Monday, September 29, 2008

Wickedly Low

Here is the story of one of the scariest moments of my life. About a week or so ago, sometime in the morning between breakfast and lunch, Emily got a little fussy. I ignored her for maybe 10 minutes, at which point she came walking toward me, and stumbled. And fell. Face forward. With no effort to catch herself. And then just lay there wimpering. I said to Justin (12 yr. old brother), what just happened? And we both said, is she low? So I rushed her into the kitchen, and with shaking hands, tested her blood. The monitor just said "LO." So while Justin tried to find the users manual, to double check on how low it has to be to just say "LO" I started force feeding her jelly bellies, the closest fast acting food I could think of in my panic. She kept trying to go to sleep on my lap, but I kept her eating them. 15 minutes later, when we rechecked her, she was still only in the low 40's, so we kept feeding a little more fast acting, and then got her going on some longer acting carbs. 15 minutes later she was back to normal.

I've been a little more jumpy about her going low these days. I keep asking her: do you feel low? or: how are you feeling? or: are you sleepy because it is naptime, or because you are low? This morning she didn't want to get tested and eat breakfast (I think because she didn't want to get her shot -- we are, regretably, going through another "hate shots!" phase), she wanted to go for a walk first. She stood by the door with her hand on the handle, and said, "I not low! I pwomise! I NOT low!" I still tested her though. And she was right, she was 242. Which if you don't know, is high.

4 comments:

Stephanie said...

that's so scary- i was impressed by justin's role in all this. heis so grown up now. i guess i sholdnt be too impressed though since if anyone is going to read and understand a users mannual it seems like he would be the one!

Linda Robertson said...

Have you heard of any special products you can buy to use as fast acting carbs instead of using candy? My friend who has a diabetic child told me once that she uses something, but I don't remember exactly what it was except that it was glucose. I also don't remember what she said the advantage was over using candy. If you want I'll ask her about it again.

Shauna said...

They have two things that I know of -- glucose tablets, which are big flat disks, and you have to eat about 4 I think. They said that sometimes kids have a hard time eating them when they are very low. They also have a tube od glucose gel, which is supposed to be great of they are as low as Emily was. Our educator said that a tube of decorator gel icing is the same number of carbs, and half the size -- because again, the porduct is sized too big for little kids like Emily. Just last night I bought some of that icing to keep in my purse. I always have fruit snacks in there for emergencies, but just in case she ever is that low again where chewing is a trial, I'll have that little tube of icing. If your friend knows of something I don't know of, that could be helpful though. I guess even though they warned us that a child could get to the point where they couldn't chew, maybe I was in denial that we'd ever let her get to that point or something. Anyway, at least she wasn't quite to that point. I've thought about what I would have done if she couldn't chew they jelly bellies, and I hope I would have thought of juice. but at the time, i was still in denial -- I kept thinking, wow, she sure is sleepy for it not even being lunch time. She's gonna need a nap as soon as I get her back to normal. I think on some level I knew it was the "low" making her that way though. And it was amazing to watch her perk back up!

Linda Robertson said...

I think those are the only two products she had told me about. I was thinking glucose gel, but I forgot about it being in a tube and it wasn't making sense to me.