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When people with Type 1 diabetes experience a high (blood sugar) they may appear irrational, angry, frustrated, whiney, sluggish, belligerent, dizzy, light-headed or completely normal.

If some of you read my post the other day about how lows can manifest themselves in people with Type 1 diabetes, you may recognize the above sentence. Unfortunately sometimes highs and lows are not distinguishable to an outsider looking in because many of the outward signs are the same.

There have been more times than I can count that my normally compliant son has had to be chased down to check his blood sugar. Seeing his reluctance and avoidance of getting his sugar check, and I would immediately think he was running on the low side, and when I finally wrestled him down to prick his finger only to see the meter read over 300.

He gets belligerent when he is high, and unfortunately sometimes when he is low. So unless we check his sugar, we have no idea what treatment we are supposed to provide. Are we to give sugar for a low, or insulin for a high? You don’t know your own strength as a mother until you wrestle your crying 5 year old to the ground to prick his finger. The inner strength, not to mention the outer strength, that this takes is astounding. He doesn’t want his sugar checked, you know it is the only way to make your normally sweetheart of a son feel better, there is no choice.

While this is something I have learned to deal with over our 20 months living with this awful disease, it was a process. I no longer have to wrestle my son to check his sugar when he is fighting me, I have learned to redirect his attention and quickly check his sugar while his attention is on the distraction I provided.

The scary part of all of this is how society perceives my son when he is feeling badly because of his sugar and not acting himself. You may say to yourself, well, who cares what society thinks. And you would be correct. But I am talking about people that I rely on keeping my son safe: his teachers, his babysitters, policemen, firemen, and any one else in authority with which children have to come in contact.

If my son has an unusually high blood sugar and is acting belligerent, how is a teacher supposed to know that she may have to have his sugar checked before kicking him out of the classroom. I, as parent of child with Type 1 diabetes, have to trust that these other adults remember that my son’s sugar must be checked when he appears to be acting out of the ordinary for HIM. The key is acting out of the ordinary for HIM. They must know how my son acts with an even blood sugar, and therefore, they must make the decision to check the sugar to determine why he would be acting out of the ordinary.

While Type 1 diabetes is not always on my mind, it is one of the first things that pop up when something is not right. If my son is crying, I immediately wonder what his number is. I know it is not possible for a teacher who has 22 children in her class to think of his diabetes first, it’s just not possible.

Diabetes courses through my thoughts, either way up front or really small in the back, regardless it is always there. I can only hope as my son gets older and has to deal with new people, that they know some of the signs of high blood sugar and allow diabetes to creep to the the front of their mind and act accordingly.

When people with Type 1 diabetes experience a low (blood sugar) they may appear irrational, angry, frustrated, whiney, sleepy, giddy, drunk, or completely normal.

This is one of the hardest things to learn when becoming a caregiver of a child with type 1 diabetes, lows are hard to quantify. There are days when a low will make a person with Type 1 diabetes become really cranky. Other days it may make the person appear angry. Then another day the person may not even realize they are having a low and will suddenly start slurring their words.

There are two very scary components of these lows, that are even the actual lows themselves. The first scary part of these lows is that sometimes they come from way out of left field, they completely blindside you, so when your child is acting cranky, or tired, or angry, sometimes the very last thing you think about is a low. That delay of treating the low may be the difference between a happy, healthy person, or a person suffering a seizure because their sugar dropped too low.

The second even scarier part about lows is that somehow as the caregiver of a child with Type 1 diabetes, you must explicitly convey lows, and how to spot a low, to everyone else that is going to take care of your baby: his teachers, his grandparents, his cousins, the babysitter, anyone that may be left to watch your child even for five minutes. Lows and seizures don’t care about time frames. They happen when they happen and you need to be able to treat immediately.

Testing the blood sugar of a child with Type 1 diabetes over 10 times a day does help catch some of the lows before they happen. That is why testing is so important. Many of the successes that we see when dealing with Type 1 diabetes is our ability to catch lows before they happen.

If a pending low is caught, glucose (sugar) can be given and no time is lost. Once the low starts to affect the person’s behavior or body you are no longer catching a low, you are sent into triage mode where you are now treating the low. This requires 15 grams of carbs, waiting 15 minutes, and then testing sugar to make sure the number is on the way up. Time is being lost. When treating a low, my son misses out on his five year old life. He has to leave the game, or stop swimming, or stop running to treat his low to feel better. If that isn’t unfair than I don’t know what is.

Lows stink. There are no two ways about that. They are serious. They are dangerous. They are here to stay. Lows are a part of living with Type 1 diabetes, and recognizing them is the first step to a small success in a never ending battle.

Type 1 diabetes has no heart. It will ruin even the simplest of plans in the blink of an eye.

That is all I have to write tonight. I am checking my son every 1/2 hour because corrections are not working and I cannot get him out of the high 200s. I have a gut feeling that it is the site, but being we changed it yesterday, I am hoping it is not. His sites are only lasting 1 to 2 days lately.

So, no long blog tonight. Type 1 diabetes ruined that for me (and you). It is hard to think and write when all I can focus on is the  next blood glucose check. Type 1 diabetes has no heart or soul, yet it sure can take control and ruin even the smallest event, such as writing my blog.