I lay sleeping soundly in my plywood bed when I heard the
7:00 alarm start to ring. Time for Kevin to get up. Matt and I have another
hour of rest before we roust to start our day and our teaching duties, as has
been the routine for the past few weeks… We all have separate school
assignments, and Kevin’s daily rustling on the bunk below me typically serves
as my 1 hour warning to start my day. As I lay there somewhere between
consciousness and the dream which always escapes my memory when I wake, I
realized that the alarm had been ringing for some time. No matter, Kevin will
get it, probably just needed a few more moments of sleep from our late evening
cooking extravaganza last night. It was at this point that the whole bed
started to shake. When paired with the audible creek of the steel joints which
I have become so accustomed to, there was little to no chance of me sleeping
through this. I peered over my outstretched legs, which clearly extend past the
end of my bed to look at Matt on the top bunk next to me: still asleep. “Kev,
time to get up.” No response... “Kev, time to get u-“ it was at this point that
I swung my head over the side of the steel bedframe and my sleepy exterior
nowhere resembled the alarm that I felt internally. “Matt, GET UP!” I
frantically careened off my bed and onto the tile floor, barely keeping my
balance… Matt did the same. We both looked at Kevin for no more than a second,
which seemed like an eternity. Kevin lay there wide awake, looking into the
abyss…convulsing. As I threw on my shorts and a t shirt and bounded down
stairs, sometimes 5 or 6 at a time, the only safeguard against waking up the
whole house was the soundless concrete under my feet. I knew Thao would be up,
she always went to the market early to buy fruit for the morning breakfast. She
would be in the kitchen. Just as I made it to the main landing, the words just
flew out of my mouth subconsciously “Kevin needs a paramedic.”
Confused as to what that could mean, she looked at me with a
puzzled look on her face. “Um… ambulance, doctor, help…” I said. That one was
universal. We ran back up the five flights of stairs together and I hardly
noticed the sweat that was now forming on my brow from both the stress and the
sudden wave of activity. We found Matt sitting next to Kevin, whose seizing had
now slowed to more of a twitch. Unresponsive. Thao had seen all that she needed
to evaluate the situation.. “I’m calling emergency” she said as she hustled out
of the room. “Get his kit out,” Matt said, and I grabbed for everything that
looked remotely like a blood sugar meter and strew it out on my bed. The look
on my face had to be the same as the one I had seen so many times in the past
four weeks on my students faces: pure bewilderment. Why hadn’t I asked him what
to do before? After a moment of struggling with one of the parts, I bent over
and pricked his finger. Within a few seconds blood began to rise from the tiny
poke. I put it on a strip and fed it into the machine… ‘ERR’. “I’m going to go
wake the girls, one of them has to know how to do this”. When we returned Kevin
looked more like he was peacefully asleep rather than in a fight against his
own body. None of the girls were familiar with how to use a meter. Matt pulled
out his IPad and began frantically typing, and I tried to illicit some sort of
response from Kevin. “If Thao is calling an ambulance we’re going to have to
get him downstairs to get him to the hospital…” said Chess. Made sense. “But
what if they can treat him here?” Matt said, looking up from his IPad
momentarily. “Yeah, they might just be able to come up here and give him an IV
or something…” I said. Sometimes throwing more people at a situation only
creates more confusion. Just then Stephanie walked in the room with a can of
Pepsi. And sometimes all you need is that extra mind to come up with a
solution…
We cracked open the can of Pepsi and stuck a straw in it. We
were able to wake Kevin and sit him up. He looked at all of us with the most
confusion and helplessness that I have ever seen, but couldn’t bring himself to
say anything. “We’re going to have you drink this, ok?” said Chess, “It has
sugar in it and it’s going to be good for you”. But as she motioned the can to
his lips he turned away. “Wait, don’t do that..” I said, “I remember last time
when I talked to Kevin after he told me that he is aware of what’s going on
around him but he just can’t do or say anything… Maybe he doesn’t need that…” Just
as we were again about to meet at a crossroads of indecision and confusion, I
could hear Thao’s voice from below. “David! They are here…” As I ran out of the
room to the stairwell I saw two EMT’s and a paramedic, clad in all white
carrying a gigantic suitcase. Thank god. After a moment of translation they
pulled out a blood sugar meter and took a reading: 1.3. “That’s very low,” Matt
said, “according to this website its on a scale of 0-9”. They worked quickly
and administered an IV with glucose and saline to Kevin’s outstretched left
arm. And as I sat at the bedside, holding the gravity drip I watched one of the
most miraculous recoveries I’ve seen. In a matter of moments Kevin went from
ghost white and barely able to hold his own head up, to completely conscious
and functioning. “Is this really happening, or am I dreaming?” He asked.
“It’s real, how do you feel right now?” I said.
“I’m ok…”
Thankfully Kevin is ok and didn’t have to go to the
hospital. They got his blood sugar up to 7.5 after the IV, which is within the
6-9 range that he told me he needs to stay in. Kevin has type 1 diabetes and it
turns out that after our late night cooking he took some insulin right before
bed which is routine, and went to sleep. The problem was that he took too much
and the result was that it broke down the sugars too quickly and he crashed by
the time he woke up. I have to say I felt pretty dumb that I didn’t act faster
in that situation, and even dumber that I didn’t sit him down and have him
properly explain procedure when he crashed a few weeks ago. Lesson learned.
Luckily Matt and I were there though, who knows what would have happened had
Kevin been alone in the room as per the previous two months before our arrival.
Nevertheless I now know how to use a blood sugar meter. What a crazy way to
wake up. Good morning Vietnam…
