Imperfection series - Part 3: I don’t want to faint

It all started when I was in my 300 level. I had fallen very ill just after exams. When I went home, I was still quite ill, but I had to go to school to submit my Civil Engineering work book. So in my sickness, I managed to drag myself to school. The plan was to just drop the book with the staff in the lab, and go back home.

When I got down from the bus that dropped me in school, I was walking to my faculty, and started getting weaker, and weaker. By the time I was in front of Mariere hall, I had started stumbling, and I had to find a dirty slab to sit on. One guy upstairs, who would later become a small-time TV personality saw me, came down, and lectured me about how he saw me stumbling before I finally succumbed, and the dangers of abortion, and why I shouldn’t do it again. Nonsense. I that made a vow to keep myself till marriage, one guy sees me stumbling, and concludes I just had an abortion. God dey sha. Anyway, I digress.

That day was my first incident of hypoglycaemia attack. That thing is bad, trust me. Even though it doesn’t kill, it can disgrace. It normally happens when I have stressed myself a bit, or when I am ill (I hardly fall ill). It is when the blood sugar level suddenly drops, and you begin to feel dizzy, stumble, and eventually faint if you don’t sit down. It is the opposite of those things that affect diabetes patient, i.e. too much sugar in their blood. This one is too low sugar.

I said it is a disgrace because when it happens, you must sit down, or lie down, to regain energy, or drink water or put something in your mouth. You must sit down or lie down. No option. So the thing is I start looking for a place to sit, begging people, can I sit in your shop for 5 minutes? I would then rest for ten minutes, walk, and beg again after when it descends, until I finally get home to find my bed. I would do anything I could, in order not to faint, cos you would actually feel yourself descending to the fainting level. I didn’t want a case when I would hit my head on any dangerous thing, fall in the middle of the road, or have people rob me because I fainted in front of strangers, and became unconscious.

The only time I fainted was during NYSC, and I was jogging. One minute, I was jogging, and started becoming weak, the next minute, people were all over me, reviving me. I wasn’t even conscious of when it happened.

I have sat in shops, at pepper-seller benches, on dry slabs, with my leg inside dry gutters. One time, I kept stopping and sitting at different places, that I got to the beginning of my street, entered the local clinic because I knew they had a staircase. I walked to their staircase, and lied down on it for like 10 minutes. The discomfort did not matter to me. I just laid there, and prayed no nurse or doctor would catch me there. I hate hospitals, and the owner is my mum’s friend. I didn’t want any panic incident. After 10 minutes, I felt I had regained enough energy to walk home, which was like 10 houses away. However, after about 4 houses, I couldn’t continue. I had started stumbling again. I walked to the stand of the pepper-seller, sat on her bench, and begged the girl to give me 5 naira pure water, that I would send the money to her later. All dignity had been stripped off o. The girl was kind of alarmed, because she did not know what would make me sit on her bench, and then beg. She looked at me, and immediately gave me the water. I was weak and almost gone, and everyone could see. After drinking the water, I regained enough strength to walk to my house, which was just few houses away.

Unfortunately, someone had seen me, and went to report the incident to my mum. She and my mum called me. I smiled, and brushed it off. Right in front of my mum, the woman insisted that I must take care of myself, because what she saw wasn’t good. In my mind, I was like “see this alakoba woman, reporting me.”

That was the last time it happened sha, because a few days later, I started driving, and it means I don’t walk continuously again. I only walk when I have to go to the bank, and I don’t feel like driving.
So that’s hypoglycaemia for you. That thing is just a very disgraceful something.

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