Saturday 22 September 2012

He wouldn't wake up!!

It's been over three years since Samuel was diagnosed, and two years since I started writing this blog. In this time most things I have written about have been quite light hearted and not too depressing. Sure, I have had my moments but as a rule I think I'm quite upbeat with my posts. Be warned, this one is not so cheerful, and could have been a whole lot worse!!

I always test Samuels blood before I go to bed, I admit I don't always test throughout the night, but this post is not about night testing. The way in which Samuel reacts to his hypos is a bit hit and miss, for example sometimes he will say he feels unwell and he is not low, other times he is running around like a loon and he will be under 3, and mostly his hypos wake him if he is asleep. If I have ever had to wake him to treat a hypo he has always been responsive, he may not be completely awake but will always be cooperative and drink his drink. That is up till now. Monday night was a completely different ball game.
I tested before I went to bed and his level was 2.7, this is not the lowest he has ever been but obviously it is quite low. I tried to wake him before I went to get his drink, I do this so he has a chance to wake up a little bit before I try and make him drink. He wasn't playing ball, he would answer me and was completely out of it. I went down the stairs to get his drink and decided that I would need a straw as there was no way he was going to be able to drink out of a cup. I got his juice and went back upstairs and again tried to wake him. I shook him a couple of times, I called his name getting louder with each time. I got no response, I grabbed his wrists to pull him to sitting, and again called him and told him that his sugar was low and he needed to drink. This time he did try and answer me but was flinging his arms around trying to push me away. I managed to get him on my lap and put my arm around him to stop him fighting me but every time I tried to get him to drink he turned his head away and was telling me no!!
I eventually managed to get the drink down him and I laid him back down. I rechecked 15 mins later, his levels were rising but it was not a number that I was happy with so I checked again after another 15mins.
Looking back I should have treated him with the gel as he wasn't really responsive enough to take the drink, and this would have been classed as a moderate to severe hypo, but as he had been that low before I didn't see it has one. What it has shown me is no two hypos are the same, and cant be distinguished by a number. I remember asking at diagnosis 'what number is classed as a severe hypo?' and being told that they are different for everyone.
What this has also shown me is that it is so important for me to test before I go to bed. I dread to think what would have happened if I hadn't.

1 comment:

  1. I always go in and wake my daughter before i go to bed and take her to the toilet. The reality is that she is perfectly capable of getting up in the night without me but i use the time to check on her and see if i need to check her blood sugar. Unfortunately she stopped waking if she had a hypo at night about a yr after she was diagnosed so i have to look in on her for my own peace of mind. thankfully we've only had a couple of incidents when she was out of it enough that i had to give her gel and keep saying her name to get her to focus at all. scary times but getting through them is the main thing even if you think it could've been done differently when you look back on it

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