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.