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.