eat, eat, eat…or else William will resort to force feeding…

Last night, I was scheduled to work at an After Hours pediatric clinic as part of my rotation for school. My shift was from 5pm to 11pm. I ate quite a bit earlier that day, and ate a decent sized piece of chicken on the way to the clinic. The clinic got busy rather quickly. When I was doing my shift work in the ER in October, I hardly ever ate anything except for maybe a granola bar or a sandwich during the 8 hours I was there. I naturally reverted back to that mode.

After about 2 hours however, I did start to get a little hungry, so I ate a banana. About an hour after that, my stomach started to talk again, so I ate a granola bar. By about 9:15, I was taking the history for one of the new patients. I was standing there talking to the mother, but started to feel a little strange. My head felt heavy, my stomach started to turn (which is odd, since I have not had any problems with nausea), and I started to sweat. I politely excused myself to go “wash my hands” and headed toward the bathroom. The nurses redirected me to their little breakroom, and told me that I looked like “crap”. They fed me Gatorade and animal crackers, took my vital signs, and sent me to lay down. I felt rather silly, but it was a lesson learned. (As I was quickly reminded by the nurse that carb-rich snacks will greatly increase the insulin produced and cause an even greater risk for hypoglycemia once all the carbs have been used up.)

Now my white coat pockets are constantly armed with not only carbohydrate snacks, but also protein such as nuts. When I returned home that night, William had climbed the fence to go to our local grocery store, and brought me back tons of food. I assured him that I was not an anorexic pregnant lady, but he insisted that he would have to start force feeding me if that ever happened again.