A five-year-old boy from Barrow saved his mother from a diabetic coma after remembering his emergency training and calling for help.
Adrian Hartley rang his grandparents for help after his mom, Hannah, collapsed from a diabetic hypo last weekend.
His father, Scott, was working at the time, but Adrian had been taught how to respond in an emergency situation. His grandparents lived round the corner from their home in Ramsgate Crescent, Walney, so he phoned them.
Mrs Halsey, who has had diabetes for 25 years, said: “I probably would have been in a diabetic coma if it wasn’t for Adrian. Last Sunday morning my sugar levels dropped very low – what they call a hypo. I was completely unaware of it.
“I was still functioning but I don’t know how. He must have been talking to me and just not getting any reaction. He won’t quite say what happened but he knew I wasn’t well and he remembered what we had taught him.
“We taught him to get a chair and get the phone down and phone his gran and papa. We’ve only had two trial runs and the last one we had would have been September time, but he’s listened, which is quite an achievement for a five-year-old.”
Adrian, a year one pupil at St Columba’s Catholic Primary School, earned applause from his classmates, while his mother added: “We’ve told him he’s a superstar and how clever and brave he is and how proud we are of him.”
Hypo awareness
Hypo symptoms can sometimes be hard to spot, even for people who have had diabetes for 25 years.
If you have a family member or friend with diabetes, and they are susceptible to low blood sugars, it is important to be able to recognise these symptoms – if they cannot – at the time of a hypo.
Having hypo awareness can be life-saving knowledge, especially if the person having a hypo is potentially in need of emergency treatment.
