The First Low

The Inevitable
So the inevitable event that we have been dreading happened, my son had his first low. The cause was pretty simple once we thought it out. For dinner he had some mushroom soup. The can had nutritional information printed on the side which we used to calculate his bolus injection. The problem was simple, the information was for 'condensed soup', not for cooked soup which would have twice the volume. We did our calculations for about 25g too much carb and so gave him 2 units of insulin too much.

He has a correction factor of 3 units of insulin per 1 mmol/l. So these two units could push him about 6 mmol/l lower than he should be. His target is between 4 and 8 mmol/l. Not surprisingly he crashed.

We knew this was coming, it was only a matter of time. He was sitting watching TV and said that he wasn't feeling well. His hands were shaking a bit. We checked his blood sugar level and it read 3.1 mmol/l. This was our first low.

What to do?
We were theoretically ready for this but you can never be truly ready for something like this the first time. First thing we did was got him a juice box. We had him drain it. After waiting 15 minutes we took another reading... the result was 3.2.

I went back downstairs and thought that maple syrop might be better. Measuring out enough for 15g of carbs, I added some warm water and stirred it until dissolved. He guzzled that quickly.

We waited another 15 minutes, the result 5.1. mmol/l. He was no longer low. An hour later he was around 10 :(, he was now high.

Not wanting to mess around too much we proceeded to monitor him for a few more hours testing him into the night. He went up to 11, and then slowly started to drop to near normal come morning. He had a headache, and wasn't feeling well, but we still sent him to school (driving him). By the end of the day he was back to normal.

One Mistake
One little mistake due to a stupid serving size on a label led to 24 hours of chaos. Diabetes is not like most other treatments, where you work with the body's equilibrium mechanism. With diabetes you are  the equilibrium mechanism. Too little insulin and he gets sick. Too much insulin and he gets sick.

And nothing is really predictable. A honeymoon period could throw us off, some exercise or stress can throw us off, and of course, badly reading a nutrition label can throw us off.