Gastro

[Jen&Khaleb]

How do other Mum's and Dad's cope with Gastro viruses? Khaleb has just had his first and it has been the worst 3 days and nights ever. I'm sure I've only managed about 3 hours sleep a night. It was lucky that Khaleb started to vomit before I had given him his morning Levemir as I had the chance to cut that down by 40%. We went for a visit to the hospital to get some little wafer thing to stop him puking and although that helped a bit it didn't make him eat either. He has had quite excellent blood sugars but I've had massive ketone problems from the lack of food and reduced insulin. He got as high as having 3.4 blood ketones (with a blood sugar of 6) and was very symptomatic of DKA but I got some carbs/insulin into him and got the ketone level down under 1.

Yesterday I gave him sustagen and this seems to have helped a lot. It is a kind of milk meal replacement that contains quite a lot of replacement minerals, vitamins and lots of carbs. I was just using glucose powder before trying this but raising his blood sugar was only part of the battle. Khaleb is very unco-operative when it comes to eating/drinking new things so the general stomach bug stuff wasn't possible.

Anyway, the ketone meter was 0.0 before bed and blood sugars are now only a little high while the Levemir gets put back up to it usually place. Well, just wanted to hear how other people cope.

 

[SophiaW]

Jen, it sounds like you coped very well and it sounds like Khaleb is over the worst of it now. Jess is different to Khaleb in that when she becomes ill her basal needs to be increased rather than cut back. She usually manages to take sips of full sugar coke or lucozade and we bolus accordingly but it is very tricky getting the right balance. Sickness usually means sleepless nights with regular BG testing, temperature taking, medicating etc. The most worrying part is trying to keep fluids in them and ketones at bay. Hope he makes a quick recovery now and you can get a good nights sleep again.

 

[annettekp]

Oh Jen I hope he's on the mend now. Erland had a bug in January and it was hell. Our GP gave him anti-sickness injections 3 times and then gave us anti-sickness medicine. We only kept him out of hospital because we all had the bug and neither of us was fit to go with him.

It was so hard getting him to take anything especially when he was woken up for this. Best advice I got was to use a straw! I was adding glucose powder to full sugar lemonade at one point. Its so hard to get the balance right of keeping ketones down and blood sugar up. We were up every 1 1/2 - 2 hours checking his blood sugar and usually having to wake him up to force him to take some carbs. We had 3 nights of it.

GP suggested we give him full sugar coke with salt added as it does as well as the rehydration sachets you get. (This is what they use in African coutnries apparently where medical supplies are limited.)

Fingers crossed you can get some well earned rest soon.

Annette

 

[marynf]

We had something similar a couple of weeks ago. S got a vomity bug in the middle of the night, spent all night fairly low (I even reduced the basal on the pump) and ketones were the last thing on my mind as she was never above 6.2. I phoned the hospital team for advice about 7am and they asked whether she had ketones, and she did, although only at 1.5 or so. They told me to come in etc etc.

Basically it turned out they were starvation ketones, and as such normal and to be expected having not eaten since mid afternoon in effect. She was on a drip for a few hours and began to be able to keep down water/squash. Ketones remained hovering around the 1.0 to 1.5 mark until she had some dry cereal the next day, after which they disappeared quickly.

I was all set to therefore ignore ketones with low blood sugar until a GP friend of mine said that you can have DKA with low blood sugars. Only a hospital blood test will be able to tell the difference, so it is worth checking them out. However if they are just starvation ketones it is possible to relax a bit.

Full sugar coke is great - I think the caffeine helps a bit too - as are dry rice crispies. I can imagine passing off blackcurrant flavour dioralyte rehydration sachets as "special ribena" at a push, but when children are ill they just want comfortingly familiar food rather than anything new. I think that once they can keep something down let them eat what they fancy. I always go back to my mum's remedy of mashed bananas and then cream crackers with a little marmite/bovril/vegemite spread on when I am ill, but no-one else in the family likes that solution.

I hope Khaleb is feeling better now,

Mary

 

[Jen&Khaleb]

Thanks everyone. Nice to know that the awful few days I've had are just par for the course with a gastro bug.

Sophia, Khaleb usually needs his basal increased when ill also but that is when he has a fever. The first day of vomitting Khaleb was actually cold (temp 35). He spiked a fever the next day but because he had already not eaten for a day he still needed reduced insulin. It was safer to reduce it regardless and just keep correcting with Novorapid if it was needed.

His ketones cleared last night but are back up to 0.4 this morning. I think a few starvation ketones in a non-diabetic are not something to be concerned about but I think they are all a problem for the diabetic. High ketones with good blood sugar still lead to DKA. Once upon a time I did not test Khaleb for ketones when he had good blood sugar while sick but now make sure to test for them as it has caught me out before.

Khaleb was very close to needing some time in the hospital but he and I hate staying there so much it was better to tough it out at home. Even though the hospital is for sick people it isn't worth spreading or catching something while you're there. :lol: