Sometimes what happens in the course of treatment goes so much against everything you know that it is difficult to keep your cool…
My son, running normal basal, dialed 2.6U around 10:30pm to fight a mysterious 168 high that developed out of nowhere. When the correction turned on, he went down and down.
He has now been in the mid 40s to mid 50s for 2 hours. With no IOB outside of his correction, he has taken almost 50 carbs (which would have needed 4.5U of bolus as a meal) and has been at -5% for 90 minutes. I suspended all insulin delivery 20 minutes ago. He still is not going up!
Today was a rainy day, so he did not go running and stayed home all day: no way to explain this through glycogen reloading.
Sometimes you scratch your head and wonder I think what is most important in these cases is not to get frustrated, but ride with the flow. Everytime we go low or high, we try to understand what to do better next time. But sometimes it is just what it is, and we can’t afford to get a rise out of it…
It is a lot easier to deal with this when there are several people at home! @elver, this is also the scenario that worries me most when the boy eventually leaves home for college. Like all parents on this forum I am eagerly awaiting technology progress with automatic insulin suspension and better.
Btw, informal conversations I have had on that front make me quite optimistic.
So I’m gonna ramble for a bit about this – chances are, your son will have roommates all through college. I have personally given all of my roommates some basic diabetes education and taught them how to use a Glucagon kit and where they could find one in my room (none of them have used one so far). At my university we typically only spend about 9-15 hours a week actually in classes or labs, and people are home at various hours throughout the day.
I guess I’ve also been fortunate enough to live with friends for essentially my entire college experience. I had random roommate selection freshman year but one of my original roomies quickly became my best friend, and we are in our 4th year straight of living together. She is a pro, can even pick up on my low symptoms sometimes and has handled a couple of fainting situations (with other friends also there helping).
But anyways, I doubt your son will spend much time totally home alone in college and if you spend enough time with a T1 you end up learning a good bit about it. Whether it’s roommates or just friends, he’ll likely end up with a circle of folks who will be willing to offer assistance (and surrender their sugary food or beverage items) if needed
Just a random college roommate note, I lived with a pre-med freshman year and now I am living with a different pre-med this year. In my experience pre-med students tend to be very inquisitive about the whole thing, so you get to talk with them about T1 a lot and you are also potentially helping a future doctor be a little more informed about the realities of living with T1
Maybe colleges should always pair the T1’s with pre-med students, then the average physician might not be so woefully unprepared to deal with T1’s in practice.
On the other hand, they could pair them with engineering undergrads who might invent a better medical device solution.
Doesn’t happen often for me, but in this case I would test again in case of bad test strip or read. If no recent food, I would do a much smaller bolus, based on experiencing this before, and gotten quick drops. I call them phantom highs, maybe hormone or stress induced, but generally don’t require same amount of correction bolus as post meal high BG corrections.
I think what is most important in these cases is not to get frustrated, but ride with the flow. Everytime we go low or high, we try to understand what to do better next time. But sometimes it is just what it is, and we can’t afford to get a rise out of it…
