began to climb back. I had no symptoms of a dangerous descent, I wasn’t sweating or fuzzy, I kept wanting to blog – it makes me feel good and kept me focused, but Maria insisted I wait. In that situation, I have to listen to her, I can’t completely trust my judgement or clarity. So we sat and talked and I kept taking my blood and eating some glucose tablets. It was a very wild ride for a couple of hours, but my reading just got to normal after three  hours, a little over 100. I think I’m stabilizing.

But I have to watch it for the next three hours, the insulin I took takes between four and eight hours to work it’s way through the system, and I took five times the proper dose for it. I need to make sure there is glucose in my system and food in my stock for the next few hours, I believe we made the right decision and responded calmly and well.

My blog grounds me, and I told Maria – she wanted me to sit still -that I can always tell how I am by how I write. I feel good.

I wanted to write this for several reasons. One, because I am honestly sharing my recovery, two because recovery is never a straight line – I had the right medicines and equipment readily at hand. I think the process has made both of us stronger and more confident, we have handled a lot this summer, but this is perhaps the first real emergency of the recovery.  Maria stayed calm and so did I, we sat together and talked, and then watched the second episode of Oliver “Kitteridge.” We had a nice time, although we were both anxious.

We were prepared to pick up the phone or run to the car if necessary. I didn’t want to call the rescue squad or spend the night in a hospital hallway with an IV in my arm.  I’m fairly certain neither of those things will need to happen. If I had felt the extreme symptoms of low blood sugar I would have and will still.

Recovery from open heart surgery is complex, it involves all kinds of medicines, doctors, changes in the  body and mind. They told me I would make mistakes, but I was getting cocky, I hadn’t made any yet.  My nurses all tell me I’m an over-achiever. I’m glad I got my mistake over with. I will be up for the next few hours making sure I’m okay, set the alarm clock to wake me up every few hours to check myself out. As always, grateful that this mistake happened in the best possible way, at the best time, in the right place. I know now that I can handle this recovery, I will get where I need to go.

Every morning, I walk up the hill that started this, the one I couldn’t walk up in June. As I sail over the top each day, I wonder at the glory and mystery of life. Maybe I’ll watch the third episode of “Oliver Kitteredge” before declaring this mistake over.