a bit of butter on toast: yum

The host of our writing group always puts out bread and butter for toast. Sometimes muffins. She also presents nuts and, sometimes, blends of trail mix with a few bits of chocolate.

I always bring my own snacks, everywhere I go. If I feel suddenly ravenous, I have learned, I need to eat. A one ounce bag of cashews, sold conveniently by the dozen at Trader Joe's, does the trick.

I have resisted buying glucose tablets for low blood sugar challenges.  I have not had many low blood sugar moments. I bring a piece of fruit to eat when I feel low blood sugar. I also test when I feel my glucose is dropping. I need data, urgently. A 70 reading is very different than a 30. A 30 is close to coma time.

Low blood sugar can happen overnight while sleeping and this is often when the type one diabetic slips into a coma.  My former endocrinologist wanted me to awaken at 2 a.m. each night to test for lows but that would keep me awake for hours. Plus I never tested low.

Diabetes changes all the time. Doctors don't tell you this. Doctors, in my experience, don't tell diabetics very much. And endocrinologists are weirdly, tightly focussed on certain lab tests and don't actually pay attention to the patient as a person.

Two weeks ago at my writers' group, an hour after Eric had offered to make toast for everyone. He made custom orders for each person but me because I don't do gluten, dairy (butter) or sugar (jam).

An hour or so into the writing, I suddenly felt my sugar plummet. Like a large stone dropped in a river.  I tested and there it was, the dread 32.

I got up and made myself toast. And, since I was eating wheat, reasoned I might as well butter that toast.   I miss hot buttered toast. I really miss it. Such a simple pleasure.

Eric, restless and hungry, I guess, came in and added a piece of toast for himself, expressing surprise that I was making some for myself. When I told him about my low blood sugar, he reminded me there was jam in the fridge.  I probably should have used some jam. Sugar will boost my glucose fast but probably not much faster than the highly processed white flour toast I was going to have. I was already looking forward to the hot buttery toast and already planning on a second slice. If I added jam, I would only have had one slice.

A purist? 

Two pieces of not-very-nutritious white bread toast with butter and my glucose was back up.

A persimmon would have done the job but I had slipped out without my fruit.  I always carry an apple and some cashews, depending on which way the sugar is moving. In persimmon season, I carry persimmons.

Those two pieces of hot buttered toast were so good.  They reminded me, however, that it is optimal to avoid highly processed carbohydrates. The more processed the carbs, the more I crave carbs. After such an indulgence, I crave junky carbs like more toast, donuts, even candy.

I have learned, to my happiness, that I can eat more fruit than I allowed myself for the ten years I was misdiagnosed. Fruit has healthy carbs. Fruit doesn't spark my glucose to dangerous levels the way highly processed carbs do.

But in a dangerously low blood sugar situation, processed carbs get the job done.

Gosh that buttered toast was tasty. And my blood sugar level snapped back into healthy range.

That buttered toast was so much more pleasurable than the most delicious fruit, probably because it was my first buttered toast in many years.