Hypoglycemia Forum - Stan, What Is Your Story?

Sure, it's a bit long but i'll try to make it short. About two and a half years ago, I was doing great, I just got back from a long trip to russia. Before I go further, here are some things I noticed before. When I was very young I would get really crazy and hyper, teachers thought I was hyperactive, but my mother would simply have to put me down to take naps and i'd be fine, so after changing the time I went to school I did well and was gradually weened off of the naps. All through my life I ate very well simply because I wanted to, until I got into second year college. I started to eat pizza, cake and such things again. Around this time I would get very sleepy around the middle of the day and would take 1-2 hour naps almost every day. I just figured I was getting old, didn't seem like any problem to me. I also used to get these flu-like symptoms at least once a week, even before I started to eat bad. It would feel like I had a serious case of the flu, even though I had no temperature or any real signs of it. It would come and go in a few hours, so I always assumed I had a strong immune system, but several times this led to unexplainable fainting spells. Still, nothing seemed to bother me about it. In russia these things seemed to get stronger (they typically eat diets very high in carbohydrates there), I got the flu-like symptoms a few times and in addition to sleeping about 8-9 hours every night would nap an additional 3-4 almost every day! I figured I was tired from work and the classes I was taking, so it didn't bother me. I also used to yawn a lot, like once or three times a minute, but again this didn't seem to be anything so I ignored it. When I got back from my trip, I started to work in mental health near my hometown. I loved my job and was there almost two years, when stuff started to happen. First, on two occasions, I got very stressed and felt like running away while at work, but it was so passing I never gave it a second thought. Then, around this time, I started to have a little vodka here and there with my dinner, and this seemed to increase these symptoms somewhat. Suddenly, around november of 2003 I got this strange feeling that was almost like I had a bladder infection. It was very, very annoying. They tested me for everything but everything came back negative, so I assumed I pulled a muscle. One day in february it was just gone, and then after this came the day of reckoning, february 22nd. I woke up in a state of panic, the night before I had the flu-like symptoms coming on again pretty strong and thought I was actually getting sick for once, but that was all. I was not stressed out about anything, didn't have a nightmare, wasn't frightened of anything, I just woke up in a state of panic, shaking, tired, thoughts racing, flu-like you name it it was there. I ate some golden crisp and the sensations went away in a few minutes, so I figured it passed, until I was going to work again and it came back. When I got to work I was pale, still shaking, a complete wreck so my boss sent me to the doctor. I set up a quick appointment, and it was unfortunately not my family doctor, so he just wanted to push me out with anti-anxiety medication. He did say, though, that it could have been some sort of infection starting to manifest. After this I never felt quite right, I would feel on edge, lethargic, overly sleepy, overly worried, pretty much all the symptoms you know so well. During this time they were testing me for everything and work became increasingly more difficult, I started to think I was going insane as every test came back negative and the fact that I was working in mental health made it no better. I started to believe I was picking it up from the patients I was dealing with and leaving the job would help. Soon, depression started to set in, I remember specifically the first time, when I was upstairs thinking about video games and then thought about how if you have money you can technically buy anything you want and there is not real collecting in this, then this for some reason led me to think about life in the same terms and this wave of absolute despair swept over me from a thought that before would hardly mean anything to me. This, strangely, went away after I drank a glass of water, and I started to notice that eating or drinking seemed to alleviate the symptoms. Sometimes not as long as others, but there was some connection. They wanted to test me for celiac disease so they did that and they did this and that and you name it I was tested for it. Annoyingly, I originally wanted to be tested for hypoglycemia when I first started to get the mental symptoms, since my grandfather had it, but the doctor, who was again the same fool I first saw, said that "the test is long and annoying and most doctors don't like to do it, besides, if you have that you can just go eat some lifesavers." I thought from this that it wasn't as serious as what I was feeling, so I let it go and never got tested. Eventually after months and