My poor kiddo has started with diarrhea as of last night and added vomiting to it this morning. In addition to trying to help him hydrate and quarantine his brother away from him, I’m hydrating myself like there’s no tomorrow. When my oldest was in day care, I would end up in the ER a minimum of once per year. This was usually to get rehydrated after gastroenteritis had gotten the better of me.
Hopefully if I can be ridiculously hydrated going into this…and if I catch it…then I can stay out of the ER. Fingers crossed!
Urgent Care opened an hour ago and their wait time is already two hours. I’m going to try to help my kiddo at home today if we can keep this under control.
Take care of yourself, @T1Allison (and of your kiddo too, of course). Yes, stay hydrated, and keep washing your hands, especially after touching anything your sick one has touched. And keep those hands away from your face.
Fun Sick Day Fact for my BG:
Imodium AD Anti-Diarrheal caplets (the tiny ones) do not cause any blood sugar change.
Imodium Multi-Symptom Relief caplets (which are much larger) spike me to 300 every single time. I’ve had enough practice with GI issues over the years (scopes and parasite tests, yay!) to feel confident in this correlation.
It can be hard to find the tiny Anti-Diarrheal caplets bc most stores around here just carry the Multi-Symptom ones. Grocery stores and gas stations around here are pretty good about stocking the straight Anti-Diarrheal caplets.
I agree that dehydration is often one of the fastest routes into the ER.
We like the G2 Gatoride for sick days. Listed as 4.6 carbs per 8 fluid ounce serving.
On sick days, I will watch the cgm and give sustained insulin for whatever seems necessary to control the BG. It is not uncommon for an extra 50% basal (like 1 unit/hr temp change to 1.5 unit/hr). And if that is not enough then I will add a long extended bolus such as 12 unit bolus with 0% up front over 6 hours (ie - extended bolus of 2 units per hour).
However, I am also not trying to maintain any sort of strict control. I will not add the basal and extended until the BG goes over 200. At 200+ sustained, increase basal. At 250+ sustained, add extended bolus. My goal here is to avoid sustained BG in the 300+ range.
I also have Glucagon on hand and am ready to use it should the BG crash and it turns out somebody’s stomach is too sick for fast carbs.
The swings on the BG during sick days can be extreme. Any ideas about target range I may have had previous to sick days are immediately thrown out the window. A sick day is its own beast.
Good Luck !!!
I hope your son is feeling better soon. Maybe you will get lucky and not pick it up.
Thanks, @Thomas! I’m going strict Ebola protocol right now in sanitizing surfaces and switching out hand towels, etc. That’s given us decent odds (50%??) of containing it in the past. I’ve gotten everyone’s laundry done so I have plenty of vomit towels and “oops, I shipped my pants” pajamas ready for EVERYONE. My son shipped pants twice now, poor kid. There’s nothing worse about than feeling awful and not having enough contingency laundry clean.
Take good care of yourself!!