Last night we had a deep, unexpected night low.
After coming home from school, my son asked to have an early dinner with a friend at Culver’s, a Midwestern burger joint, and we agreed. He took his bike for a short 20 minute ride there, had dinner, came back, then spent the evening working before going to bed.
Around midnight he started going down on the Dexcom, at a moderate rate. I gave him some milk with a straw so he would not have to wake up. 20 minutes later, he was still going down at the same clip, when I had expected to see a flattening trend (the Dexcom sensor is about 15 minutes behind on carb intake for us).
So I hand tested him. He was at 27. I gave him a bunch of extra fast carbs, tested him again 8 minutes later—he was still at 38. It took a good 2+ hours to bring him back to am even keel.
The event itself is no big deal, although we don’t see 27 often. What was shocking was that we were not expecting any low that evening based on activity pattern: my son typically bikes for 30-45 minutes every evening when he does not have a practice, so his bike ride was not something we we were worried about.
In the end, we think that, because he was biking in freezing temperatures, his bike ride may have had a very different glucose consumption profile, and his heavy carb dinner was not enough to refuel him. That the the only explanation we can come up with.
The lesson we are drawing from this is that, for a teen, bad lows can occur at any time without any expectation. It is a good thing we had a running Dexcom.