"Woman Acts Drunk in Medical Mystery"

For more than a year, Rosemary McGinn's coworkers used to think she was drunk. Or crazy. In reality, she had a rare tumor on her pancreas that was causing her blood sugar to plummet, starving her brain of fuel. "What happened was I noticed a few times I would get weird," said McGinn, a 54-year-old realtor from Rockland County. So around Easter 2011, her coworkers sent her home from work early, thinking she was drunk. That night, a client called to set up an appointment, but as soon as McGinn hung up, she forgot the time and place they'd just decided. Not long after that, McGinn was driving with her husband when she forgot where she lived. She forgot who the president was and what year it was. The next thing she knew, she was in her kitchen with two paramedics standing over her. They were feeding her candy and checking her blood sugar. Normal blood sugar is between 70 milligrams per deciliter and 140 milligrams per deciliter, so most people feel symptoms of low blood sugar -- confusion, hunger and shakiness, for example – when they hit about 60 milligrams per deciliter, said Dr. Ronald Tamler, who directs the Mount Sinai Diabetes Center in New York City and who would solve the medical mystery.
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