I’d never tried competitive eating before, but there I was, tying a bib around my neck and preparing to eat as many pancakes as I could within a certain window of time.

Sounds like a T1D’s nightmare, right? Attempting to bolus for an unknown amount of high-carb food that will be consumed within a matter of minutes…

…well, that’s because it was this T1D’s nightmare!

Yes, I had an actual dream (but I’m calling it a nightmare because of what happened when I woke up) that I was in a pancake-eating competition. So bloody random, weird, and kind of funny. Unfortunately for me, I never found out how I fared in the competition, because just as it was about to begin I woke up to the sounds of my CGM (both my receiver and the app on my phone) buzz-buzz-buzzing.

Blearily, I rolled over in bed to silence both of them…but my eyes opened wide when I saw what was on the screen(s).

284 with an up arrow!

Immediately, I grabbed my meter so I could confirm that I was, indeed, that high. One finger prick later, I discovered that yes, I WAS that high – just over 300, in fact.

I was absolutely bewildered. It made no sense that I was so high. I’d been 85 just before bed and had a small package of animal crackers (15 total grams of carbohydrates) to ensure stability throughout the night. That was hours before, at around 8 P.M., so they should’ve been through my system by the time I woke up to the high, at 2 A.M. Moreover, my high alarm on my CGM is set to 180, so I’d slept through numerous alarms. That was frustrating, but I’m relieved I did eventually wake up to correct the high…the alternative, staying in a deep sleep and waking up to a sky-high number to start my day, was definitely worse.

I was struggling to make sense of the high but I knew it was more important to treat it and stay awake until I knew I was coming back down. That way, I could rule out my pump as the problem. Sighing, I took my bolus, got up out of bed, grabbed a cold water bottle from the fridge, and trudged back up the stairs to prop myself up and watch some TV to make the next hour or so go by faster.

By 3:30 A.M., I’d watched three full episodes of Sex and the City (thank you, E! Network, for playing that show at such an odd hour) and my blood sugar had tumbled back down approximately 100 points. I felt like it was now safe for me to go back to sleep, so I drifted back off to dreamland…and continued having really weird freakin’ dreams for the rest of the night (one involving me auditioning to be the voice of Moana, the Disney princess, in the movie…I can’t even begin to fathom how or why I dreamt about that).

Days later, I still don’t know how the high happened. But I think I’m closer to a conclusion: It must’ve been all those damn pancakes that I ate in my dr- I mean, nightmare.