You’re possibly low but have a bunch of food in your belly?
Samson was 88, -3 when he started eating lunch. And then all of a sudden dropped to 53, (a 35-point drop), then 47 (a 6-point drop) He’s a few flights of stairs away from the sink where they wash hands and right now all the teachers are legally mandated to be with the kids based on the teacher:student ratio, so we can’t do a clean finger-prick to confirm. All morning the sensor has been doing this; lingering at roughly the same BG for a long time only to skyrocket up the next, then proceed to increase at a normal rate. Same with dropping. Also some wandering (i.e. points where he goes up, down, up). So I know the sensor is having some issues. At this point, no way to know if the 88 or the 47 was closer to the mark.
Would you also treat with a glucose tab? Or would you assume that your food will kick in pretty soon and just ride out the weird readings and hope the sensor gets back on track. Carbs are tortilla, blueberries, cashews and peas, so none are super fast-acting but none are slow either…
If it were Liam, I’d give a single glucose tab just to be on the safe side…I’d hate to not, then have a hypo event. Sorry he’s going through this. We’ve experienced this same type of behavior, but typically when he’s coming toward the end of his current sensor session.
@ClaudnDaye, yeah I guess the issue is taht I know he will come up and I’m worried that the glucose tab will make the sensor’s readings even more unreliable. Because the sensor seems to be struggling to catch up to the normal rate of rise, and a glucose tab raises BGs quick.
I think I’m going to wait about 15 minutes and see if he’s not rising. He also has no IOB so all that food sitting in his stomach has no advance insulin to prevent a huge spike later.
Yeah, my decisions vary all the time based on the circumstances. In the situation you cited, with no insulin on board, I’d probably have just waited also in this case…we don’t want lows, but we also don’t want huge spikes either. Sounds like he’s coming up so everything’s OK.
We have overlooked lows lots of times when we’re sure he a) just ate, and b) he either doesn’t have IOB, or the IOB came after he ate.
@TiaG, a year ago or so I read the story of that young woman that pre-injected for lunch, had lunch with her friends, then walked out of the restaurant and had a huge low, because, for some reason, she was not processing her food fast enough.
I have wondered ever since – what do you do in this situation? Several times my son has had a mild low in the same manner, which we just toughed out. Not that long ago, he had a deep low like Samson (a real fingerprick low) – we ended up rubbing glucose paste in his mouth so that it would get absorbed directly.
His low disappeared very quickly but I am not sure that it would not have done so anyway. At least, now we know we can do something though, if we need to.
yes, in those situations where we’ve pre-bolused we often will give a glucose tab. The logic is that relative to the carbs he has in his stomach and the amount of insulin on board, the overall effect of the glucose tab is probably negligible.
In this case the fact that he had little IOB was what made me feel comfortable waiting.
My wife put it to me very well the other night when I was having a persistent low. I was at about 50 and had had a slug of o.j. about fifteen minutes previously.
She told me to have another o.j. and I objected, afraid of a big rebound. She told me that I was 100 points away from having to take some insulin, but I was only 20 points away from an ambulance ride.
Apparently after reading this thread and having nothing of additional value to add, I will cross-plug another post, and say you should give him a donut hole, because that is the way we roll.
JK!!!