Hypers

cmebaxter said:

My 6 year old son has been consistently high recently enough so to indicate that he needed to go back on his long acting insulin lantus things were starting to come down and be normal but tonight he has gone to bed at 22 I have gave him a half a unit of insulin I would rather not have but I don't know what else to do and quite frankly I can't stop crying because he's been on his lantus for and week now I thought things were looking positive. He eats and mixture of the same things all the time so it's not food I might change the insulin cartridge in the morning and I know what I am doing but when this happens I feel useless! Going to have to phone the nurses I haven't been in contact with them ands much and so my ex husband as he was able to do the choice program before me and now I feel even more left out and useless and all I want to do is make his blood sugar normal

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Don't ever be frightened to seek the advice of your DSN or any member of the Diabetes team. It is their job and their expertise is to help you avoid feeling the amount of despair which you are currently experiencing. It's what they are paid to do and also what our taxes pay them to do, so please don't feel reluctant to use them!

The best thing to do is contact them ASAP and they will be able to advise on dosage adjustments for your son.

cmebaxter said:

My 6 year old son has been consistently high recently enough so to indicate that he needed to go back on his long acting insulin lantus things were starting to come down and be normal but tonight he has gone to bed at 22 I have gave him a half a unit of insulin I would rather not have but I don't know what else to do and quite frankly I can't stop crying because he's been on his lantus for and week now I thought things were looking positive. He eats and mixture of the same things all the time so it's not food I might change the insulin cartridge in the morning and I know what I am doing but when this happens I feel useless! Going to have to phone the nurses I haven't been in contact with them ands much and so my ex husband as he was able to do the choice program before me and now I feel even more left out and useless and all I want to do is make his blood sugar normal

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Hi You mention your son having to "go back on his long-acting insulin" - are you saying that he'd previously been able to stop it for a while? If so, and your son is fairly recently diagnosed, then having to go back on insulin would be normal. Early on in diagnosis, the pancreas can still make a little of its own insulin but that gradually stops.

Did you use a fast acting insulin to give him his half unit correction dose? Does your son have fast acting insulin?

Do phone your DSN as soon as possible so they can help with insulin doses.

You're not useless and you haven't failed You've spotted your son is going too high. That's a win not a fail.

Don't be worried about calling his team. It's completely normal and completely expected for parents of Type 1 children to call frequently for advice.

Let us know how you get on

Oh, one other thing to add - you may want to test for ketones as it's routine practice when BG's are running a bit high. If you don't have a meter or strips that can do this then bring it up with your diabetes team when you next speak with them. In the meantime, you could probably get some urinalysis testing strips from a local pharmacy.

Some hospitals have out of hours emergency hotlines for T1 diabetics. At levels of 22 I would (if it was my scenario) be phoning them - if your sons hospital has this extra service.

As above, but just to confirm really that your son is T1 so he will need whatever insulin is necessary to keep him under 8.0. Please do not fear the fact he is needing insulin..its not a sign of getting worse, you can only think now that you need to give whatever insulin is necessary to keep his bloods in normal range.

Christmas time tends to be needing more insulin for most of us due to the abundance of food that is around. The carbs in food may just go up by say 10% but that 10% needs more insulin.

Never think you have failed.. honestly, think well, ok learnt from that. Next christmas/holiday etc we know this happened so we'll do this instead this christmas.

Heck, we never get everything perfect!! Its just learning and adapting from
now on. No beating self up!!

Contact your DSN and they will advise.... have blood readings and details laid out to go through them etc..

Please let us know how you and son get on.. x