How Low?

When we were at Childrens' after Ellee was diagnosed, one of the things they had to teach us was how to administer Glucagon in the case she goes unresponsive during an extreme Hypo.  I'm not sure how their bodies actually act during an unresponsive state, but I picture convulsions and something like a seizure.  And the thought of having to hold her still enough to get the extremely large needle of the Glucagon while she is shaking scares the crap out of me.  Every once in a while, Josh or I are asked (or we ask ourselves) how low does she have to get to go unresponsive? This is the first thing we asked the nurse in the hospital.  Like many things in the world of T1D, there is no clear cut answer - unfortunately.  Everybody's body is different. 

Last night, I found out the hard way that El can go as low as 35 without being unresponsive. (Her ideal range is 90-180.)  I do not like lows, but I also don't like her being high.  We have not had a hypo in the past two months since she fractured her wrist and after the consistent highs and a horrible A1C a few weeks ago, this is a positive sign that her body is functioning and reacting to the new NovoLog that were we switched to. 

Yesterday was Ellee's follow up appointment for her fractured wrist and Dr. P cleared her of all restrictions do to her gaining back full range of motion!  I can't explain how painful these last two weeks were for her to not be able to play on the slide or monkey bars!  After meeting with Dr. P, we went eye glass shopping and ordered her a new pair of glasses!  Then off to school.

After Ellee got off the bus, I took the girls to the grocery store to help decide what to make for dinner.  They didn't care about dinner but asked for a banana for a breakfast, but it quickly turned into a beg to have them for their afternoon snack.  While I was cooking dinner, they had their snack.  I did check Ellee before and she was around 100 (yay!).  Since she was on the low end, I ad it to her dinner shot.  The girls played after dinner while I cleaned the kitchen. When they started fighting and getting cranky, I decided it was bath time.  

When I declared bath time, Ellee actually fought me about it by throwing a fit and refusing.  It was unlike her which ticked me off so voices were raised and I told her she can go straight to bed.  I walked away to get the bath started for Dani and El followed us up. When I told her to get undressed and get in, she started whining that she wanted a drink.  I was about to lose it when she said she didn't want water but took a drink anyways and complained, but it dawned on me... HER SUGAR!  I was certain that she couldn't be low, but maybe she was really high.  When I came back into the bathroom with her meter, she was in the bathtub and obviously had no energy to do anything.  When her meter beeped with 35 on the screen, it was an instant panic.  We were at Daddy's house so I did a mad dash downstairs, frantically looked for something for her to ingest, then back up the stairs. It was a relief to see her coming back to life as she drank the juice.  At that point, the main goal is to keep her from going any lower and going unresponsive.

Lesson for Mom: check her when she starts getting mouthy, overly whinny, or defiant.  Lesson for Ellee: when you don't feel good like that, tell me that you don't feel good so that I can check your sugar.  We had a talk after she got her jammies on about how she felt and how that was an indication that her sugar wasn't right.  We've been a T1D family for 19 months and we all have so much that we still need to learn.