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Woman credits toy poodle with helping save her lifeBy Joel Stottrup Hazel Hamann of Princeton credits her 4 pound, 6 ounce, 4-year-old toy poodle, Pixie Rae, for saving her life. Hazel, who turns 76 on May 3, has diabetes and is in danger of blacking out if her blood sugar gets too low. That was the case the evening of March 9. It had been a strenuous day for Hazel, who has some difficulty walking. For starters, her septic system had backed up and after the sewer cleaning person left the house, debris remained in the laundry room of the lower level of her split level home. At about 5:30 p.m., after eating and then taking her insulin shot, she thought about the mess in the laundry room and set about cleaning it. By the time she was done, she had made three round trips up and down the 13 steps of the stairway connecting the two levels of her home. When the job was over, she sat down in her easy chair to watch TV, a ritual in which Pixie Rae sits snuggled against her shoulder. At one point Hazel headed for the bathroom but didn't make it because dizziness and light-headedness overtook her. She slid down to the floor of the hallway. She figures that she must have passed out and was unable to press the Life Alert call button she wears on a bracelet. The button, when pressed, transmits a signal to a device in a room next to the hallway and a dispatcher comes over the loudspeaker on the device and asks Hazel if she is all right. But this time Hazel wasn't pushing the button until Pixie Rae affected the events. As Hazel lay on her hallway floor, Pixie Ray licked Hazel's face until Hazel came to. Hazel pushed her Life Alert button. Soon after an exchange between Hazel and the dispatcher, paramedics, police, Hazel's daughter, Cheryle, and some firefighters were on their way. Hazel remembers Cheryle giving her some orange juice when she arrived and the paramedics giving her an insulin injection. By the time a couple of firefighters from Baldwin Township arrived and were about to walk up her stairway, they were notified that everything was OK, Hazel said. Cheryle said last week she is glad her mother has Pixie Rae for a companion. Hazel said her blood sugar had dropped to a level of 18 when she lay in her hallway unable to move, noting that the normal blood sugar level is 70-120. "If my Pixie hadn't brought me to, I wouldn't have pushed the Life Alert," said Hazel. "I could've laid there in a coma from complete insulin shock. My legs were like stone, I couldn't move them. I had three brothers who died from diabetes. "She [Pixie Rae] is really my life right now. If it wasn't for her I wouldn't be here, I think." Princeton Union-Eagle |