October 2026

Just When I thought it couldn't get worse. October

A Morning I'll Never Forget: Recognizing Diabetic Stroke Symptoms

    It was October 12, 2026, around 11 in the morning, and I was getting ready to head over to my sister's to sort through our late mom's jewelry box. Just another heavy chore in a year that has felt like one endless sh*t show. Hubby was still in bed—or so I thought—until I heard him cursing and shouting complete gibberish from the bedroom.

    I walked over to his side of the bed and found him shaking his hearing aid at me, spitting out made-up words like his mind was completely unplugged. I asked him what was wrong and he just kept repeating total nonsense. I've seen him get confused before when his sugar drops, but this was way beyond his usual low blood sugar. These were clear diabetic stroke symptoms, and my heart slammed right into my throat.

    For 22 years as a pancreas and kidney transplant survivor, Travis has wrestled with carb counting and insulin shots. Lately his sugars had been crashing hard, sending him into this weird fuge state. But this morning was terrifying. He was aggressive, kicking chairs around the kitchen, slamming his hands on the counter, and sobbing because he couldn't say what he wanted to say. He couldn't understand a single word I said either. The 15 minutes it took for the ambulance to get to our house felt like 15 long years. His dad ran over to help keep him safe, but Travis was completely trapped in his own head.

    The EMTs rushed him to Lamar Cox because it was the nearest Level 1 stroke trauma center. Watching them haul my husband away in his underwear was a level of terrifying I wouldn't wish on anyone. Between my Stage 2b Serous Carcinoma fight, losing my mom, and now this, I was operating purely on raw survival skin. My family met me in the ER waiting room, and when they finally let me back, he couldn't even name who I was. I whispered "Rachel Baldwin," and he just stared at me like I was a total stranger.

    At first, the on-call neurologist showed me a brain scan with a popcorn-shaped white spot over his speech center and told me it was a brain bleed. They called for a helicopter to life-flight him to Cox South in Springfield for emergency surgery. I nearly collapsed. My eldest son Justin had to drive me nearly two hours to the hospital because I was shaking too hard to drive. But once we got there and ran an MRI, the doctor realized it wasn't a fresh bleed at all. It was a stroke and a seizure triggered by his blood sugar crashing into the 50s, which set off old scar tissue from a stroke he had 15 years ago.

    The next 48 hours were an absolute blur of no sleep, wild sugar spikes, and endless hospital chaos. The nurses kept letting his blood sugar bounce between sky-high 350s and sudden drops down to 72, which kept him agitated and terrified. He was convinced they weren't giving him his anti-rejection meds or insulin, and he argued with everyone in sight. By the time we finally got him discharged on Tuesday, I was running on 48 hours without sleep, completely wiped out and emotionally wrecked.

    We are back home now, slowly picking up the pieces. His friend Rick—who is also a Type 1 diabetic—has been helping us get his sugars leveled out so we don't end up back in the ICU with diabetic stroke symptoms again. His memory is slowly coming back, word by word, day by day. My chemo brain feels completely fried just processing the panic, but we are still here. Breathing. Fighting. So for heaven sakes, we just take it one hour at a time. Rinse, rest, and repeat.