My seven year old son was just diagnosed with T1D in August. He is not feeing his lows we only catch them because we check his blood sugars often. At what age did your children feel thier lows? Is he not feeling them because he is newly diagnosed? It worries me that he doesn’t feel them. The doctor said our next step is CGM.
My son was dx at the age of 3. He never really “felt” his lows, but I could tell by his behavior. He got really whiny and desperately hungry. Sometimes, at that age, they just don’t realize WHAT they’re feeling. My son started being more aware of things after he attended diabetes camps at the age of 7. He is now 10 and ALWAYS knows when he’s low. You should check into camps in your area - they are an amazing way for the kids to connect with other diabetics and become more familiar with the disease.
Our daughter (dx’d 5 y ago at 10) never had hypo-awareness and unfortunately still doesn’t. She will often feel it at 3 or so and naturally very much so at 2.5 or so. We’ve been asked to ‘run her high’, that is, aim for an average higher number (say, 9) so as to re-establish some sensitivity around lower numbers. However, that hasn’t work on the few occasions we’ve tried.
On a more positive note, we’ve recently begun (again) on CGM using the SmartGuard system of the new 640G pump (available in EU). It’s doing a very good job of tracking and is accurate across a wide range of values. It does lose some accuracy when BGs are changing rapidly but quickly regains that accuracy. The SmartGuard from our very limited experience provides great protection against more severe lows and provides a glimpse of how technology will (and is) assist into the future.
My daughter was diagnosed @ 9 months old. She’s obviously too young to even begin to tell me how she is feeling, even if she is aware that something isn’t right. We’ve had her on a Dexcom G4 Platnum CGM since she was 11 months old and I cannot say enough good things about this product. I would STRONGLY recommend it’s use to ANYONE - but especially someone suffering from hypo-unawareness or any kind of pediatric patient - as stated above - the CGM technology is going to lose some accuracy when glucose values are changing rapidly, but when we are talking about a scenario in which values are moving at more than 2 or 3 points per minute - it becomes much more important to slow the trend itself then to worry about “actual” number values. Sleeping at night has been incredible since we’ve started using the Dex, and it really gives you a great look into actual daily trends as to what their levels are doing throughout the day (being able to see a glucose value every 5 minutes without taking a finger stick is an incredible advantage in dealing with this disease.) We are able to play around with different foods at different times throughout the day to try to make her levels more stable overall, and we are also able to see that certain foods cause higher or faster spiking than others - again - the name of the game in dealing with diabetes is INFORMATION, the A1C is giving you a 3 month average, your finger sticks are giving you a current snapshot, but the CGM will enable you to tie these two pcs of data together through trending information. I can say with almost 100 percent certainty - if you decide to go with the CGM technology - you will NEVER go back. Best of luck!
We also have used Dexxcom CGM for our since since 6 months into diagnosis and I could not live without it, amazing. If you get one you will have to find the right adhesives, which we order through Amazon, but CVS also carries, “Tegaderm” stays on for about a week, we restart sensor and change Tegaderm about another week. O n average we get 10-14 days on y 8 year old, may be less on a baby. You can join the Dexcom group on Facebook and the questions and support you get from other users is also a life saver, finding out what other parents with kids your age do is so helpful Best of luck