I haven’t had a lot of time to post this week.
I have been furiously chasing colossal build ups of sugar from my son’s blood, or desperately trying to raise the starved levels. It’s been a numbers game this week, that’s for sure.
Earlier last week, Lance was talkative, happy, but his eyes looked heavy and weary and I had heard the toilet flush for the third time in about 40 minutes. It was enough to make him test himself. This is what was on the screen of his glucometer.
I was temporarily unable to breathe. I could feel my heart pounding in my ears and my throat. Stirrings of nausea washed over me. I looked incredulously at Lance, who was happily playing, singing to himself and showing no physical signs of hyperglyaemia. I immediately gave him two bursts of rapid and long acting insulin plus a litre of water to shoot this number down. These are the readings that notoriously spell out DKA. ( The next morning I discovered Lance had a gum infection. That’s the only good thing about hypers; there is usually a standout reason for why they happen.)
That feeling of panic and great distress reminded me of another infamous reading before Christmas last year. Chino was upset and droopy eyed. Lance was weak and pale, unable to use his cupped hands to grasp onto a handful of grapes. They scattered all over his face and down the back of his neck, promptly causing tears and pandemonium. Again I tested, and was left shaking as the glucometer flashed not a number, but a dreaded “word.”
That was a near glucagon incident, however, we were able to increase his unreadable levels up to 2.3mmol/L, 15 minutes later. An hour later, he was still only 6.2mmol/L. He spent the rest of the day vomiting and unable to move off the sofa, too weak to walk.
In these photos are frightening examples of severe hypoglycaemia and hyperglycaemia. Both, left untreated, could cause unconsciousness, coma or death. The terror that lies behind these numbers is the speed in which a symptom will occur, and what little time you have to treat the problem. In Lance’s case, only a trained eye can detect when a situation is aboout to escalate into a serious diabetic emergency.
Diabetes isn’t just about having your insulin, exercise and modifying your lifestyle. Your child should know a finger prick is coming, just by hearing the machine slide out of the leather pouch, the click of the lancet in the lancet device, and your footsteps approaching them. Fingerpricking is the only way that you can maintain Diabetes at home. This is the side that people who assume Diabetes is a “lifestyle disease” never see. They will never feel that helpless panic, the fear of failure, or the guilt that is associated with taking care of your child who has Diabetes.
Insulin is not a cure.
amine said,
12 February, 2008 @ 3:43 am
good project