So for the past 6 hours, my son has been almost contiuously low – not super low but moderately low, between 60 and 65. In that period of time he has taken 1 unit of bolus insulin (for dinner), and has corrected with 80 (YES!!) carbs. He has not taken any other bolus insulin since 11:30am. He has not had any sports practice. His basal has been unchanged for a week. He has had a perfectly normal day, except that he is low, low, low.
I keep on feeding him carbs, glass after glass and handful of candy after handful of candy, wondering when this will end. I have lowered his basal by 10% over the past two hours. He still isn’t inching up. I am scratching my head.
Was he more active than usual? Hotter weather than usual? Stomach upset of some sort? All of these things make me go low.
I’ve had two four-hour overnight lows in the past week. One would not come up at all and then had a huge rebound. The other I simply slept through and it came up quickly (and reasonably) once I ate about 25 grams of carbohydrates. Both were caused by being very active lately, but the one that would not come up also had an upset stomach involved. Not fun at all.
I have seen perhaps something similar. Where it is a low and multiple carb corrections don’t appear to have any impact. Then a couple hours later it is like all the carbs start hitting. And then we are in high territory but then everything starts working normal so it can be corrected.
As if the entire digestive system was shut down for a few hours.
Is this with a new pod? If so, is it possible the cannula is in, or went through, a blood vessel? Usually a degree of pain on insertion would signal that, but not always.
Sorry to hear you guys had this problem last night @Michel. We’ve had nights like that where, no matter what we did, Liam wouldn’t come up. I’ve had 10 sugar tablet nights where we’re giving him a tablet every 30 minutes with no IOB and the basal totally suspended and he has still dropped. Those are the most frustrating nights for us as well. I would love to figure out what causes them because they don’t make sense to me at all unless his pancreas (at times) still produces LARGE amounts of insulin during the honeymoon phase.
It was hotter than usual. He did not do any sports, but he did have a period of a couple of hours when he was somewhat more active.
It is possible that he could have a few beta cell sputters, although we haven’t seen any for a long time. I took his basal down to 15% for the rest of the night and it still is a tiny bit too high. I think he’ll need to be 20% down.
We have seen that! I thought that might be it, but the carbs never hit.
Yes, it is with a new pod. I have wondered about that. But it does not appear bloody to the eye - although who knows!
That’s awful. I can imagine the kind of night you got…
He is now up and on -20% temp basal. He is finally inching up slightly. I’ll see how long this lasts. At least now he is balanced at one level – just not where I expected.
Is he perhaps coming down with a tummy bug? That’s pretty much the only time we see regular (or even increased) basal needs plus complete imperviousness to carbs.
Samson just had one of these mornings. I bolused for his toast and he was basically in the 50s 60s and 70s for three hours even after eating about 30 extra grams of carbs. He’s (finally!) going up – good thing too, just before gymnastics.
Michel, my son had the same thing yesterday/last night. For us it was preceded by throwing up at school, so we know for sure he has a stomach bug. With that said, he was loving it, because even though he didn’t feel great, he was able to eat 10x the carbs he normally does, with no bg effect. Kind of weird how he might be looking forward to getting a stomach bug…
yep! I forgot that Samson threw up at school yesterday. They told us he stuck his finger down his throat so I wasn’t sure if it was an upset stomach but now I’m thinking that’s it!
My son is now back to normal. He went a bit high mid-day and we took his basal back up.
Many of people’s comments looked like they could apply – so I am not quite sure what it was in the end. If I had to guess, I would probably pick @Jen’s suggestion of hot day + more activity. But it’s so hard to say – it’s too bad that, while many mysteries bring an aura of romance to the day, a diabetic mystery doesn’t
This same thing has caused me one of the most frustrating episodes in 46 years, and it happened not long ago.
The more I ate the lower my Bg went. I was at work and after several hours in the 30’s, despite well over 100g of carbs (oj, donuts, candy, you name it) I had to close the office. Although it finally went up high enough to drive home, it never really got too high.
This disease really sucks, but sometimes it sucks more than at other times.
It won’t look bloody, necessarily – until you remove the pod and suddenly look like an extra in a slasher movie. (Life lesson #1: Do not remove a pod while wearing a white linen shirt.)
Good to hear he has settled down, though. Or his sugars, at least.
