H-I-G-H

High.  H-I-G-H.  High.

Yes, contestant number seventeen, that's correct!

Well, that wasn't one of her words, just the end result of last weekend's spelling bee.

We've seen adrenaline highs before, but this one was a doozy.  There was the 20 minute wait to start spelling, which was difficult.   The pressure of standing up in front of the microphone was new. The intense disappointment of messing up an easy word was, I'm sure, the final straw.

By the time it was all over, she was 318.  As she sat to watch the grand finale, I bolused about a third of that number and handed her some water. Experience told me that with my child, much of that number would disappear on its own once she calmed down.  A couple of hours later, thankfully both her blood sugar and her self confidence were back in range. 

Adrenaline is a funny thing.  She certainly didn't need that surge of blood flow and glucose to spell correctly.  In fact, the related jitteriness and, in her case, high blood sugar, was nothing but detrimental.  Yet after so many years of evolving from cave people who required that fight or flight response to escape charging bears, it's still a physiological reflex in any anxiety producing situation. 

Maybe next year she'll have to spell adrenaline.  She'll take a deep breath, and ask the pronouncer to use the word in a sentence.  "A surge of adrenaline makes me want to run screaming around this room instead of spell."  By then she'll have taken that deep breath, calmed her nerves, and she'll spell it perfectly...unlike her mother who is fortunate to have access to spellcheck.