Death by Sugar/ Dead in Bed

It’s three o’clock in the morning and suddenly I am awake, aware of a strange sensation in my body. My heart is pumping loudly. My shirt is soaked with sweat. My head is light. My blood sugar is low. I reach for the drawer on my nightstand and fumble for a juice box, glucose tablets, gel. There is nothing. I used it up earlier in the week. I get up and shuffle to the kitchen. I grab a glass, fill it with juice, drink it down in seconds. I sit on the couch and feel the electricity pulsing through my arms and legs. I am alive. I woke up. I saved myself from dying. I am the pilot of my saccharine homeostasis- poking, bleeding, guessing, testing, trying.

Dead in bed syndrome (DIB) is a term used to describe the sudden unexplained deaths of young people with type 1 diabetes.

The syndrome is characterized as when someone with insulin dependent diabetes has gone to bed seemingly perfectly fine and has been found dead in an undisturbed bed.