I had a low last week that knocked me for six. It certainly wasn’t the worst hypo I have ever had – far from it actually. But it had been a while since I had one like this. In fact, since I started eating low(er) carb. (I’m still reluctant to call it low carb, because I am really not trying to stick to a certain amount of carbs per day. But to give you an idea, it’s a rare day that I eat more than 80 grams.)

But last week, I did. My usual Japanese food takeaway place was out of sashimi which is my favourite quick lunch. So, I ordered a sushi roll and a cup of miso and off I went.

Now white rice is evil to me. It really is. I love it, but have never managed it! In 18 years of type 1, I have never worked out how to bolus for it. I am better (although not great) with pasta and other carb-heavy foods. But rice? Just hopeless! I would just guess, hope that I was close to right and then kept a close eye on my numbers afterwards, correcting as necessary.

On Friday, I was nowhere near right. No.Where. I watched my CGM line start to rise and rise and rise pretty quickly after I ate, resisting the urge to bolus before I hit the upper limit on my graph. And I am so glad I didn’t because after the spike, came the plummet. Insulin still on board, and two arrows pointing down.

I tried to intervene, but it was too late. Suddenly, my lips starting tingling, I realised I was sweating a lot and my thought process was all over the place. I read the same email five times, started five different responses and had no idea what I was trying to say.

I grabbed a juice box, and drank the lot in one gulp. The desperate low feeling of ‘I.Am.Going.ToDie’ overtook me as I stabbed another straw into another juice box and looked around for what else I could consume that would help, grabbing a handful of jellybeans; spooning honey from the jar and pouring some milk into a bowl with cereal.

And then I stopped. I willed myself to breathe, counting up as I inhaled, down as I exhaled, trying to not get the numbers messed up. I concentrated on my heartrate. I walked away from the food on the kitchen counter and sat at the table, focusing on the artwork above the wood-fire oven that the kidlet and I had done years ago when she was only about 5 years old. I thought about us spreading down a drop sheet on the front veranda of our old house, sitting the large canvas on top of it and emptying tube after tube of paint onto it. ‘It’s like a Jackson Pollock painting,’ she said, signing the finished artwork with her name and then adding ‘and Mummy’ afterwards.

Slowly, my heartbeat returned to normal. I could count my breathing without difficulty. I stopped thinking that I was going to pass out. My clothes were drenched from the sweating, though and now I was shaking because I was cold. I gingerly walked into the bedroom, pulled off my top and put on a thick jumper, wrapping a scarf around my neck for good measure.

I looked at my CGM graph on my iPhone and saw the quick spike and the sudden crash – a sight I’d not seen for some time. I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes for a moment, which became an hour and when I woke, the ‘hit-by-a-bus’ hypo hangover had taken over my body.

All this because of a sushi roll gone wrong. It wasn’t even a delicious doughnut or cupcake, I thought. It took me almost 24 hours to get back on track. The over-treating had to be corrected and I tried to not over correct, but that failed and another low in the middle of the night messed me up a little more.

This was a forgotten low. And I’m not particularly inclined to have another one in the near future to remind me again.