I’ve apparently been misinformed about the nature of the word “honeymoon”—mine was a trip to Maui, but Eric’s is no day in the tropics. We’ve been seeing unusual lows in the past 3 days (they started, ironically, the day after Dr. Olshan said in disappointed tones, “Gee, I’d have thought he would have started honeymooning. Maybe he’s not going to.”). But yesterday was downright scary. He’s taken to vomiting when he’s really, really low, and of course that’s just when we’re trying to feed him to bring him up. So we’ve been using the ondansetron they prescribed to help keep food in him. Well, ondansetron apparently is no miracle drug, because even with it on board, he yacked during lunch yesterday—in the booth at Subway, to my great dismay—after having given me a BG of 54. I put the kids in the car and headed home, but then Eric started to pass out—I saw his eyes roll back in his head in the rearview mirror and that was it. I stopped, got a BG of 34, tried unsuccessfully to get juice in him, and wound up giving him a glucagon shot right there in the Hannaford parking lot. We went straight to Maine Med Ctr after that. Of course, by the time we got there, he was back to normal and cheerful as a parakeet, and his BG measured 291, which is REALLY annoying. I mean, if you’re going to drag your kid into the ER with a life-threatening condition, you need to at least LOOK like there’s a problem!
But that wasn’t even the last of it. We talked to his endo and cut back on his Lantus, and have been trying to feed him up to a level of ~300 so we can safely give Humalog for the ketones. Did I mention his ketones were up in the 3s and 4s? So we’ve been giving him ice cream, gingerale, juice, and chocolate milk pretty much every 3 or 4 hours (these being the only things he doesn’t refuse entirely) without any short-acting coverage, yet he still had a reading of 44 when I woke him this morning. He wouldn’t drink the chocolate milk or the juice, so I hit him with the glucagon pen again, and viola, in 20 minutes he was his normal self.
This is one heart-stopping rollercoaster ride. I’ll take a trip to Maui over this any day, even WITH the airline delays and lost luggage.
I thought that my son’s honeymoon period was bad, but it was nothing compared to Eric’s! Sorry you had to go through that, it must have been scary! I am sure you cannot wait until the “honeymoon” is over! Good luck!
Yeah, it’s scary, but it’s teaching me to roll with the punches. Eric yacked again today over at the daycare and I had to go get him and somehow get a few carbs in him… which I did… you’ll never believe how, though. Eric loves to brush his teeth, and he was refusing to eat anything at all (who can blame the poor kid? vomiting isn’t any fun!) But we got some white frosting and put it on his toothbrush and let him suck it off, the way he does with toddler toothpaste. Just kept putting more on and letting him “brush” until he’d had a couple teaspoons worth. Then the frosting itself made him thirsty so we offered him juice. Then milk. So we got the carbs in and now he’s fine… it just seems like it never ends! But the clinic told me tonight, he’s going insulin-free—nothing that he doesn’t produce himself will be added into his system. That should at least prevent the crashing.
He has been vomiting off and on again for several days because of a stomach virus. Sometimes he can keep the food down, sometimes he can’t. We have had trouble keeping him high enough to put insulin in.
Wow, that must have been really freaky! The part that scares me most about the Glucagon was how big it was… but when my eyes widened when the educator showed us it, she merely said, “Oh don’t worry, you won’t be awake for this.” Oh yeah… thanks. Reassuring.
I remember Hannafords grocery stores… I used to live in Masachusetts before moving to Minnesota. Our Victory store was taken over by a Hannafords and that was eventually demolished to make room for a WalMart.
Those glucagon needles are frigging huge, and I have a long-standing “thing” about needles anyway. I had to really grit my teeth to inject him (and contrary to your educator’s comment, he was NOT unconscious), but knowing that the next stop was seizures, maybe coma, well… that was incentive enough.
