I messaged them 30 minutes ago and no one responded. I called 20 minutes ago and they treated – when he was already 52. I know the teachers love Samson and are doing their best, but there’s just such a wide range of abilities and intuitiveness when it comes to D-care.
I can’t wait for the time when he is hopefully able to treat his lows himself and be more independent.
This is my biggest concern for Liam when school approaches next year. I fear I will be driven crazy (and make the entire staff crazy from my non-stop yelling) by this kind of thing. Nothing erks me more than someone not responding to something so important. I get it…they have more to do than monitor my child’s sugars…but in my mind there is nothing MORE important than monitoring a LIFE.
So sorry you are going through this…the more I see things like this the more I’m inclined to just home school. I am going to be relentless and pretty harsh to any school official if this happens to Liam…maybe I’d be better served to home school for that purpose alone. I have no mercy on anyone hurting my kids…and things like this ARE, or CAN BE hurting our kids.
The thing is, I know that these lows do happen on our watch too. I mean, I looked at the last 7 days of data from Dexcom, and there are 0 percent urgent lows for the hours he’s with us except for like 3 percent during the hour when he eats breakfast (when he sort of touches down to 55 and then bounces up sometimes), and then like 15 percent!!! urgent low at the noon to 1pm hour, when he’s at school.
But, when I look at the 90-day data, the urgent lows look a little more evenly distributed. There are still times of the day when it’s more common, but not all of them are concentrated in the school hours. Because even though we’re vigilant, sometimes we do miss things as well, and sometimes lows just come out of nowhere. And sometimes alarms don’t work at night, or he has no data for a while and then all of a sudden does, etc. etc. etc.
The other thing I’d say is that it’s not all the school’s fault of course. I mean clearly we have some settings that should be tweaked somehow if they need to treat impending lows every day. Our goal when he started school was to have him need low treatments about 3 times a week, but realistically, he needs low treatments/avoid low treatments at school every.single.day. Once every two weeks he may have a day with no glucose tabs. We are constantly trying to figure out the right balance to make those lows go away but we never have been able to. Setting the target higher doesn’t seem to help because the crashes way overshoot whatever the target is anyways. And when we lower his basal rate he’s hanging out at 300. And when he weaken his carb ratio he shoots up to 300 and only drifts down to 280 or so at lunch time. Anyways, the point is that someone who was happy for their kid to hang out at 170 or 200 all day long probably wouldn’t have as many lows to treat, and therefore wouldn’t spend much time in the urgent low range, and that’s our choice of a tradeoff. If that’s your #1 concern there are definitely ways you can set the care plan to make them much less likely, even if the school is not 100% responsive.
I also think being the squeaky wheel really does help…and it will help you guys as well that the public schools are required to care for your child, which is not necessarily the case with a private school or a preschool.
I’m not even talking about the lows…I get it, lows happen. I’m talking about the unresponsiveness for 30 minutes. that bothers me because then I’m left wondering. When I’m left wondering, my mind goes to all the wrong places.
yeah I mean to be fair I sort of make a choice every day about how soon to call versus just waiting for a text response or to see an update on NightScout. Today I didn’t get a response for 10 minutes so I called. Some days I call immediately after sending a text and the director does always pick up. it’s an annoying process (the director has to go get the teachers to see if they treated) but they are responsive in that way.
My guess is that responsiveness will be lower next year when he’s at school. But I hope there’s a way to communicate via text and I suspect they’ll just assign him a one-on-one aide, in which case there may be a way for us to communicate via a district-supplied phone and I think that will be better than what he’s having now.
I can’t imagine how parents do this, day in and day out. Kudos to all of you, really! Our grandson is in daycare and it gets really loud in there. I’m wondering if, when they are unresponsive, if they hear their phones or even if they hear the Dex alarm? I have often wished I could increase the volume on mine and I’m not in a daycare environment.
My child is obviously older. Still my responsibility. For now.
Well, yes, of course. But I mean that right now the teachers are solely responsible for his diabetes care as the first-line. I think he’d (eventually) do a better job than them as that first-responder.
