Looking for suggestions

He was tested for celiac disease in August and all was well.
Thanks for the support, this is a great community and I am overwhelmed by the support!

Sounds like a good approach. Having the backup of knowing how to handle MDI, and injections is huge and a neccessary skill for any diabetic on insulin.

Just some general information: NPH has a burn-out time of between 12-16 hours in most people and tends to be fairly unstable in terms of its peaks and valleys. Lantus or Levemir are considered 24-hour insulins with a much more stable absorbtion rate with a lower plateau. Helps even out those times when you're always running high or low at a specific time of the day.

I agree, Zoe! I was dx'd at age 15 and told my parents I was too old to go to camp. Looking back, I wish my parents had pushed me a little more to go. I think it would have been beneficial to be around other T1's. But I was nervous and trying to be the same as all my non-D friends. I didn't realize what a source of encouragement and peace it is to find other who can relate to diabetes.

I hope that your son can find some others who he can relate to!

Hi SuzP,

Hello from a fellow Canadian who also has a (10 year old) son (DX at age 8) with Type 1 diabetes (as well as myself).

My son can be tired at times as well and he has ADHD. You can be tired from high sugars (or even just higther than he is used to especially if he is coming out of the honeymoon period). As well, when you have a low sugar this can also make you very tired and give you a headache.

My son is very lazy and we have a hard time getting him to do activity as well. It must be something he likes like swimming, tobaganning, trampolining.

As well, I am not sure what your nightime routine is like. Do you need to wake him up at all in the night? THis can also have an impact on sleep as well. My son was much more tired when first diagnosed and sleeping in which HE NEVER did before the diabetes. He is starting to wake up at his normal time in the morning and a lot less sleeping in.

I notice he is tired and in a bad mood when his sugars are higher than normal or fluctuating a lot.

Good luck to you son and your whole family. He is not alone in this eventhough you can sometimes feel like you are :-)

Lethargy and stomach aches can be related to highs, so of course the first question is, do you notice any relation to his blood sugars? He may be getting highs at school after lunch and thus coming home with belly aches. Also, what has he had for lunch on the days he comes home? Some foods are harder to dose for. (My son loves Chinese food, but if he has it, he ends up with high blood sugar.)

Second, belly aches, needing to come home from school, and lethargy can also be related to depression. I know if I were 12 and wanting more than ever to fit in, and came down with a life altering "forever" illness that involved shots- I would feel depressed. The fact that a little activity perks him up may indicate that it is more of a situational and temporary depression, rather than generalized global chronic depression.

After the initial diagnosis there are a lot of appointments so your son would be getting treatment that feels active, like something is going to be done. Coupled with the fact that he was probably also feeling better it was a kind of hiatus emotionally. Once it starts to sink in that this is for life... it may feel overwhelming.

High blood sugar gave my son belly aches and symptoms seemed stronger in the early days before his body acclimated to having highs and lows. With a glucose reading of 60, back then, his hands would shake-- now, I've seen him walking & talking- to all appearances, normal-- with a glucose reading of 23!

My son was dx'd at 14 and was also growing like a weed. We had a huge amount of trouble getting his readings under control- It was enormously frustrating because we did everything right and my son was highly invested in cooperating too. They said that it was the growth hormone (and our inability to predict its release) that was undermining all our efforts.

After the first year he went on the pump and that helped a lot- we could set up the continuous drip to be more regular than any time release that lantus had. He still had some wild readings, but greatly improved. He just turned 18 and is a lanky 6 feet something and 145 pounds, but with the end of his active growth, his glucose seems to actually correlate to what we do. Best of all, (pre-pump his A1C was 8.6).... post pump it is 6.4! We have done all our counting of carbs and his diet exactly the same, what has changed is the accuracy of the drip as opposed to the time release of lantus.

I would ask your son's doctors about his lethargy. My son was always a low energy kind of kid, but if this is a big departure for your son, it is either physical, emotional or perhaps a combination-- and ask your son, it is important that he know his own body and he may have insight that is spot on. In any case, it can't hurt to get medical advice.

I wish you all the best.