Pretty sure the kiddos and I are sick. I have a headache and stomach upset, and, ha, my BG control is beautiful at the moment (despite my best efforts otherwise - a little potato with lunch, an apple for a snack, etc). I’m still “lucky” and have run lower most of the time I’ve been sick. When I bolused for the apple, it sounded appealing, but by the time my 30 minute pre-bolus was almost up, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stomach it. That brought up a question - what do you do when you’ve got IOB but suddenly can’t eat (or worse, can’t keep anything you eat down)? Thankfully this hasn’t come up for me before…
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When our son is unable to keep food down and we’ve already bolused him, or if food is not causing him to rise, we use mini-glucagon for those situations… for our son we use 3 units per dose – one per year of life – but someone your age and size might use quite a bit more.
Basically mix up the glucagon in your emergency kit and then draw up whatever the appropriate dose is in a typical insulin needle. Usually works in 10 minutes to raise BG the right amount. You can’t do this too many times though as it will only work if you have liver stores of glycogen.
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What if you don’t have glucagon? 
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I would use something like juice or soda then to cause a rise – digestion can be delayed when you’ve got a tummy bug but in our experience liquid forms of sugar usually work better than legit food.
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Thanks! I decided to use some of my precious Afrezza stash (lol) for dinner, since I dose 30 minutes AFTER a meal, so I wouldn’t really be in any danger if I ended up not eating. Fortunately, we also happen to have juice in the house for the first time in a long while.
I recommend flat ginger ale (ginger helps stomach and has sugar in it) or any other sugary drink as a primary source of carbs. Applesauce with cinnamon (also helps stomach but does not cure diabetes) also works.
In the dark days one or two shots of R/NPH a day, this was standard procedure during a sick day as you already gave your insulin so you had to eat.
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Thanks for the laugh (and the suggestions!).
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@Pianoplayer7008, I would only use mini-glucagon in more extreme situations, although I would not hesitate to do it, in the same way as @TiaG explained.
My thoughts on glucose and sick day problems:
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remaining hydrated is critical, even before anything else – so trying to keep on taking fluids is really important
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when you start throwing up, you create a salt unbalance in your body (since you can’t get food in). So, if you drink more water, your body may make you throw up more. The BEST way to rehydrate is to take special glucose-free pedialyte-like beverages with salts/electrolytes. We typically use zero-calorie sports beverages. Be careful that regular Pedialyte has sugar.
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when we need to also get sugar in, we rarely use regular Pedialyte because it only has 8 carbs per cup (8 oz). We use regular sports beverages (to get sugar and electrolytes), or we make them from scratch by mixing zero-calorie sports drinks with sugar. I read that the ideal ratio is about 7-8 carbs per cup (the body needs some water per carb, and may pull some water from other tissues to get you to absorb these carbs), but we found out that this does not replenish carbs fast enough for us when we are sick (throwing up too much), so we are typically using 16-20 carbs per cup. Here is an interesting read from a runner’s site, which looks at best absorption ratios, but does not try to solve the same problem: how do we get as much sugar as possible without throwing it up?
https://runnersconnect.net/best-sports-drink-marathon/
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doctors recommend waiting for 5 minutes after you throw up, then drink a spoonful every 5 minutes, to minimize throwing up. Even when you throw up, you don’t throw up all the time you drink, so by drinking a bit every 5 minutes you can still take in sugar.
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anti-emetics: there are a couple over the counter ones that we keep on hand, but they don’t work well with our kids. Several parents also recommend keeping a prescription anti-emetic on hand named Zofran (odansetron), which has had several positive study results, in particular for children, for whom anti-emetics are not always recommended due to secondary effects:
This second study refers, among other things, to four randomized controlled trials:
I have always thought we should write a few wikis for sick days.
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I would strongly suggest to get the Glucagon.
I consider this to be the emergency antidote for insulin.
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So this is one of my biggest issues with not being able to do any artificial sugars - pretty sure there’s no completely sugar (artificial or “real”) free drinks out there? I’ll have to experiment with something homemade, maybe.
I plan to ask my doc about it when I see her next week. The idea of potentially getting sick after dinner with IOB home alone with the kids was kind of scary! Thankfully, I think today must have just been a bad combo of things - couple of my health issues flared up, picky/cranky toddler, and baby’s allergies flared up - as everyone seems ok now, but it brought up some concerns of mine I need to address.
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There probably are. Unsweetened?
Would you like me to send you some saccharine so you can test it?
Water with lots of lemon juice?
I like a 15:1 ratio.
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I like Nuun tabs. Looks like no artificial sugar and your electrolytes. I use them running sometimes and they are FANTASTIC hangover cures.
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I really appreciate the offer, but right now I’m trying to avoid adding anything new to my diet - baby is having a lot of trouble, and I can’t figure out what (if anything) I’m eating is causing the issue, so I don’t want to add to that! Plus after just a few hours feeling sick this afternoon, I don’t want to potentially do that to myself anytime soon while baby is still so needy. 
Yum! I usually drink water with a little lemon juice in it anyway - 15:1; is that oz?
Those look AMAZING, but unfortunately, I’m allergic to stevia, and I have to use very small amounts of monkfruit to avoid a reaction. Ugh!
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Emily, is the baby sharing some of your allergies, or reacting to your symptoms?
He has his own issues with certain things (dairy, eggs, and stevia for sure) that he reacts to through my breastmilk if I eat them.
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Oh I see- argh stevia is in everything it seems! It looks like its in the electrolyte and vitamin version but not the “performance” version. I don’t like the stevia aftertaste if there’s a lot of it but thankfully no allergies.
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When I’m sick with a stomach thing and needing to rehydrate, I usually just use the lower calorie gatorade—it has sugar (and I don’t think uses artificial sweeteners, just less sugar), but I’m not eating either, so I think that’s a good thing in that case, and easy enough to dose for since I’m only able to drink it in small sips anyway, so its impact on blood sugars is slow. My only issue is that I like to have it on hand, and I rarely get sick like that, so sometimes it goes bad before I have a chance to use it. My mom got a bunch of electrolyte tablets that include sugar, as free samples, that seem basically like gatorade in tablet form, and those seem more shelf-stable, so she gave them to me to have on stock instead for emergencies.
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Us also. G2 Gatorade. 13g carbs in a 20 oz bottle. Great for sick days.
I had no idea it was possible for Gatorade to go bad?
Next thing somebody will tell me Twinkies don’t really have a 20 year shelf life…
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I should clarify that it passes its expiration date—I’ve sometimes had it for many years at a time, since I’m very not prone to vomiting (even when sometimes it would be useful/seems like it might make feel better), so it’s very rare that I need it. I’m not sure the extent to which its quality actually decreases (although I think maybe I tried some once and it tasted weird?). I know diet sodas with aspartame degrade in quality extremely quickly following their expiration date (I can taste it when a diet coke is even weeks past the date; by months it’s just gross), but sugared things probably don’t have the same steep drop-off.
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