Saturday, January 26, 2008

Nervousness and shakiness

Benign Essential Tremor. Ever heard of that???

I was diagnosed with this condition back in 1985-6. This condition, over the years, hinders me from writing in script. Hence, the only thing I can write in script is my signature. Everything else I print. It also has hindered me when I was doing architectural drawings by hand. Maybe this is why I am so good using AutoCAD on a computer. As I slowly grew up, went through school, worked at different locations, and then settled down, I noticed the following - stress was the biggest factor in how bad my nervousness was. If I am under pressure, then I get very nervous. It did not matter if drank coffee or not. When I was out from under the pressure, I got calmer and my nervousness slowly got calmer as well. Also, as my weight went up, the nervousness went down.

Since being diagnosed with T2 diabetes and getting off sugar, and working on getting my weight down, I have noticed that my nervousness gets worse at times. I have had people tell me that my blood sugar was low and that I need to eat something, but all of those incidences have proven false.

They do say that one of the signs of low blood sugar is nervousness. But in my case, it is the "benign essential tremor". Now do I dismiss any incident where I am more nervous to BET? No, I do not. I check it with my glucose meter to make sure I do not have low blood sugar.

Just another thing I have to do now.

Isn't life interesting?

2 comments:

Loren said...

Dirk, we would all be so much better off without stress!

Are you on medication for the Essential Tremor?

When I get lows I get very shaky but I don't get nervous.

When my BG level is really low it start with a kind of burning in my stomach, then my hands start to shake (this is when I usually have to treat the hypo before it goes any further) if I let it go and don't treat it I start to get the feeling of confusion and slurred speech and then dizziness and the feeling of passing out.
I had one episode where I almost passed out. I got to the point that my whole body felt paralyzed.
Thank goodness my mum was there (we had gone for a drive, pretty far from home, and were in a pub about to order lunch) and she quickly got some sweet soda for me to drink. She had to put the straw in my mouth because I couldn't lift my head up from the table or move my hands to hold the glass. It took me several hours to recover from that. It was very scary!
Another time I ended up with a panic attack just because of a hypo. I didn't get the shaking feeling just the feeling of passing out and by the time I got to my BG Monitor I was having a panic attack.
After that first time I get really scared when I feel a hypo coming on but I don't let it get to the stage of adding a panic attack to it anymore. :-)

Loren said...

Oh I forgot to leave you this paragraph that I read on "Scott's Diabetes Journal".
I think it explains perfectly how I feel about diabetes! :-)

"Diabetes is like being expected to play the piano with one hand while juggling items with another hand, all while balancing with deftness and dexterity on a tightrope"