When you have a child with juvenile diabetes you are always at a state of worrying. If your child is at a friend’s house will the parents remember that they need to check your child’s blood sugar before they are given a snack, or meal? It is always on your mind, you are no longer the parent of a child who can be allowed to eat and drink like a child without diabetes.
With my niece when she received the diagnosis she was still young enough to try to get her used to eating the way she should without too much problem. Yeah that is what we thought. She was what is called a brittle diabetic. They were trying to get the dosing correct for her insulin shots and how many carbs she was allowed to have per day.
When you are a diabetic you should have a blood sugar between 70 and 110 before they eat a meal. A person whose blood sugar goes below 70 should eat some form of sugar or their blood sugar level could drop to a level that could cause a diabetic induced coma. When a person has low blood sugar they are having a hypoglycemia episode.
If you have low blood sugar around 70 the condition is still mild and the symptoms include nausea, they may get jittery, feel clammy, sweaty or cold. If a person has a sugar that goes below 55 it becomes moderate hypoglycemia they may become irritable, confused, what I call the drunk effect which includes poor coordination, slurred speech, mood changes. If the blood sugar is below 40 this is time to call 911 the person will be hard to give sugar orally and they may experience seizures, low blood temperature and could slip into a diabetic coma. If the blood sugar stays too low it could cause permanent brain damage and heart problems and even death.
There were a few times that my niece had moderate hypoglycemia and she was very difficult to administer glucose to. At this point she was unable to chew the glucose tablets so we kept a tube of decorating frosting in our house and squeezed it in her mouth and kept checking her sugar every 5 minutes to make sure it was going the right way. When she was still low and we were out of icing we switched to orange sherbet it melts quickly and was easy to get in her because there was no chewing required.
I was very scared this was the first time she had dropped this low with us it was a rude awakening.