This post is all about hypoglycemia — also known as “a hypo,” “low blood sugar,” “going low,” “driving the magic bus,” or “kibitzing with Buddha.” (People without diabetes, the next time you see someone blessed with diabetes acting strangely, drop one of those last two into the conversation. “Hey, Jeff. You look a bit . . . vacant. Are you driving the magic bus?” Trust me, we love this. Just don’t tell any other PWDs that I’m teaching you our secret language.)

The human body is a truly amazing thing when it works well. But when it’s just a little bit off, things get unpleasant. Maybe you have uncontrollable nausea for nine months straight. Maybe there are arcs of light crossing through your field of view. Maybe you get a goiter-shaped neck-warmer. Yup, the our bodies like things a particular way and can get really obnoxious sometimes.

When it comes to blood glucose, the body likes it to be somewhere in the range of 70 to 140 mg/dL. What kind of measure is that anyway? At least here in ‘merica we use metric units we can understand, unlike y’all in the rest of the world who use mmol/L. Now that’s messed up: a purely dimensionless quantity divided by a volume. (Just kidding, Rest of the World! You know I love ya.)

Anyway. If blood glucose is too high, there are unpleasant long-term consequences that are usually hard to notice until they’ve arrived, although there are some more subtle and immediate indicators of elevated blood sugar. For me these signs include crabbiness, muscle pain, weakness, crabbiness, a kind of paperiness to my palms, and crabbiness.

But hypoglycemia is a truly amazing bodily sensation. And when I say “amazing,” I mean amazingly unpleasant. The brain consumes roughly 25% of the glucose used by the body. So hypoglycemia is primarily a brain thing and, as a result, is a bit trippy. And for those of us lucky enough to feel our lows, blood sugar doesn’t have to go much below 70 mg/dL before we notice its effects.

I’ve heard someone trained a service dog to identify hypoglycemia (SQUIRREL!!) and tell its companion to go have a snack. Other than a cold nose lovingly nuzzling you toward the fridge to get some orange juice, what are the symptoms of hypoglycemia? As with so many things related to diabetes, I suspect that it depends.

For me, here are the various things that clue me in:

• A warm feeling in the tops of my legs.
• An inability to concentrate, especially when I’m reading.
• The awareness that I’m touching my head a lot. You know, just to make sure it’s still there.
• Ringing in my ears.
• A realization that I can hear all of the ambient noise around me.
• The feeling that I’m hearing sounds coming down a tunnel. (Think, really cliché techno music.)
• A sense of panic.
• A vibrant, glowing white spot that hangs out right in the middle of my vision like an enormous stop-shoveling-snow-and-go-eat-something indicator light.
• Losing my balance.
• Sweatiness.
• Shortness of breath.
• The sensation that my eyes and my brain are trying to trying to trade places. (I kid you not!)
• Needing to hold onto my desk so that the room and I are spinning at the same rate.
• Saying loud, embarrassing, utterly bullshit things such as “My wife beats me!” in the background as she talks to her mother on the telephone.

Well, you get the point.