Well, I made that FAMOUS mistake last night. I prepared dinner, my daughter gave herself her shot, and i was cleaning up when i realized, I PUT THE WRONG INSULIN IN THE SYRINGE!! I put 6 units of Lantus in the syringe instead of 6 units of Humalog!!! My heart dropped! The first thing i did was call the emergency after hours number. Explained my situation and asked for a doctor to call me back ASAP! Guess what, 25 minutes later no one had called back. So, I called for a 2nd time (which i feel is totally unacceptable!). We have diabetic (excuse me Type 1 diabetic) children, i feel if/when we call an emergency number someone weither it be a doctor or nurse, but someone should call back ASAP. Anyways, (just needed to vent for a second) I again explained to the operator my situation. She told me to stay on the line and she connected me directly to a doctor at the hospital (now why wasn't that done the first time). Well, long story short we got my daughters insulin straightened out and the doctor told me her numbers maybe a little weird today but not to panic. She also told me NOT to "beat myself up" over it because it is one of the most common mistakes people make...I'm one of those people that if i can learn from my mistake then i won't beat myself up over it. And TRUST ME i did learn from it. The first thing i did after getting my daughter back situated and eatting was to totally seperate the two insulins all together. One is on one side of the frig and the other is on the other side......I still just can not believe it did that. I know now she is OK, but i was so scared but i knew i had to keep calm for her because she would have paniced if mommy paniced....I also learned that when it is time to give her her shots, then mommy can NOT multi-task (i'm so famous for it).. This takes all attention and this is something that i can't make a mistake at....
So am i the only one who has done this, or can someone make me feel alittle better and let me know i'm not alone :)
Many of us have made this mistake, and you can't help but feel awful and incredibly guilty- but we're all human. It's especially easy to do when you're perpetually sleep deprived. This tends to be the common state for parents who have a child with T1 diabetes. The good thing is you were able to catch the mistake and start fixing things.
THANKS RED!!! and you are so right, the last full night of sleep i've had was December 3, 2009 (the night BEFORE my daughter was rushed to the hospital) but i just continue to go on. As long as my baby is ok, then i'm ok!! But i will say, i'm planning on taking a day or two off (once winter break is over and the kids are back in school) and i'm taking a day off and SLEEPING!! I think i at least deserve that :).......Hope you and yours has a WONDER NEW YEAR
Never done the wrong insulin but completely FORGOT to give the shot once (we were about a year into the diagnosis at that point). My then-five-year old ended up really high at school because I did not give her insulin to cover her breakfast. DUH!! I felt AWFUL and the Nurse (who happens to be the Mom of a Diabetic also) assured me that "everyone does this" at some point! I felt better knowing I was in good company.
Yep, been there, done that. I gave our son Lantus instead of Humalog to cover his meal once. It was kind of lucky it happened to be dinner, I gave him enough Lantus to "finish" what would have been his usual 7:00 pm dose, then gave him the correct Humalog to cover the carbs. He was fine.
One of the things our ped endo told me at our first meeting was that, sooner or later, just about every caregiver goofs and gives the child Humalog instead of Lantus at their evening basal dose. THAT creates a challenge, especially if the regular Lantus dose is considerably higher than the average meal Humalog dose. In that case, he told me, call him immediately and he'll figure out how to balance the mistake. Basically what happens is, you've got to keep testing and feeding carbs for about four hours until the Humalog gets out of their system. Translation: you're going to be up all night. So, what's new :) When I took the caregiver's class, there were two parents in the class who said they had already made that mistake, and their kids were fine. A little groggy in the morning, but they were fine.
Another situation I've run into is when our son doesn't eat everything that he says he's going to eat. I have him test his BS and serve up his plate, then I calculate his dose based on what he says he's going to eat. When he doesn't eat all his carbs, I simply "reverse calculate" how much additional glucose he needs to balance his Humalog dose, and have him either drink the appropriate amount of milk or eat an appropriate number of glucose tablets.
One of the nice things about having a carb:insulin ratio for each meal is that you can usually take a deep breath, sit down, and figure out how to correct the error. The "deep breath" is the most important part :)
So, have you shattered a vial of insulin on the tile floor yet? I did, less than a month after our son's dx. Thank goodness both the hospital and our ped endo had given us free "samples" to take home, so I had a backup.
hi my name is kerri and i have a 11 year old son with type 1. that is a really common mistake. what we did was we use insulin pens instead of vials with syringes. this really cuts down on mistakes. they are different color pens and they both come in half unit increments. have you ever tried the pens?