months they settled for the diagnosis of "epstein-barr" because my liver was enflamed (this was actually because of the sugar, which I found out much later). At this point I was becoming extremely depressed for short periods of time, anxious about the stupidest things, worried I was insane nearly every second of the day, shaking, chilled, swollen throat, what felt like a high temperature, fatigued, it was terrible. It got so bad that even though I was happy with my diagnosis since it seemed my illness had a face, I had to eventually go on medical leave and used up all of my time. I couldn't go back to work so I had to quit. They had me on anti-depressants, which I was wary of at first, and this was a big mistake. I was then eating a diet I thought was good for epstein-barr that turns out was pretty much exactly what a hypoglycemic should be eating, minus a few no-nos. I actually got better on the diet even though I was eating things like pasta and prunes, but it took over a year and I could hardly do anything at times. Eventually I weened off the anti-depressants and everything seemed fine. Oh yeah, I started to get the depersonalization/derealization right after about the third month on anti-depressants. I thought it was the medication, so I ignored it, but it was certainly frightening. After being weened off, I was married and went on my honeymoon. Everything seemed perfectly fine, then one day I had made some pasta with a sauce containing plain sugar in it that I made, and the day we went to this beach I suddenly became very depressed for about five minutes, then a little crazy in thoughts (get this, I saw a hardee's sign and thought that I was part of a movie set for some reason), then I suddenly became so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open, slept for literally three minutes, and then the symptoms were gone. This was the beginning. Over the next several months I would occasionally have something that, based on the hypoglycemia diet, is to be completely avoided, such as chinese food (well, general tso's and such), gnocchis, breaded chicken, whole grain bread with honey in it, and so forth. My symptoms started to come back little by little, but I seemed to be doing fine otherwise. I suddenly started to get this worn our, burny feeling on my face and almost in my brain that had been present when I was first really sick, but it went away after eating a handful of sunflower seeds, so I started to carry them around with me everywhere. I started graduate school and everything seemed okay, and then it slowly went downhill. I started to get anxious again, depressed and so forth, pretty much all of the symptoms I had before, but even worse at times. I remember feeling so worn out for a period of at least a week, it was awful. Again, I went to the doctor here where I live now to no avail. They tested me for this and that and the guy eventually pretty much said I was crazy and it was all in my head and I could eat whatever I wanted, even though he had tested me for hypoglycemia and the test showed a saw-tooth curve. This was a spot of luck for me because I thought I might have hypoglycemia, and found on a site that eating honey was a "good snack." completely false, but luckily I didn't read any further and tried it, it started to give me blurry vision and near fainting and complete disorientation, so I told the doctor and he suggested the test. Anyway, after he said I was nuts, I figured, maybe he's right, if it is in my head I can get it out, so I tried drinking grape juice at first in hopes that I really could eat anything I wanted. Within three days my symptoms had become hell with terrible intestinal problems and such. I remember vomiting once for fifteen minutes straight, getting blurred vision, it turned terrible. It was getting bad and I think I was contemplating suicide like every day at this point, it was awful. I had terrible obsessions about everything from running someone over with my car, to something stupid like killing a fly with a pencil, it was pathetic. Eventually I said no, this has to be my sugar, out of luck I came upon this and thought about it again (this was actually before my test). I had went out on a long trip with my wife's parents, and was unable to eat for about five hours. During this time I became incredibly pale and awful feeling, crying and such. After eating a handful of nuts, an orange, and two cans of tuna, it all went away in a flash. I remembered this and thought no I have some sort of sugar problem maybe it really is hypoglycemia. So I started a diet with high carbohydrates that seemed to work okay at first, but led to ruin. As it got worse I realized it was all my sugar, so I created my diet and within two weeks noticed significant improvement. Now i'm at the point where I hardly have anything left. There are some things you can't avoid during treatment, like stress, which plays a big part in the symptoms, but eventually everything starts to get better. I hope that's enough, there is more here and there but no need to go on. I'm 26.